Let's make Florida the 11th province

David Sherman

It’s time we annexed South Florida, made it the 11th province. We own the place anyway. They filled in swamps to build condos for us. Created Early Bird Specials so we could eat dinner at 4 p.m. Canadians bring in more cash than Disney in Orlando, and it’s not the gone-and-not-forgotten Duck Dollars. Looked like play money, spent like play money, mourned like real money when Mickey and Co. chewed through savings accounts. We actually spent cauldrons of the fabled green backs, synonymous for nausea.

Americans still hanging out in Florida and the U.S. tourists that pass through could use a good dose of colourful Canadian currency. We have jazz great Oscar Peterson on a coin. And civil rights fighter Viola Desmond on the vertical ten.

They have Andrew Jackson on the twenty. Jackson was a slave owner and trader, known for the genocide of Native Americans by pushing them off their lands, an exodus known as the Trail of Tears as well as less systematic slaughter. Trump gets wet dreams thinking of those Ol’ Glory days.

Civil rights activist Harriet Tubman was to be the centrepiece of the U.S. 20-dollar bill. Trump, believing Black people should not even be paid for work, let alone be featured on U.S. currency, pushed that back to 2029. U.S. money is of and for white people. Many look at the twenty and see themselves. When American was “great.” Like a great white shark. But that’s another story.

No better proof South Florida belongs to Canadians than the Florida Panthers becoming a hockey powerhouse. There have eight Canadians on the team and six Americans but with names like Kiersted, Megna, Samoskevich, Schmidt and Tkachuk, who are they kidding? The team is a European stew of talent boosted by Canadians on the ice and in the stands. Hockey is us. To most Americans, ice is something that’s melting somewhere but so what? Florida is another way of saying, "Floods are us."

We also buy millions of dollars of their oranges and Key Lime pies, watery beer and bony chicken wings. We keep their garment economy humming by buying up “Grandma went to Florida and all I got was this shitty shirt,” shirts, white belts, black socks and sandals and pelican statues. We appreciate pelicans. They never say a stupid thing, know how to fish and, unlike Boeing, crash land without government subsidies or hurting a soul.

More importantly, we need a warm 5,000 sq miles, beaches on the Atlantic where it’s not too cold for Canadians to swim and beaches on the warm green water of the Gulf of Canada.

We could do without a few hundred restaurants with the “World’s Best Fish Sandwich,” another way of saying “We-Don’t-Know-What-it-is-But if-You-Smother-it-in-Enough-Tartar-Sauce-and-Slide-it Between-Grainless-White-Bread Sandwich” it’s almost food.

We’ll impose trilingualism so when you do eat out you will no longer hear, “Good evening, how are we tonight? My name is Cindy. I’ll be your server. What are we going to start with?”

“Hi Cindy, I’m David, your customer, and I don’t know about you but I’d like something that won’t give me cramps.”

They’ll just say, “Bonjour, good evening and buenas noches” and we can all get on with our lives.

We won’t be selfish. Americans can keep North Florida and the Keys, also known as Hurricane Highway.

It keeps getting drowned or blown to bits every few months and they rebuild over and over so why not let them keep on doing it? They must like it. They can keep the Everglades, too. They’ve unleashed a plague of pythons big enough to swallow swamp boats. Canadians are about ice and hockey, swamps are part of U.S. DNA.

Swamp creature Ron DeSantis will be president of the Everglades and head of Covid for the Republican party of Florida. It’s his reward for being governor of the state with one of the highest mortality rates due to Covid in North America. He will also enjoy the crushing responsibility of python control.

The Americans can keep Tampa Bay and the bridge that crosses it. A target for freighters, one of which took out 1,200 feet of it, killing 35, it’s also a favourite of the suicidal. More than 300 have jumped to their death. Living under the thumb of "Where is he now?" DeSantis will do that to a person.

DeSantis can leverage funds for urban redevelopment (See Savings and Loan Scandal, Sub Prime Mortgage scandal, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program scandal) and build a few token lampposts and sidewalks for houses that will never be built and pocket a few hundred million. It's the Florida way.

Between pythons in the Everglades, hurricanes and tornadoes and floods, bridge spans that are freighter targets, crime and corruption, much of Florida is a disaster zone.

Now that Trump and his pet bank account, Adolf Musk, have disembowelled the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA, the U.S. government can treat Florida as it did Puerto Rico and let them suffer. Though they'll never be short of paper towels.

Compassionate Canadians can just take over and give them one less place to screw up.

Once we take over Florida, with a carve-out of Mar-a-Lago called Trump State, we will be only 50 miles away from our favourite vacation spot and newest trade partner, Cuba. Give us sugar and cigars, we’ll send spare parts for their ’57 Chevies, steel, maple syrup and real smoked meat and bagels, tourtière, baked beans, poutine and pea soup.

If Cubans embraced baseball, they’ll love hockey.

And nobody does chicken like we do. We’ll put a St. Hubert BBQ, Coq Roti, Benny’s, Chalet or Lucerne on every street corner in Florida not manned by a drug dealer. For a true taste of Canadiana, we’ll add sides of steamed hot dogs and breaded veal sandwiches, a curious Toronto concoction.

We can teach Americans about French fries and greasy spoon pizzas as well as open a chain of snow tire shops.

We will bring a few lessons in civility and democracy. Annexing South Florida means people will be allowed to use the washroom or eat when standing in line to vote. Instead of forcing people to wait in line for eight hours, we’ll do Canadian democracy. People will vote in eight minutes, even if they’re poor, Black or Indigenous.

The “greatest democracy in the world” is anything but, so we’ll annex Florida and along with steamed hot dogs and rotisserie chicken, we’ll turn the province into a home for "nice" Canadians. Americans that stay can even lock up their handguns. They have nothing to fear but themselves.