RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025. I’m personally embarrassed when local TV reports on the Toronto International Film Festival ask visiting foreign (albeit usually just US) celebrities : “What is your favourite thing about Canada?”

(I should quickly note that the countervailing logic has been voiced by my wife : “I like it when they ask that question.” And the media pay much more attention to her.)

My embarrassment, however, was recently redeemed by the answer of the actress from Connecticut, Glenn Close, at TIFF 2025 : “My favourite thing about Canada … [said with a friendly smile] … They stood up to you know who. I shouldn’t say that but I will anyway.”

And I think to myself that if Glenn Close thinks Canada has stood up to the insanity of Donald Trump’s still oh-so-young second federal administration in the USA today, others outside Canada must have some similar thoughts. And for we Canadians that is of course a good thing!

On some similar wave of current popular thought the Oscar-winning director from Mexico, Guillermo del Toro, “known for his love of … our city and country,” has offered an even stronger Canadian assessment during a speech at the 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, which will end this coming Sunday, September 14, 2025.

“Canadians,” Mr. del Toro has pronounced, “are modest and shy except on traffic and hockey …So it takes a Mexican to tell you that Canada is a bastion of hope in the world right now.”

It isn’t just Donald Trump’s USA that looms darkly on the horizon. To take two immediate cases in point, both Keir Starmer’s UK and Emmanuel Macron’s France are leading very domestically unpopular governments with uncertain futures. Neither qualifies as a bastion of hope in the crazy governing universe of MAGA America, Phase II.

There are of course clear and obvious limits on what Canada can and cannot do outside its own borders. But I agree with what still does seem to be the current majority of my fellow Canadians that Prime Minister Mark Carney remains the right guy for the times inside and outside Canada.

And then finally back in the USA, USA, USA the only thing worse than the shooting death of Charlie Kirk while speaking at Utah Valley University is President Trump’s speech from the Oval Office on the issue.

To conclude with a post on Twitter/X by the group Republicans against Trump : “What an absolutely disgusting speech from the Oval Office. Trump is truly incapable of uniting the American people, even in times of tragedy. Disgraceful.”

The Canadian people are certainly not as divided as the American people right now. And Mark Carney is certainly a more experienced and knowledgeable international political leader than Donald Trump.

It could even be that Prime Minister Carney can in some small but significant degree speak for the side of the USA itself that is in opposition to Donald Trump — until the historic and real Democracy in America speaks again for itself in 2026 and 2028.