Dear editor:

In NOTL we are less than two miles from the U.S. border. Fortunately, the “border” here is a deep chasm through which flows the Niagara River, so almost impervious to American carpetbaggers trying to gain a foothold in a country they think will soon be theirs … but not totally secure, no.

I have family in the U.S., relatives on my wife’s side, who was Trinidadian, so all Black folks. My wife has passed away, so she will not have to experience the literal shit-storm that is the orange turd named Trump.

Every day I fear for all my family in the U.S., this fear beginning with the Trump’s first term, when attacks on and wanton killing of Black people by police and militias and just about anybody at all, were oh so “kindly” “forgiven” by the American judicial system, and murderers literally allowed to go free.

This kind of idiocy and blatant murderous racism pervades the usa and all such people in the usa, and there are many many many, who again feel emboldened by this so-called “president” who is openly racist and sexist and anti-immigrant, just for openers.

While my wife was alive we were invited to spend the winter months in Florida with her relatives — no more.

So I have no need to go into the U.S. at all, and that’s how matters remain; I have no wish whatsoever to visit the U.S. for any reason whatsoever, though I live right by the border and there are attractive cross-border shopping options that locals around me have always taken advantage of.

In grocery shopping, I deliberately check labels for origin and do not buy anything from the U.S. even if that is the only thing available in what I am looking for.

I can get cheaper flights from Buffalo Airport in the U.S. only 30 kilometres from my house and I used to do that, but no more: never again. I will go to Pearson Airport in Toronto even though that’s a two-hour drive and costlier.

In any and every other kind of shopping, also I check for U.S.-made labels and never buy them.

I have a small rural property in Niagara just under an acre and have built a small greenhouse on it and am in the process of starting seeds of all kinds.

I patronize local small stores, NOT American chain stores, for all my needs. I do not care if doing so costs me more money: Better that than kowtowing to U.S. commercial and Trumpist interests.

All my life I have hated guns, and have found the American “gun culture” to be absolutely horrific and insane.

However, given what is happening today and what might transpire in the near future (Trump has only the next four years to do his “thing”) I am about to buy some guns — if only to stop the carpetbaggers from swarming my house when Trump “gives the order” for Americans to consider Canada as an American “state.”

Perhaps the only other thing I might contemplate doing is just harassing Americans still so ignorant of our sensitivities as to try to visit Niagara for our fine wines and world-class restaurants geared to food/wine pairings.

I mean, I might follow them and flash my lights and blow my horn, and then I would tell them the closest best place to eat and have some really good wine — because you see, those Americans who come here to genuinely enjoy being here for many reasons including food and drink, cannot be all bad.

They are probably not Trumpists.

They often stop to photograph my heritage stone home dating back to the 1840s and I offer them a refreshing cool rose in the summer.

For despite Trump, and his racist, war-mongering cohort, there are still a lot of people in the U.S. and Canada who see each other as friends and allies, not as “others” to always be exploited.