Day: August 1, 2007

Americans Really Are Moving to Canada

Trish

You know how both times Bush stole an election, people said they would move to Canada? Apparently it wasn’t an idle threat.

The number of U.S. citizens who moved to Canada last year hit a 30-year high, with a 20 percent increase over the previous year and almost double the number who moved in 2000.

In 2006, 10,942 Americans went to Canada, compared with 9,262 in 2005 and 5,828 in 2000…

Not only that, fewer Canadians want to be in America.

Last year, 23,913 Canadians moved to the United States, a significant decrease from 29,930 in 2005.

No doubt many of those making good on the threat we have all uttered are from places already Canada-ish, like Seattle and Fargo and Portland(s). Those of us further south have a little harder time with the whole concept of frozen things. Still, our country is losing some of its best and brightest.

“Those who are coming have the highest level of education — these aren’t people who can’t get a job in the states,” [Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies] says. “They’re coming because many of them don’t like the politics, the Iraq War and the security situation in the U.S. By comparison, Canada is a tension-free place. People feel safer.”

Would you have ever thought you’d understand — and agree — with that statement?

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

— John Adams (1735-1826), second President of the United States, in a letter written when he was serving as Vice President

Aug. 1 is the Anniversary of Emancipation from Slavery in the Caribbean

Buck Banks

Many Caribbean nations are marking the anniversary of emancipation with calls for apologies and reparations from countries that profited from the human trade.

Slavery finally was abolished in most Caribbean territories on Aug. 1, 1874. Although abolished some 26 years earlier in 1807, it was not until Aug. 1, 1833, that British member of Parliament and social reformer Thomas Buxton presented the Emancipation Bill before the British Parliament. The ensuing act went into effect one year later on Aug.1, 1834.