Washington Huskies

It’s hard as a Canadian to wrap my head around American college football. Earlier this fall I went to a university football game in Saskatoon. It was charming – beautiful September night, about 7,000 fans, a down-home atmosphere in the pre-game festivities and an exciting game to boot. It was a quaint, perfectly lovely thing to attend, even if the hometown University of Saskatchewan Huskies couldn’t pull off the victory. Fast forward a few months, and with a stroke of scheduling luck, the University of Washington Huskies played the USC Trojans while I was in Seattle attending a conference in November. Walking into the stadium, it was clear this was nothing like the game I saw back in Saskatoon. All this experience would share with that September night is the name of the two home teams.

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I was not ready for post-election America.

Arriving in the USA two days after the recent election, I had no idea what to expect. What I found was a blue state in mourning. The wounds were fresh. People were hurt. Deeply hurt. I was in Seattle for a medical education conference and every keynote speech had been torn up and rewritten in the aftermath of November 8. Every workshop and panel discussion had a tie to the election. At every table I sat, I was asked what Canada thought of what had just happened. In my head, I had a chuckle at the irony of an element of the Canadian psyche in seeking validation from Americans now emerging from my colleagues to the south.

This was a predominantly work-related trip, but even my limited social and tourist activities around the edges kept bumping into post-election America – demonstrations in downtown Seattle, overheard conversations and newspapers filled with election coverage. Even with all of that as a backdrop, I’ve taken away some great memories unrelated to politics. I ate close to my weight in seafood (oh, how I miss fresh seafood in Saskatoon), did a tour of Seattle’s baseball stadium, sampled a good number of Pacific Northwest craft beers, and had a memorable night at a big college football game. I’ve got a backlog of writing to do, but will write more about my Seattle experiences in the coming weeks and months.