OPINION:
Americans were reminded this week of what a tried and true friend it has in its Canadian neighbor, a relationship all but unique in the world. That reminder, Ken Taylor, Canada’s ambassador to Iran who hid six Americans in the ambassador’s residence during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, died last week at 81.
Mr. Taylor and his deputy, John Sheardown, took the risk that their embassy, too, might be seized. Three months later, Mr. Taylor arranged escape by persuading the Ottawa government to issue counterfeit passports for the six.
The six Americans had managed to sneak away when 52 other American diplomats and workers were held hostage for 444 days until the very day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. The mullahs in Tehran clearly did not want to mess with the Gipper. Mr. Taylor’s wife recalls that her husband never hesitated. The Canadians — and others familiar with the facts — were outraged when a Hollywood movie called “Argo” opened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012 depicting the episode as a brilliant plot by the CIA.
Mr. Taylor’s exploits and the false narrative characterize that special, intimate and complex U.S.-Canada relationship. It has blossomed recently under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, despite several differences. Mr. Harper, a conservative from the Canadian plains, differs sharply from Barack Obama in both outlook and temperament. Canada under Mr. Harper has stepped out of America’s shadow, taking a firm pro-Israel line in the Middle East in contrast to the ambiguity of Mr. Obama’s response to the growing Palestinian violence against Israel.
Mr. Harper has lobbied for the Keystone pipeline in the United States, threatening to go west to China with Canadian oil and gas rather than selling it at the Houston exit. Against the backdrop of a growing trade with China, he has not hesitated to take Beijing to task in both public and private for its human-right abuses and its aggressive feints in the South China Sea.
This era of more or less smooth collaboration may soon run into troubled waters if the polls are right. Mr. Harper appears to be losing in Canada’s multi-party elections scheduled for Monday. His chief Liberal Party opponent, Justin Trudeau, is the son of Pierre Trudeau, the prime minister during the decade of the ’70s. The son inherited some of his father’s talent for plucking tail feather from the American eagle, always popular with the descendants of Tories who fled to Canada during the American Revolution. He has also teased the beast of French Canadian nationalism in Quebec to restore the Liberal Party base there.
Hillary Clinton has stirred the pot with her opposition to the Keystone pipeline. Like most American environmental critics, she ignores the fact that Keystone would carry American crude as well to U.S. refineries, reducing the growing threat of overloaded tank cars on American railroads.
Hillary or young Trudeau notwithstanding, the deep and abiding American-Canadian relationship that Mr. Taylor personified will eventually win the day. Friendships endure when people don’t.
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