PORT ANGELES — It’s a July 1 tradition for serious Victoria cyclists to take the Coho ferry to Port Angeles, then ride up to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park.
This year, when they arrived shivering and panting at the top, a woman was waiting with a plate of treats.
“Hey boys,” she said, “it’s Canada Day, so we baked you some cookies and wanted to let you know we don’t like what that Donald Trump is doing to our country.”
Which, on this Fourth of July, serves to remind us of two truths: A) there’s no getting away from Trump in today’s America, and B) there’s so much more to the U.S. than its president.
Put another way: Don’t confuse Trump with the American people, including our across-the-strait neighbours. And no need to hector them about him, they don’t need reminding.
Port Angeles, pop. 19,000, is a terrific place. Good hiking and biking trails, and a walkable downtown with — thanks to an influx of young entrepreneurs — a surprisingly good selection of tasty food, coffee and beer.
It’s just 30 kilometres across the strait from Victoria — close enough to make out the Canada Day fireworks — but isolated from everywhere else. The Olympics loom to the south (Victorians have a spectacular national park on their doorstep, albeit in someone else’s nation) while Seattle is two hours to the east. To the west lie the vampires of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels. That makes Victoria their closest neighbour.
Port Angeles feels as familiar as it does foreign — and that goes both ways. For all our smugness about American ignorance of Canada, our neighbours on the Olympic Peninsula know Victoria much more intimately than we know them.
Port Angeles residents go to Victoria for everything from clothes to dentistry. Some even buy annual passes to Butchart Gardens. When Cindy and Alan Turner come to the capital, they bring a Tupperware container to load up on barbecued pork from Wah Lai Yuen in Chinatown. At one point there was a brisk trade in pharmaceutical tourism, with Americans saving a lot of money by shopping for certain prescription drugs in Canada.
“Pretty much everybody in Port Angeles only listens to Victoria radio stations,” said Autumn Martin, tuned in to Brittany King and KOOL-FM while working in the Sassy Kat Salon and Clothing Boutique. Just up the street at the Brocante vintage store, Christy Fagundes was dialled to The Ocean.
But have no doubt, this is the U.S.A. On Lincoln Street the classic old American courthouse was decked out in red, white and blue on Tuesday, the Stars and Stripes hanging under a clock tower that could have been in Back to the Future. At the neighbouring war memorial, where a POW/MIA flag flew beside Old Glory and the Washington state flag, among those remembered are nine local boys who died in Vietnam. A block away at Republican campaign HQ, the window featured literature from a woman running on an anti-gun-control platform. In 2015, one in nine Clallam County residents paid $52.50 US for a concealed-pistol permit. Safeway sells booze. Gas stations actually SELL GAS FOR DIFFERENT PRICES, all of them cheaper than ours.
And boy are they divided politically. In Clallam County, which voted 48 per cent for Trump and 45 for Hillary Clinton, Democrats and Republicans are like an old couple who forgot what they once had in common. Our purple-faced letters to the editor are about bike lanes; theirs are about who caged more children, Trump or Obama. At Port Book and News they sell Impeachmint lip balm and Trump’s Small Hand Soap, while in the window of a vacant storefront across First Street, a bumper sticker reads “Democrats are more angry than when Republicans freed the slaves.”
“We’re so far apart that we can’t even have a conversation,” said Catherine Harper, behind a desk at the Clallam County Democrats’ campaign office, where they’re gearing up for November’s mid-term elections. “That’s a sad thing, because that’s not who we are as a people.”
Others are less bothered. In his First Street barber shop, a Proud American ball cap on his head, owner Les Lauderback said there are two types of Americans: those depicted in the news media and those who exist in real life. He’s a big Trump supporter, as are most of his customers, but he said when someone from the other camp sits in the barber’s chair, they just avoid the subject. “We talk about the weather, how the Mariners are doing, whatever.
“Basically, we all get along. Just walk around and see: People are getting along, being congenial.”
Over at the Station 51 Taphouse, bartender Tiffany Wilkie isn’t so sure. The town is polarized politically, so she lays down the law when patrons turn in that direction. “I don’t think alcohol and politics mix well, so I shut that down.”
North of the border, there’s less debate. Most Canadians don’t like Donald Trump. According to a Gallup poll released in January, our support for the U.S. leadership plunged 40 per cent in his first year in office. A separate Angus Reid Institute poll pegged the president’s approval rating at just 13 per cent across Canada and a mere 11 per cent in B.C.
Still, Canadians have so far bucked the so-called Trump Slump that has seen other nations cut travel to the United States. While overall foreign visits to the U.S. dropped 3.8 per cent in 2017, travel to the U.S. from Canada rose 4.8. Canadians accounted for one in four foreign arrivals in the U.S. last year.
That was before Trump’s anti-Canadian tweets and tariffs, though, and before the backlash they inspired. Don’t think our neighbours haven’t noticed the backlash. Port Angeles’ Cindy Turner, listening to CBC Radio a couple of weeks ago, took heed of the anti-American sentiment. “It made me sad,” she said. Don’t blame the whole country for Trump.
Some worry the chill could hurt tourism. “In Port Angeles, you have to have a good summer to make up for winter,” Fagundes said. She worries that the usual influx of Canadian customers hasn’t shown up downtown yet. “Generally, we start to see it in May. We didn’t see it.”
Others have a different experience. At Mr. Buds, one of the three marijuana retailers allocated to Port Angeles by the state licensing authority, they say they get at least five or six Canadians, mostly Islanders, every day. The Station 51 Taphouse sees plenty, as well.
They treat us well, too. After a mugger stole a 16-year-old Canadian tourist’s shoes in October, Port Angeles residents were so offended that they passed the hat, bought a new pair of $200 limited edition Air Jordans, and shipped them to the boy’s home. Remember that the next time you feel like getting snotty about Americans.
And remember that as they, our friends and neighbours, celebrate the Fourth of July.
“We are going to honour the spirit of what America is,” Harper said. “We’re not ‘rah, rah, Donald Trump.’ We’re ‘rah, rah, we the people.’ ”
