Here’s how I spent my winter vacation: driving to the land of Donald Trump, only to discover that my homeland had taken a right turn into Doug Ford territory.Anyone visiting the U.S. knows the feelings of envy we evoke in American friends who coo over our Canadian cool. In their eyes, Justin Trudeau is the anti-Trump — prone, perhaps, to overdressing on road trips with a fashion faux-pas, but a welcome foil all the same.Seen through their eyes, it’s easy to see why. While we read about Trump’s depredations in the abstract, online, they live with his decisions as a daily reality on the ground.When you’re staying with American friends and comparing notes with Washington journalists, it hits home. Herewith, a few lessons learned on the perils of populism and the popular press in the time of Trump and in the dawn of a Doug Ford era.First, the old storyline that casts Canada as a sanctuary of sanity (and our PM as a paragon of politics) is being rewritten. A chill wind is blowing from the country of cool as Toronto’s old Ford Nation juggernaut hits the comeback (and campaign) trail across the province.Americans have seen this script before, just like Torontonians.In the waning days of Rob Ford’s reign, during my last visit to the capital, his portrait graced the cover of the Washington Post’s Sunday magazine. His mayoral notoriety went global — a reminder that his populist appeal took root in Toronto long before America fell under Trump’s spell.On this trip we visited the National Portrait Gallery, where crowds line up to see the recently unveiled paintings of Barack and Michelle Obama. But it was a picture of P.T. Barnum that caught my eye, notably the explanatory label that captured the essence of the circus showman back then, the U.S. president today, and perhaps the next premier of Ontario:“The greatest impresario of the nineteenth century, P.T. Barnum was a shrewd judge of popular taste and an int ...
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