After narrowly escaping from Dubya and his crack units of simian agents following the research portion of last month's Politics and Other Dirty Words, I thought it best to pull a Trotsky and expatriate myself for a while. On the lam and penniless (pending the deposit of my check from the Bullhorn), I was lucky enough to find an old Indian guide in the hills of New England. He told me of a mysterious land to the north where I would be safe "from the pounding hooves of the horse soldiers of the great father in Washington." Heeding the wizened old man's words, I headed north under the waxing moon until, at last, I found myself in the land known which the old man described. It is from this great nation (whose leader, I believe, is a man named "Tim Horton") that I write this month's column. Canada, for my readers who may not know, is located in another country. As such, it has a different governmental philosophy (less guns, more health care) and way of playing baseball (the players wear ice skates and hit a flattened ball with a stick). Their president is called a "prime minister," and lives, they tell me, in a beautiful igloo in the Canadian capitol of Niagara Falls. Their money is likewise different, with some bills bearing the likeness of the queen of England, and others having a picture of that one guy from "Kids in the Hall" who looked kind of good in drag. I'm kidding of course, playing upon the supposed naïveté of a small portion of my readers. (The capital of Canada is, in fact, Toronto). Being broke, I took up residence in an all-night donut shop located on the Trans-Canada highway, Where I spend a lot of time reading discarded newspapers and talking to truckers. The view that many Canadians have about their special position as America's neighbor was well summarized by a trucker from Quebec: "It's like, you know, living next door to an 800 pound gorilla, and it's appointed itself neighborhood watchman" He told me. If the editorial pages of the local papers are anything to go by, Canadians, like the rest of the world (excluding those on the current administration's "friends, families & donors" list) are deeply disturbed by American plans to militarize space and press forward with widely unpopular missile defense program. Even the government of Canada, long accustomed to playing the acquiescing Ed Norton to America's gung-ho Ralph Kramden, has been vocal in its own reservations about the missile shield. This does not sit well in Washington's corridors of power, where the government is having a hard enough time convincing predictably difficult European allies to rubber stamp the plan without having to deal with obstinacies from its number one sycophant on the world stage. Even so, it came as a surprise to Canadians when the American government countered Canada's claims that the missile defense shield was overly militaristic with charges that Canada herself was slacking in the military preparedness department, and would be unable to fight a war if called upon to do so. This is funny - like an arsonist lecturing his neighbors on the importance of fire insurance - since the only nation with any conceivable reason to threaten Canada would be the United States, against whom the only possible defense would be a mass evacuation across the Bering straits. The Canadians I spoke to were puzzled by the Bush administration's sudden interest in Canada's military preparedness (or lack thereof). "The only thing the Canadian military does is take part in peacekeeping missions," one guy told me over a cruller "and we do that well enough with the military we have." Inclined though I am to believe that the administration's comment was just a knee jerk response to the Canadian government's failure to sing the praises of Missile Defense, I wouldn't want to shut the door on one nefarious (and amusing) possibility - the "Canadian Bacon" scenario, in which America creates a Canadian menace as an excuse to boost defense spending. Keeping the storyline of this fine movie in mind, I took a trip around the Maritime Provinces searching for evidence that a Canadian military buildup was underway. Those revolutionary war-era canons on top of Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland could be transported to Niagara Falls, Ontario. With a little fixing up, they could pose a threat to residents of Niagara Falls, NY, or even Buffalo (if the wind was blowing in the right direction). But it's an unlikely scenario, especially given the political clout of Canadian strippers, who would be dead-set against any sort of attack on western NY state. "Lots of guys come across the falls from there, and they're the best tippers," one girl, a dancer from Hamilton, told me. My quest to figure out a way that Canada could become a threat to the American way of life seemed to have hit a dead end - until I picked up a copy of the Toronto Globe and Mail, and found a story about the Canadian government's new medicinal marijuana program. The American-led anti drug jihad has never been popular in Canada. Not only are drug laws less puritanical in Canada, but the government has recently instituted a program in which it grows cannabis for distribution to ill citizens. The marijuana is grown deep in the bowels of the earth, in heavily guarded mines located in the prairie province of Manitoba. While the underground location is ostensibly for security purposes - we wouldn't want teenaged stoners sneaking into the government crops - it's quite possible that the site was picked to prevent defoliation from napalm-armed American anti-drug crusaders. Looking at the picture in the newspaper of Canada's minister of health surrounded by thousands of cannabis plants, the potential threat to America became clear as a river running through Labrador in the summertime. Canada has a three thousand mile border with America, an endless supply of cheap hydropower, and now, tons of dope. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the Canuck plot for continental domination. As you read this, plans are being drawn up to plant huge fans all along the border. Canada hasn't forgotten the bitter lessons of acid rain, and when they turn those fans on they'll be blowing the smoke from ton after ton of high grade "medicinal" marijuana into every American city north of the 35 degree line (Vanessa, can you replace this with the symbol for 35 degrees latitude, that little circle?). From Boston to Baltimore, Chicago to Denver, Seattle to San Francisco, America will be stricken stoned, her people dropped into a drooling, donut eating stupor. And that's when the Royal Canadian Mounted Horde will saddle up and trample forever the light of American liberty. When the fog finally clears, Americans will find themselves disarmed, paying sales taxes of between 10% - 15%, and forced to accept socialized medicine as a way of life.