Speech delivered by Karl Kaiser at the US-Canada Friendship and Solidarity Caravan Rally, Sherbrooke,

Quebec, September 6, 2025.

 

Dear friends,

Let me begin by addressing you in your beautiful language as our expression of respect for your rich

Québec culture.

We have come to you today not as representatives of political parties or of Washington, but as a group of

Americans from all walks of life and as your

neighbors from New Hampshire – a state that has shared borders, waters and prosperity with Québec and the Maritime Provinces for two centuries. We

have come to tell you that we profoundly regret the difficulties and tensions that have arisen in US-Canadian relations, which do not reflect the values

and opinions of millions of Americans, in particular

of those of us who work, live and build our lives along

our shared border.

Above all we disagree with any notion of annexation

of our closest ally, with whom we have had a peaceful

and fruitful relationship for more than 150 years.

We categorically reject any suggestion that Canada’s future should be decided anywhere but in Canada,

by Canadians only!

For over 150 years, our economies have grown together. This is not mere trade statistics—this is the

foundation upon which our communities thrive.

New Hampshire companies have built their aerospace innovations hand-in-hand with Canadian partners, creating supply chains that cross our border dozens of

times before a single product reaches market. When Bombardier and Pratt & Whitney work with our

precision manufacturers, they create not just aircraft

engines, but shared prosperity.

Consider the St. Lawrence Seaway, one of the outstanding engineering feats of the twentieth century, completed in 1959 through unprecedented

cooperation between our nations. President Eisenhower and Prime Ministers Mackenzie King and

St. Laurent understood what seems lost on some today: that our geographic destiny is shared, and our

economic futures are inseparable. The Seaway didn't

just connect our Great Lakes to the Atlantic—

it connected our peoples in bonds of mutual benefit that have lasted generations.

Your lumber flows back and forth and helps to build our houses. Your hydroelectric power keeps our

lights on during peak demand, while our technological

innovations help optimize your grid systems. The daily flow of commerce across our shared border—over

$780 billion annually before these recent disruptions

—represents not just numbers on a ledger, but jobs in

Sherbrooke and Peterborough, paychecks in Montreal and Manchester, innovations in Toronto and

Portsmouth. Our tourists visit your cities. Our students

attend your universities. Our families span your border. When someone threatens this relationship, they

threaten our prosperity, our connections, and our way of life.

But our relationship transcends economics. It lives in the marriages that unite families across our border,

in the students who cross back and forth pursuing

education, in the countless small interactions that

make our border feel more like a county line than

an international boundary. 

Think of the Underground Railroad, when Canadian

soil represented freedom for enslaved Americans,

and Canadian communities opened their doors to those seeking liberty.

Consider our shared sporting traditions—the hockey rivalries that bring our communities together in

friendly competition, the annual migration of

"snowbirds" who spend winters in our southern states and summers at Canadian cottages, creating bonds

that span decades and generations. Our children

attend summer camps across the border; our families vacation in each other's national parks; our retirees

settle in each other's communities and call them home.

When disaster strikes, we respond as neighbors, not as foreign nations. During the 1998 ice storm that devastated Quebec, New Hampshire utility crews

worked alongside Hydro-Quebec to restore power.

When Hurricane Sandy battered our coasts, Canadian