February 8, 2005

About all those people moving to Canada.

The NYT has an article following up on all those Americans who were going to move to Canada after Bush got re-elected. I don't think the article is really meant to be a humor piece, but look at who they've managed to turn up.

There's a 56-year-old man -- here's a photo of him in Vancouver, where he's looking for a job and finding Canadian companies prefer to hire Canadians -- and perhaps, though the article doesn't say, have some doubts about a person who flees his country on this ground. (How would he deal with a challenging on-the-job problem?)

And there's this 30-year-old woman who says "I don't want to participate in what this administration is doing here and around the world. Under Bush, the U.S. seems to be leading the pack as the world spirals down" but has a long-term Canadian boyfriend she's going to move in with in Toronto. This is political? Oh, shut up, and take a picture of me next to my Volvo, which I'm trying to sell.

And there's a 40-year-old financial planner who lives in Palm Beach, Florida, who says: "I've told my wife, I'd be willing to take a step down, socioeconomically, to move from white-collar work to a blue-collar job, if it would get us to Canada." They don't say what the wife said back, but it might not have been "fit to print."

If you're already in Seattle, and you're talking about retiring and living in Vancouver -- like one person in the article -- that makes sense. But if you need to find a job, and especially if you're talking about moving over one thousand miles in a northerly direction and dragging a family along in your political-expression escapade ... well, tell me how it works out after you do it.

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