In “Carney takes on Trump’s America” (FT View, March 11) you quote Mark Carney, Canada’s new prime minister, as saying “Canada never, ever, will be part of America”. Yet Canada is already part of “America”. After all, the majority of the inhabitants of the landmass that makes up the western hemisphere — from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego — locate their countries on a continent called America.
This adheres to the five-continent model favoured by the UN. The mistake is easy to explain: for over two centuries, citizens of the “United States of America” have shortened their country’s name to its third word for convenience sake (even though it has more syllables than the more accurate USA). But other “Americans”, both north and south of the US, see it as a crystal clear signifier of imperialism, no different from calling China “Asia” or Germany “Europe”.
For almost 100 years since the onslaught of Hollywood films and cheap publications directed at Canadian consumers began in the 1930s, Canadians have been drowning in US culture. Yet many of us — I’m a Canadian living in New York — have stubbornly resisted that choice piece of nomenclature from south of the border, Carney excepted.
I suspect Europeans like the term because it gives the country an imaginative immensity. This seems to include the FT as reading the paper in a place like Mexico — which militantly adheres to the term’s larger definition — can be quite confusing. Those of us who share the continent with the US would love to “Make America Great Again”, by restoring the word’s full and accurate continental usage.
Terence Gower
New York, NY, US