RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2026. In the midst of all the 51st State nonsense on Twitter/X lately, Alice Hunt’s recent piece on King“James VI & I” (1566–1625) in the London Review of Books gave me a fresh (if also crazy) slant on the 250-year-old non-unification of the United States and Canada.

Very quickly, James VI of Scotland (since he was one year old in 1567) became James I (of the new united kingdom of Scotland and England and Ireland, known officially as Great Britain) in 1603. Remaining in this office until his death in 1625, James I is the monarch who starts the now long modern history of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, (now just Northern) Ireland, and Wales (etc).

All this, it struck me while reading Alice Hunt’s piece, has at least some theoretical meaning for the United States and Canada in the 2020s. As the US comedian and talk show host Jay Leno once confessed on TV, he had some understanding of Canada because his mother was Scottish. Canada is the New World’s Scotland, due north of the New World’s England in the USA.

With one eye on the 51st state nonsense these days, after centuries of separation the old medieval kingdoms of England and Scotland did begin a long process of unification in 1603. Through chance and his own aggressive urging, the 37-year-old King of Scotland, James VI, proved to have the strongest hereditary claim to the English monarchy on the death of the childless Queen Elizabeth II.

Without going into the various other deeper fascinations of King“James VI & I” (1566–1625), for political life in North America today the implication of his career for any forthcoming union of the United States and Canada as soon as the next few years (as the 51st state apostles urge) would seem to run roughly as follows.

After a totally disastrous performance by Republicans in the fall 2026 mid-term elections — at all three levels of government in the USA today — the Trump administration falls apart decisively in 2027. Parallel failures in various Trump foreign policy adventures lead to a particular 2028 real-world scheme for the at long last unification of the United States an Canada.

Under this scheme Canadian prime minister Mark Carney runs as Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 election for first president of a new United States of North America — into which Canada is admitted with each of its 10 provinces as separate states.

This duly increases the Democratic vote in the 2028 presidential and congressional elections. And Mark Carney is finally elected President of the new USNA, which stretches all the way to the North Pole!

Of course nothing remotely like this will or even could in theory ever happen.

It defies a host of realities in both the present-day United States and Canada. It does, however, arguably suggest the depths of change in both Canada and the United States that any successful plan for the unification of the two countries in the trying global times of the later 2020s would have to entertain. And, whatever else, it does seem clear enough that the alleged Canadian advocates of 51st state status do not even remotely have any interest in (or understanding of) the altogether vast deepness of such historic real-world depths!