BORDERLANDS: CANADA RULES BUT WHO'S BEHIND IT?

A FASCINATING news report last week revealed that Canada and the United
States are more estranged than ever in their modern history. Two neighbors
of North America are drifting apart, both socially and politically. The
separation is post 9-11 but aggravated by differing national agendas in
Ottawa and Washington, D.C.

The story in The New York Times showed two societies diverging dramatically
on social issues. A relationship that once accepted cross-border Canadians
and Americans as two peas of the same pod has split along the same fracture
lines that divide Americans from each other.

Canadians are more tolerant of gay and lesbian marriage than most
Americans. Two provinces of Canada -- and that's where significant power
resides within the Canadian confederation -- have made homosexual marriage
legal.

Canadians tolerate marijuana smoking much more than most Americans. The
Canadian national government has moved to decriminalize possession of small
amounts of marijuana. Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien was
quoted that in retirement he might just sit back and enjoy a joint. You can
image Clinton joking like that, but hardly Bush, and hardly former Canadian
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Canadians feel remote from Republicans in Washington, D.C. Canadians don't
agree with the war in Iraq, and many Canadians believe the U.S. is too
unilateralist. Canadians who voted in Liberal governments, including
Chretien's, don't think much of President Bush.

Canadians are going to church in smaller numbers, at rates dropping
steadily from 1950s levels of attendance, while Americans are becoming more
churched, especially in the growing evangelical movements. Answering a poll
conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, roughly
68 percent of Canadians responded it is not necessary to believe in God to
be moral, while only 40 percent of Americans thought so.

Accepting of gay marriage, reluctant to make pot-smoking criminal,
distrustful of Republicans, unchurched ... Hey, wait a minute! These aren't
Canadians, they're Seattleites!

Indeed, any measure of current Canadian attitudes is almost duplicative of
recent voting patterns in urban Seattle. Seattle residents voted to
marginalize marijuana law enforcement by police, a step toward
decriminalization. Bush has as much chance of carrying Seattle precincts in
2004 as Canadian glaciers to melt -- or, maybe less.

The convergence of attitudes continues: In Seattle, gay and lesbian
marriages are seen as a simple matter of equality. Seattle residents and
people across the Pacific Northwest, just like Canadians, have one of the
lowest church membership ratios to population of any region in the country.

In nearby Vancouver, B.C., medicinal-marijuana smoking is considered as
normal as in many European cities, notably Amsterdam. A significant number
of Seattleites would agree that medical use of marijuana is both necessary
and humane.

A recent, massive Canadian project to limit development on 529 million
acres of boreal forest is especially attuned to Seattle's environmental
ethic. Merging the desires of native peoples with a broad
forest-preservation initiative would be right up Seattle's alley. Canada
has moved to preserve 25 percent of what's left of the world's forests. Put
something like that on the ballot in Seattle and the result would be
overwhelming approval.

Exactly how Seattleites took over Canada is unclear. Future historians may
have to ask the hard questions about who actually runs the Discovery
Channel. The decline of Disney and the rise of Animal Planet certainly was
an overlooked signal in media mind control. Starbucks as Seattle's cultural
weapon needs major study.

No matter how you cut it, the makeover of Canada into a giant Seattle is
just about complete. Prime Minister Greg Nickels has only a few months to
wait before the government changes hands.

James Vesely's column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times.