It’s Sunday afternoon. Time to start thinking about my trip this coming week to Smoke On The Mountain, the Virginia State Barbecue Championship in Galax Virginia. I’ve made this trip before, but there seem to be some new considerations – not so much in my routine preparations, but once I am into the trip itself. And most of them seem to center around Canada – US relations.

Now, you wouldn’t think there would be much of a consideration at all, but a few things have changed since I was last in the United States, a little over a month ago. Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. Trump upset the G7 applecart. Canada legalized marijuana. Canada instituted tariffs on a slew of American goods. So now, I don’t know where I stand.

Am I going to encounter new problems when I hit the American border? I suspect they are not yet ramped up on the marijuana issue, but I’ll be watching. Will there be any new stringency to how they handle a Canadian visitor (I travel on my Canadian passport, the only one i own)?

My other question, that i never considered until it popped up randomly on Facebook is, “is anybody in the United States going to take offence when they see my Ontario license plate?” My initial reaction is that this really should not be a worry; All the tariff and Trump/Trudeau bluster has subsided to a dull roar. And, as i start out, it’ll be all Trump/Putin/Britain on everybody’s minds.  But it’s also something I really hadn’t thought of. Like they do at the car rentals, I should probably check my vehicle over for marks before I go… But at the same time, that just sounds silly!

And then there’s the philosophical edge to this… All that “buy Canadian, boycott American” posturing that is going on these days. I might not be going if I were not headed for a specific event to do something I am trained to do; I also think a lot of this has that feeling of “this too shall pass”. I would much rather boycott goods made in China than goods made in the US. I worry that we are making a little too much of this right now.

So I have to pack, get some things together; should I be packing Canadian T-shirts, or should I be as anonymous as possible? I take Ontario Trillium and Ontario flag pins to hand to people who are nice to me – they are happy to be made honorary Ontario citizens. But I wonder…only a wee bit.

I’ll keep you posted!