These days I read product labels as carefully as I used to read liner notes.
asserted
I → read → notes
You’ll not get an “assembled in” or a “distributed in” Canada past me any more than you’d have got a “the band’s third bass player got legal rights to the name and this album’s even less live than any of its founding members” album past 14-year-old Tabatha.
asserted
album → get → Tabatha
I read a condiment bottle as though the text might say something about me.
uncertain
text → read → me
I’ve learned that a red maple leaf icon doesn’t necessarily mean the contents of the box are Canadian and that “designed in Canada” is just a weird thing to put on soup.
asserted
designed → learn → soup
Like the vast majority of Canadians I have been avoiding buying American products since President Donald Trump began making threats to annex our country.
asserted
Trump → avoid → country
Although, like many Canadians I have spoken to, I have one American product I have been guiltily buying anyway.
asserted
I → speak → product
There is a brand of peanut butter that I have occasionally still picked up.
asserted
I → be → that
It’s all-peanut, apart from the salt, and it comes in a large glass jar with three inches of peanut oil floating at the top.
asserted
it → ’ → top
This oil has to be laboriously recombined with the giant, solid omni-peanut it has separated from before you can, only slightly less laboriously, begin spreading it.
asserted
you → have → it
The late Leonard Cohen never sang anything about the “homicidal bitchin’ that goes down in every kitchen” to determine who will stir up the new jar of peanut butter but it’s absolutely there.
asserted
it → sing → butter
I may not be selling it here, but it was a convenient product to have for my household.
uncertain
it → sell → household
I generally walk by the Maple Leaf Garden Loblaws on my way home and you know how it is.
asserted
it → walk → way
It’s just so easy to walk in that Loblaws’ door, through the security gate, past the security guard in quasi-tactical gear, and through the other door.
asserted
It → ’ → door
Leave it to the Weston’s to engineer a grocery purchasing opportunity that recreates for the average consumer the experience of visiting a not overly beloved family member in prison.
asserted
that → leave → prison
Having called in the appropriate authorities to exorcise the phantom unexpected item from the bagging area, I’d slink out the door(s) and two more gates.
asserted
I → call → door(s
But I’ve bought my last.
asserted
I → buy → last
I can no longer skirt the fact that the label does in fact say something about me.
asserted
label → skirt → me
Yet no matter how much shame I might feel over my salty breakfast spread malfeasance, I’d argue the most important thing Canadians can do isn’t to stop buying their one guilty pleasure.
uncertain
Canadians → feel → pleasure
It’s to avoid buying into the kind of American-style nationalism that put us all in this situation.
asserted
that → ’ → situation
Happy as I am to see Canadians appreciating what we’ve got at the suggestion it will be gone, I’m uncomfortable with what can feel like uncharacteristic national back-patting.
asserted
what → see → patting
Sure, I tend to buy Canadian but I also buy from other Trump-free countries.
asserted
I → tend → countries
I would love nothing more than to take home a great big jar of Mexican or Greenlandic peanut butter if they offered something as salty and dark-roasted as my soul.
asserted
they → love → soul
The change in my shopping habits is less that I am buying Canadian than that I am, occasional legume paste sin aside, not buying American.
asserted
I → buy → American
It is important to keep in mind that we’re hardly the first, or most seriously, harmed of the countries targeted by America under Donald Trump.
asserted
we → keep → Trump
We’re enduring insults and economic injury.
asserted
We → endure → insults
Around the world, many people are being killed.
asserted
people → kill → world
So I’m not buying American the way I didn’t buy South African.
asserted
I → buy → African
But trade is good and the American exports we should be most wary of consuming — after lettuce — are isolationism and jingoism.
asserted
we → consume → lettuce
They have a glut of both they’re anxious to distribute globally.
asserted
they → have → both
Canada won’t win by holding on to our sovereignty on paper while becoming the 51st state in spirit and, ironically, as soon as this country starts self-consciously celebrating and defining itself
asserted
country → win → itself
, we sound as American as apple pie.
asserted
we → sound → pie
I would rather stay as Canadian as “Well, what are you having?”
asserted
you → stay → what
The Aporia
