OTTAWA—Every day, just before sunset, 33-year-old Ryan Hemsley heads to Clover Point, a scenic stretch along the southern coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province. When the weather is clear, he can look across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and see the Olympic Mountains in Washington State.
“Subconsciously, there’s something that keeps bringing me here every day,” Hemsley told me. Watching the Seattle ferry return to the U.S., his thoughts drift to an unlikely fantasy.
“How can I be a stowaway so I can be an American?” he said.
Hemsley insists he has no intention of crossing the border illegally. But when president-elect Donald Trump recently referred to the “great state of Canada,” while trolling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “governor,” and claiming that “many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st state,” it struck a nerve.
Canada’s top officials universally said Trump was joking. Hemsley, on the other hand, saw potential. Recently, he said, his country has become stagnant, a place where ambition dies and potential is squandered. Despite earning a decent living as a car salesman, he can’t afford to buy a house or plan for a future.
“You wake up and survive,” he said. “There’s no opportunity for growth. You occasionally go out for dinner with friends, have a good night, but then you go home, sleep, and do it all over again.”
“As much as I love Canada,” he said, “Canada becoming the 51st state of the United States would rejuvenate me.”
