I was up on the battlements of Fort Niagara ( New York) on a July 4th a few tears back, which is about fifty yards from the border that runs up the middle of the Niagara river. I was right in the middle of a dozen or so of American tourists who were staring in wonderment at the family continuous horizon of high rise towers going as far to the right as the eye can see.
"What's that?" "Where is that place?" One of the smarter ones even offered up the theory that they were seeing Minneapolis off in the distance. I decided to put them out of their misery and I told them that they were looking at Canada. "Canada?!" I got back in a clearly unbelieving tone. They didn't buy that. You could see them looking a little more closely, though.
"The other half of North America ..."
"Hunh?"
A long time ago it wasn't rare to see skies strapped to roof racks on American cars heading to PEI on the ferry during summer. I try to avoid belittleing Amercans but every once in a while some come along who stand out.