Canada–United States relations

Based on Wikipedia: Canada–United States relations

Here's an odd couple: two nations that share the longest border on Earth—nearly nine thousand kilometers of it—who routinely call each other their closest ally, yet have spent much of their history oscillating between warm embrace and cold suspicion. Canada and the United States are like siblings who grew up in the same house but insist they're nothing alike.

And lately? The relationship has hit a rough patch.

The Paradox of Proximity

Every single day, around 400,000 people cross the Canada-U.S. border. That's roughly the population of New Orleans making the trip daily. Alongside those travelers flows about $2.7 billion in goods and services—enough commerce in a week to fund NASA for an entire year.

The two economies aren't just connected; they're fused. Supply chains snake back and forth across the border so thoroughly that a single car part might cross it multiple times before ending up in a finished vehicle. Communications networks, highways, pipelines, electrical grids—the infrastructure of daily life treats the border as more of a suggestion than a hard line.

This integration didn't happen by accident. The North American Free Trade Agreement, better known as NAFTA, formalized the relationship starting in 1994. When that agreement was renegotiated into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2020, it kept the fundamental premise intact: these three economies function best when they function together.

Yet despite all this interdependence—or perhaps because of it—friction never fully disappears. Trade disputes flare up regularly. Environmental policies clash. Arguments erupt over everything from softwood lumber to dairy tariffs to the flow of oil through pipelines. Immigration, terrorism concerns, and drug trafficking add more tension to an already complex relationship.

Defining Yourself by What You're Not

Canadians have a long tradition of defining themselves in opposition to their southern neighbor. It's not quite anti-Americanism, though that strain certainly exists. It's more like a national identity built on differentiation: "We're like Americans, but..."

But more polite. But more multicultural. But with universal healthcare. But less violent. But more modest.

This impulse runs deep, and it has roots stretching back to the American Revolution itself. When the thirteen colonies declared independence from Britain in 1776, not everyone in British North America was ready to join them. The revolutionary Congress was so confident that Canadians would come around that they pre-approved Quebec and Nova Scotia for membership in the Articles of Confederation—America's first attempt at a constitution.

The invitation was declined.

Instead, after the Revolution ended, somewhere around 70,000 Loyalists—colonists who had remained faithful to the British Crown—fled north into Canada. These weren't just political refugees; they were the founding population of English-speaking Canada. They brought with them a deep skepticism of American revolutionary ideals and a determination to build something different.

Among those Loyalists were about 3,500 free Black Americans, many of whom had been promised freedom by the British in exchange for their loyalty. Most settled in Nova Scotia, though some later migrated to Sierra Leone when Canadian promises of equality failed to materialize. The Loyalists also brought roughly 2,000 enslaved people with them—slavery wouldn't be abolished throughout the British Empire until 1833.

Wars and Almost-Wars

The relationship between Canada and the United States was forged in fire long before either country existed in its current form.

For more than a century, French and British colonists fought a series of brutal wars across North America. The conflict names sound quaint now—King William's War, Queen Anne's War, King George's War—but they were deadly serious. The fighting often took the form of raids on frontier settlements, with both sides enlisting Indigenous allies. The Iroquois Confederacy fought alongside the British; various First Nations supported the French.

The decisive moment came in 1759, when British forces under General James Wolfe scaled the cliffs outside Quebec City and defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham. France ceded Canada to Britain, and the continental map was redrawn.

Then came the Revolution, and with it, the first American attempt to conquer Canada.

It was a disaster. In 1775, American forces invaded Quebec, hoping the French-speaking population would rise up against their British rulers. Some did join the American cause, but most stayed neutral. The invasion collapsed, and Britain tightened its grip on its remaining North American territories.

The second attempt came in 1812.

The War of 1812: A Conflict Everyone Remembers Differently

Americans, when they remember the War of 1812 at all, typically think of the British burning Washington and the Star-Spangled Banner. Canadians remember it as the war where they successfully repelled an American invasion—a founding myth of national identity.

The Americans had genuine grievances. The Royal Navy was stopping American ships on the high seas and impressing sailors into British service—essentially kidnapping about 6,000 American citizens and forcing them to serve in the British fleet. Britain was also propping up Indigenous resistance to American westward expansion, most notably through support for Tecumseh's confederation of tribes.

The American strategy was straightforward: since they couldn't defeat the Royal Navy, they would conquer Canada instead. The British garrison was small. Many settlers in western Canada had recently immigrated from the United States. Surely they would welcome liberation from British rule?

They did not.

The invasion failed. American forces were defeated repeatedly by a combination of British regulars, Indigenous warriors, and Canadian militia. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy raided the American coast at will, culminating in the burning of Washington, D.C., including the White House and the Capitol building.

The war ended in a draw. The Treaty of Ghent, which took effect in February 1815, essentially restored the status quo ante bellum—everything went back to how it had been before the war started. Britain stopped harassing American ships (Napoleon had been defeated, so there was no more need for a tight blockade). The United States stopped trying to invade Canada. The border stayed where it was.

But in Canada, the war became legend. A "militia myth" developed—the idea that brave Canadian farmers had almost single-handedly repelled the American invaders. It wasn't quite accurate (British regulars and Indigenous allies did most of the heavy lifting), but myths don't have to be accurate to be powerful. The War of 1812 became central to Canadian identity: proof that Canadians were different from Americans, that they had chosen a different path, that they could defend that choice with force if necessary.

The Long Peace

After 1815, something remarkable happened: the guns fell silent and stayed silent. Despite ongoing tensions, despite border disputes that occasionally threatened to erupt into conflict, Canada and the United States never went to war again.

The border slowly took its current shape through negotiation rather than combat. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 settled the boundary in Maine, resolving a dispute that had nearly escalated into the "Aroostook War"—a conflict that never quite became a war but came close enough to require a treaty to defuse.

In the Pacific Northwest, American expansionists demanded all of Oregon Territory up to the latitude of 54°40'—deep into what is now British Columbia. "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!" became a rallying cry. In the end, cooler heads prevailed, and Britain and the United States agreed to extend the 49th parallel westward as the border.

Canada also became a beacon of freedom for enslaved Americans fleeing the South. As the United States passed increasingly harsh fugitive slave laws, the Underground Railroad extended its reach northward. Canada, where slavery had been abolished in 1833, represented safety and liberty. Estimates vary, but tens of thousands of escaped slaves made their way to freedom in British North America.

Civil War Complications

The American Civil War created unexpected tensions with Britain and Canada.

Officially, the British Empire remained neutral. But unofficially, British shipyards built commerce raiders for the Confederacy, most infamously the CSS Alabama, which spent two years destroying Union merchant shipping across the globe. Blockade runners loaded with British arms used Canadian ports in the Maritimes as bases, slipping through Union naval blockades to deliver weapons to the South.

The most dramatic incident came in October 1864, when Confederate agents based in Canada crossed into Vermont and raided the town of St. Albans. They killed one American citizen, robbed three banks of more than $200,000, and fled back across the border. When they were arrested by Canadian authorities but then released by a Canadian court, American outrage was immense.

Some American politicians began demanding compensation—not just for the raids, but for the entire cost of British support for the Confederacy. Senator Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, initially wanted $2 billion in reparations. Alternatively, he suggested, Britain could simply hand over Canada.

That didn't happen. But the threat of American annexation, combined with fears of future raids by vengeful Civil War veterans, helped push the separate British colonies of North America toward confederation. In 1867, the Dominion of Canada was born—in part as a defensive measure against the colossus to the south.

Alaska and the Shape of the Continent

In 1867, the same year Canada became a nation, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward pulled off one of history's great real estate deals: the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million.

Seward wasn't just buying icebergs. He was a believer in Manifest Destiny—the idea that the United States was destined to expand across the entire continent. Alaska was supposed to be the first step toward American control of the entire northwest Pacific coast. Seward fully expected British Columbia to seek annexation next, and he thought Britain might go along with it as compensation for the Alabama claims.

British Columbia did consider the option. But in 1871, it chose to join Canada instead, connected to the rest of the country by the promise of a transcontinental railroad.

The border held.

Military Allies, Wary Partners

The twentieth century brought the two countries closer together than ever before. In both World Wars, Canada and the United States fought on the same side. In the Cold War, they created NORAD—the North American Aerospace Defense Command—to present a unified front against Soviet bombers and missiles. Both joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), committing to mutual defense of Europe.

About 40,000 Canadians volunteered for the Union Army during the Civil War—many already lived in the United States, though some crossed the border specifically to enlist. The integration only deepened in the twentieth century.

But Canada has always maintained its own foreign policy identity. When the United States went to Vietnam, Canada stayed out. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Canada refused to participate. Peacekeeping, rather than warfighting, became a distinguishing feature of Canadian military policy—a point of pride that set Canada apart from its more interventionist neighbor.

The Current Crossroads

For decades, surveys consistently showed that Americans and Canadians ranked each other as their "favorite nations." The relationship seemed stable, even boring—the kind of alliance that generates no headlines because nothing dramatic ever happens.

That changed in 2025.

President Donald Trump's second term brought sudden upheaval. Sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods. Talk of annexation that would once have seemed like a joke from an earlier century. The trade war that began on February 1, 2025, when Trump signed orders imposing near-universal tariffs on Canadian imports, shattered assumptions about the relationship's stability.

Recent surveys now show something that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago: increasing Canadian distrust of the United States. The "closest allies" rhetoric sounds hollow when one ally is threatening to absorb the other.

Yet the economic integration remains. The 400,000 daily border crossings continue. The $2.7 billion in daily trade still flows. The supply chains are still intertwined. The infrastructure is still shared.

Canada and the United States have weathered invasions, burned capitals, trade wars, and annexation threats before. They've always found their way back to equilibrium. Whether that pattern holds in the current moment—or whether something fundamental has shifted—remains to be seen.

What's certain is this: the two nations are bound together by geography, economics, and history in ways that transcend any single administration or policy dispute. They're stuck with each other, for better or worse. The question is whether "better" or "worse" will define the decades ahead.