A man from the Canadian consulate called the other day, trying to drum up interest in his country. Did I know that 50 percent of the crude oil that comes into Illinois originates in the sands of Alberta, and it’s going up to 70 percent? Did I know that Canada’s turning Prince Rupert, in northern British Columbia, into a major container port, adding a train a day between there and Chicago and tripling the amount of cargo handled by Canadian National’s intermodal yard in Harvey? Did I know the 30 new locomotives required to make this happen will be built by a company in La Grange?
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Lynch knew I was fascinated by the Conrad Black trial and was testing my limits, which hugely exceed those of the American press as a whole. On April 3 the Toronto Star carried a dumbfounding story from its man in Washington. It began: “When the Washington Post closes its Toronto bureau this summer, it will mark the death of the American newspaper correspondent in Canada.”
The Star went on to say that the New York Times had shut down its Canadian bureau last summer, keeping pace with the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune (I thought synergy in the Tribune Company meant papers pooling their resources, not turning their backs in unison). The article talked about market forces and hard times, about a 10 percent drop in foreign bureaus maintained by American papers and a 30 percent drop in foreign correspondents since 2000. That might explain pulling out of Kenya. But Canada?
I had never heard of any of these men, which was exactly my sister’s point. American reporters pay no attention to them. They’re not world figures. Worse, they’re not celebrities. But they’re interesting, accomplished people. Suzuki’s a widely respected environmentalist. Dallaire was the commander of the UN peacekeeping force on whom Nick Nolte’s character in Hotel Rwanda was loosely based. Lewis was the UN’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. “Perhaps because Canada is a much smaller country we have the opportunity to get to know our heroes,” Dixie wrote. “But also, we don’t make such impossible demands on them. And the country gains.”
And did I know that British Petroleum is spending $3 billion to expand and modernize its refinery in Whiting so it can handle all that crude oil from Alberta? That’s three billion U.S. dollars, Lynch stressed. He wanted me to care.
