Brad Wheeler

“The cheeseburger and the banquet-cut fries tasted exactly as I remembered them”

I moved to Canada in the summer of 1980. I was 17. My father was an engineer with Mobil Chemical. There was a plant in Belleville, Ont.

After I graduated from university, my family left Canada. I stayed behind. It wasn’t a political choice – it wasn’t much of a choice at all. Picking Toronto to start a life and career made as much sense as Chicago or Boston or any other dart-throw-on-the-map decision.

I remember telling my story to people. Why would you stay here when you could live in the United States, they would ask. I never understood the question. Canadians had bought the myth of the gold-lined streets of America.

To me, Toronto was fantastic. I loved it, and it quickly became home.

Four years ago I visited my hometown, Clifton Springs, New York, in the Finger Lakes region. I stopped by the golf club where I had spent my summers swimming and caddying for my father. I ordered lunch in the clubhouse restaurant. The cheeseburger and the banquet-cut fries tasted exactly as I remembered them.

But then I overheard a conversation at the bar: two guys who had no use for then-President Obama and the 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. They mentioned no policy they were against. It was casual but blatant racism and misogyny.

Donald Trump, of course, was elected. I watched the election returns at Dangerous Dan’s, my beloved Toronto burger joint. Trump’s victory was a gut-punch and a wake-up call. Who would vote for him? Racists and misogynists, that’s who.

Nobody asks me why I don’t wish to live in America anymore.