I Almost Left

What kept a Canadian-born American combat vet from going home.

Photo by Hudson Thomas on Unsplash

I still have my Canadian birth certificate. Born there. That never expires. But I also have my old CAC (military ID) and my current US passport. More than that, I have 40 years invested in the idea of an America I thought the majority of my fellow Americans wanted.

I’ve looked into repatriating to my birth country more than once this past year. Not nostalgically. Practically. I was doing the math. What it would take to reclaim my heritage, cross back north, park the travel trailer somewhere in British Columbia, and let my adopted country eat itself without me in it.

I wasn’t daydreaming. I was planning.

A stacked supreme court. A cult built around a man who wouldn’t survive a week in the places I grew up. Republican bootlickers. The toxic two-party dirty money system. Zionism and genocide. American diplomacy turned into pure braggadocio and bullying. And maybe it was always this way. It shouldn’t be.

I already bled for this country. Two deployments. I earned my citizenship the hard way. At what point does the debt run the other direction? I don’t owe this place anything else.

Most Americans who say they’re moving to Canada have never left their time zone. I’ve lived in six countries and visited dozens. The US has been my anchor country since the 1980s — longer than some of the people running it have been alive. I know what leaving actually feels like. I know what starting over costs. That’s what made this real. I wouldn’t be the guy who tweets about it. I’d be the guy who does it.

Canada isn’t perfect. I know that. I was born there. But it has things this country has decided it doesn’t want. Healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt you. A political culture that hasn’t completely abandoned the concept of shame. Jobs that pay a living wage. Financial stewardship. Dirty money out of politics. A sense that people should take care of each other whenever possible.

I had to fight the VA for ten years to have any kind of resolution to what the US government put me through in a war predicated on lies.

So why am I still here?

I took my family to Canada a few times. It was great. It’s not home anymore though. Could I live there? Absolutely. In many ways it would be better. But then I would have to go to my grave wondering what would have happened if I had decided to fight one more time?

I won’t live in a world where bullies run amok, and people are disappeared for being poor and desperate while others hoard wealth like mythical dragons.

Fear I have. Fight too. Fleeing isn’t in me.

I’m not fighting fascism with a rifle. I’m fighting it from a travel trailer, a laptop full of better ideas than the ones we are currently living through, and a pit bull who snores and snuffles through all of it.

Some days that feels like enough. Some days it doesn’t.

But this is what I was trained to do. Not the shooting. The reporting. I was a combat correspondent. My job was never to pull the trigger. My job was to make sure people knew what was happening. To document it. To refuse to let it go unrecorded.

Different war. Same job.

If you’re reading this, you’re still here too. You haven’t left. Maybe you can’t. Maybe you chose not to. Either way, you’re in it.

Staying and doom-scrolling isn’t fighting. Staying and showing up is. I don’t care what that looks like for you — writing, organizing, showing up at a school board meeting, having the conversation your family doesn’t want to have. Pick something. Do it. Keep doing it.

That’s what fighting looks like when the war is at home.

My Canadian birth certificate is still in the drawer. I haven’t thrown it away. I’m not pretending the option doesn’t exist.

I’m choosing this. Every day. Eyes open.

That’s not patriotism. That’s a decision. Cowards run. I learned what I was decades ago. Some people have no choice — I get that. I do have a choice. My privilege is trumped by my humanity. I’m staying to tell the truth. Truth makes the world less cruel.