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Love letter from Anchorage: Take us with you

In recent months many of my fellow Americans have threatened to move to your country depending on the outcome of our presidentia

In recent months many of my fellow Americans have threatened to move to your country depending on the outcome of our presidential election. The lovely island of Cape Breton even invited us to move there with the promise of land and jobs. I personally like where I live but am afraid of the direction our country will be heading in terms of the environment, income equality, social justice and foreign policy. So what I would like to suggest is having Alaska join Canada as a province.

Please hear me out: Our Indigenous populations already enjoy very good relations with the annual participations in the Arctic Native Games and could help save the Arctic region from the ravages of global warming by the sharing of data. You would also own the largest contiguous section of land along the Arctic ocean making you a global leader in preserving polar bear habitat. Your rivers in what we call the southeast would be yours all the way to the ocean. No more arguments about fisheries and those great Whitehorse musicians could easily come play the Juneau Folk Fest without hassle. Also, three words: Alaska Winter Olympics! There’s world class fishing and the Wrangell St. Elias and Kluane National Park could combine to form the largest preserved wilderness site in the world.

Some of the benefits of this exchange would be enhanced vacation possibilities, and we could work together to fix those last few hundred miles of roadway from Yukon into your newest province. Oh, that’s right, I’m sure we will quickly adopt to the metric system and use Kanadian Miles (km). We grow really big pumpkins and cabbage and recently legalized marijuana. British Colombians can finally find out whose weed is better. Our governor isn’t a Republican or a Democrat, he’s Independent, so that should be an easy transition.

Your prime minister, Justin Trudeau is a smart, likable, young man, something we completely admire in a politician. Alaskans are nice, Canadians are nice, it’s a win-win situation. America won’t miss us, there’s only about 750,000 of us and we could leave our delegation in D.C. if you like. The president could make Guam and Puerto Rico states, finally giving them a voice while actually growing the USA by two more states. They can have our representatives.

So Canada, please give this some thought, because I really like where I live and don’t want to move. Thank you for your time and patience.

Brian MacMillan,

Anchorage, AK