FF 2/3 of the way into the toon in the second link, where Bluto locks Popeye in a safe and hurls it into an “Orphanage.” (Hint: Those babies ain’t really babies.)
As a gross generalization, discontent in Newfoundland takes the form of complaining about Ontario. Succeeding from Canada to be a Republic is a recurrent fantasy, you can gettee-shirts with a nationalist Newfoundland flavour. Joining the US is not on most people’s minds.
But, the Newfies are baby-seal-killers! They belong in the Union!
Using US highways to get from one place in Canada to another is nothing new.
We didn’t have a road connection between eastern and western Canada until WWII (Highway 11), and didn’t have a second road connection until 1960 (Highway 17). Both still share the same bridge at Nipigon, which is the only bit of road that connects the two halves of the country (there are also to railroads, one at the top and one at the bottom of Lake Nipigon).
Well, of course not. Prince Edward Island is an island. (A real one, not like Rhode Island.) And I think it’s too far from NS for a bridge. (Maybe a tunnel . . .)
I think a bridge stopping at Pictou Island might be doable. It would break it into a 10 mile bridge from PEI to Pictou Island and a 4-6 mile bridge from Pictou Island to mainland Nova Scotia.
It would be stupid to build a second bridge when there are better options (like the US and Canada doing something about the border, or even just letting people who can’t/won’t enter the US take a ferry or an airplane), but I don’t think it would necessarily involve any feats of engineering that weren’t involved in the building of the current bridge.
Newfoundland only joined Canada in 1948. Before that they were part of Britain, if I understand wiki correctly. They benefited from US military spending during the war. For a brief moment, they considered joining the US, but ended up opting for Canada (with England’s encouragement). So they might form the basis of a better thought experiment.
What do I think would happen? Canadians are very reasonable. They would discuss the matter among themselves for 40 years, put the matter to referendum, reject it, then pause before discussing the matter for another 40 years.
Well, no. No British colony or dominion was really “part of Britain,” the way Hawaii is part of the U.S. Even the remaining Overseas Territories are not, they just belong to Britain.
And then there’s Ireland, which constitutionally was part of the UK, but a colony really.
The federal government might actually be obligated to pay them to run all year round. There has to be a ferry service “between the Island and the mainland of the Dominion, Winter and Summer,” but since 1993 that requirement has been met by the bridge. The constitutional amendment allowing the ferries to be dropped after construction of the bridge just says “mainland,” but I don’t know if the USA would qualify as being the mainland, especially since the original requirement was clear that it had to be mainland Canada.
And there is no road other than the TCH connecting Kenora ON with the Manitoba border. It is the only road which crosses the Ontario-Manitoba border other than one minor link between a town in ON about 25 miles north with no surface-travel connections other than backpacking to the rest of the province but a short road to the nearest locale in MB.
If you mean it was treated as though it were a colony, say so. It was in fact for 122 years a constituent part of the UK of GB and I, entitled to MPs in Commons, to have peers created, and to elect a representative slate of Irish peers (with those not elected to Lords eligible to stand for Commons). I can agree it was terribly mishandled socioculturally, but not in the legal sense.
All true. In fact, I still think the Irish nationalists were wrong and things would have gone much better for Ireland if they had not succeeded. But it’s not at all hard to understand their POV. Especially after the Potato Famine, all during which Ireland was growing food (on land owned by English absentee landlords) and exporting it, to England. In hindsight, though, the problem wasn’t so much a national problem as a class problem.
Much better in which sense?
They might have avoided The Troubles, for one thing. And the Irish Civil War. And the division between NI and the Republic. And isn’t Ireland’s economy still pretty closely intertwined with the UK’s? Westminster decisions still affect them and they have no representation there any more.
In more general terms, I think T.H. White was right when he used Merlin as his mouthpiece (transparently in connection with the Irish Question) in The Once and Future King: (which I recently quoted in this GQ thread):
I could never stomach nationalists either. I’ve always found myself wishing the American Revolution could have been avoided. (If only they’d just let the Colonies have representation in Parliament already . . . well, then the British Empire would be the American Empire by now.) The divisions worth fighting over are class, not national.
I’m no Communist, but no political song stirs my soul like “The Internationale.”
To the extent that Westminster decisions still affect the rest of the Eurozone. As a republican in principle and someone born in Northern Ireland, I must admit I am biased, but I believe in autonomy. I feel the same way about Ireland as I do about India (though there were no events in Irish history equivalent to the Amritsar massacre as far as I can tell).
I am of the opinion that had Ireland not seceded, the Irish Republican Army would have continued to operate in the country, perpetuating the same level of violence as prior to the war. That’d continue indefinitely, making avoiding the “Troubles” inconsequential. Unless you meant they’d be routed completely and Seán MacBride never got to found Clann na Plobachta. If you believe in international solidarity, we can clearly see that the historically worst route to obtaining it is subservience to an imperial force (as a dominion, their head of state would still be a monarch and their Governor-General appointed).
Aren’t there?! What about Cromwell?!
That works well enough for Canada, doesn’t it?
I wouldn’t mind living in the Kingdom (not Dominion – fully equal status) of America, a state of the British Empire with a ceremonial GG or Viceroy representing HM in the capital (probably NY or Philadelphia) while American pols do the real work of running things here – and more American pols represent us at Westminster (a point on which Canada also should have insisted).
I must admit, also, that “autonomy” tends to raise my hackles a bit because it calls to mind “states’ rights.”
And I’m a “republican in principle” too (or a “democrat in principle,” if anyone cares to draw the distinction), but the UK is a republic/democracy for all practical purposes. Are the peerage and monarchy and other colorful medieval survivals really all that burdensome?
Well, there were differences in form between the massacres of civilians, in that those gathered at Jalianwala Bagh had an explicitly peaceful motivation for remaining there. The civilians Cromwell’s troops massacred had been part of a siege.
I’m not seeing it I’m afraid. Hereditary succession is no basis for a system of government, even if the regent’s position is nominal.
Autonomy is simply the natural correlate to democratic and republican principles. If the people of a state choose to federate, that should be entirely up to them. The principle in international law is known as “self-determination”. Historically, it was synonymous with Swaraj. Currently I can think of one advocate for Palestinian self-determination, Norm Finkelstein.