Detained in Canada

~ Clarissa

A colleague comes to my office.

“You know I was going to Canada for a conference,” she says. “You signed my travel request.”

“Yes,” I say. “It’s a good university. I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”

“Well, I decided not to go,” the colleague says. “I heard that US citizens are being detained in Canada and sent to concentration camps.”

“There are no concentration camps in Canada,” I reassure the colleague. “It’s a very peaceful country. You are not in danger.”

“No, I heard that it’s Trump.”

“Trump detains people in Canada?” I ask.

“No. Yes. I don’t know how it works. But I heard that if you go to Canada, you might not come back.”

“It’s OK, you’ll come back,” say I despondently, beginning to wish this weren’t true.

“I heard it had something to do with Trump,” the colleague perseveres. “That if you travel to Canada, you might disappear and then nobody hears from you again.”

“Well, I’m going to Canada two weeks before your conference,” I say thinking that I don’t get paid nearly enough. “If I don’t come back, you’ll know whom to blame.”

“Trump?” she asks hopefully.

“Sure,” I say. “Blame Trump’s Canadian concentration camps.”

After the conversation ended, I took the rest of the day off.

Unknown's avatar

Published by Clarissa

19 thoughts on “Detained in Canada”

  1. Is it bad that I am laughing a lot at this conversation? It is quite disturbing, but really funny. It is like some kind of absurdist fiction. You should collect all these stories into a book.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. I’m sure I will laugh at some point. For now, I’m distracted by the pain in my face resulting from my efforts to keep a calm and friendly facial expression throughout the conversation.

      Like

      Reply

  4. So what are the US citizens being detained or disappeared for in Canada? For being a Trump supporter? But your colleague is likely not a Trump supporter (just for statistical reasons, if she works at the University).

    Yes, I do realize that you exist. 🙂 Which reminds me of a joke. Two mathematicians are on the plane. And one tells another – you know, I was very concerned about bombs on the plane. Then I calculated the probability to have two bombs on the same plane and it is negligibly small. Now I am always carrying one bomb with me.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

      1. How in blue blazes is that supposed to work? Did she not hear about the election? Is it some kind of secret illuminati thing?

        Like, when Alex Jones types were talking about the US gov setting up camps for liberty-lovers, at least there was logical consistency with the opposition in power.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

        1. If Trump wanted to hunt her down and drag her to a detention camp, wouldn’t it be easier for him to do it right here in America? Why would he let her cross over to Canada and then detain her there? And in what way would he detain her? Would he send troops?

          People on meth are more reasonable than people on NPR.

          Like

          Reply

              1. Yeah, it’s genteel because you get it from a doctor and it doesn’t make your teeth fall out. Still meth.

                Check out this weasel explanation of the differences:

                https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/how-do-adderall-and-meth-methamphetamine-differ

                😀

                I read that as: “No! Even though it’s extremely chemically similar and has basically the same effects, Adderall is OK because you do that with a doctor’s supervision and it comes from a *clean* drug factory!”

                Haha. They are totally the same thing, and adult people take them for exactly the same reasons: because they like getting high all the time. But Adderall has a high-class brand name, costs more, is covered by insurance, is generally safer because of manufacturing standards, and doesn’t have low-class street-drug cooties.

                And yeah, they both cause paranoid delusions.

                https://windwardway.com/prescription-drug-abuse/adderall/psychosis-symptoms/

                Like

      2. “she thinks that it’s Trump detaining them. In Canada”

        My assumption is that she thinks nothing of the kind. She decided for some other reason she didn’t want to go and assumed (probably rightly) that in the NPR/PMC set that blaming it on Trump would go unquestioned.

        That she hadn’t figured out you’re not of the NPR/PMC set is more disturbing… not a great observer….

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

  5. I know several scholars like her, here in France. I think of one, in particular. One of the top French scholars in his domain, a professor of some international fame. Besides that, he knows the history of all the train stations of France (there are several thousand) and all the technicalities of trains, busses and trams that ever existed (although that’s far away from what his job is about). Also a fine connaisseur of classical music and literature (knows seemingly hundreds of poems by heart). Speaks several languages. Unfortunately, there are plenty of things that he can’t do or doesn’t know: swimming, riding a bicycle, driving a car, having sex with a woman (he told me at least twice that his marriage lasted six hours… the duration of a catastrophic first night, after which the bride decided that there would be no second night).

    He thinks that nothing happened in the Donbass between 2014 and 2022, because French radio didn’t mention it. Doesn’t believe me when I tell him that 15,000 people were killed there. He doesn’t read the press and he has no TV set. I suggested to him, once, that he should subscribe to a weekly newsmagazine. Any of them. Not ideal for information, but… He looked at me as if I had uttered something crazy. Until I told him he thought that the USA was a majority black country (because of adverts and sports teams). I could go on and on.

    He is the kindest man you could imagine, but he doesn’t understand contemporary society. I asked him once: “Do you think that a man can become a woman?” and he replied to me: “How could I know? There are diesel locomotives that become electric…” That was during a conversation with me and other friends, in his home, after someone mentioned the case of a French woman who is presently prosecuted for having said that men cannot become women (the judges are in no hurry to settle the case)

    People like him and your colleague have superior intellects but they don’t understand the world. All they can think of is: “What opinions, however absurd, are acceptable in polite society?” What is sad, is that academia is full of people like them.

    Like

    Reply

    1. “He thinks that nothing happened in the Donbass between 2014 and 2022, because French radio didn’t mention it. Doesn’t believe me when I tell him that 15,000 people were killed there. “

      • I don’t think anybody knows the exact numbers because Russians are concealing them. But yes, the war went on and Russians murdered, raped, tortured, and beat people throughout that period. My cousin’s husband was shot by the Russians and barely survived. The funny thing is that he supported them but these are insane, maniacal bastards. They don’t care who supports what.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a reply to Clarissa Cancel reply