Friends no more? Remembering “Between Friends” Canada’s bicentennial gift to the United States
In one month the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Fifty years ago, Canada gave a birthday gift to the United States, a glossy coffee table book of high quality photographs that was at the time the “longest undefended border” in the world. It was called Between Friends/Entre Amis.
Times have changed in those fifty years. Under President Donald Trump, the United States threatens Canada daily with an ever changing regime of tariffs, threats of annexation to become a 51st state, insults to our political leaders and plans to devastate our industries.
It appears that the major event, apart from the obligatory fireworks and a parade of sail, is an Ultimate Fighting Championship 250 on the south lawn of the White House more to celebrate Donald Trump’s 80th birthday than the Declaration of Independence.
The fight will also be broadcast live on the Ellison family’s Paramount + at the same time the company is undertaking a political purge at CBS News. The UFC event appears to have come out of Trump’s ever expanding ego rather than any American tradition. After all, when Rome had gladiatorial games, it had been a custom for centuries, going back to the earliest days of the city.
Fifty years ago, glossy, heavy coffee table books with spectacular photographs printed on high quality paper were often best sellers. Today those books are rare, replaced by low quality images on a smart phone. Photography is dying as a profession.
In 1975, Canada’s National Film Board, inspired by the success of Canada A Year of the Land, which was published for the Canadian centennial in1967, hired 32 Canadian photographers “to examine the United States Canada border,”
One of those photographers was my teacher of photojournalism, the late Ted Grant, who was on the faculty of the Carleton University School of Journalism that year.
The photographers were asked to interpret the border, to photograph the land and the people in the immediate vicinity of it, to document places in both countries where there is a sense of the border present in the daily lives who live there. They were to range more than twenty miles from the border vista only in sparsely populated parts of the continent, where people in one of the countries live a considerable distance from their nearest neighbors across the border.
The late Loraine Monk (1922-2020) executive producer of the NFB was the editor of both books. She chose to include 263 images from the 160,000 submitted by the photographers.
As part of the bicentennial gift, the NFB, the publisher McLelland and Stewart and the government of Canada sent a copy to every public, university and private library in the United States. Copies were also for sale in bookstores across the continent.
A special enhanced edition of 75 copies of Between Friends was produced for “dignitaries” including a copy presented to President Gerald Ford by Monk and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau at the White House on June 16. 1976 in the Rose Garden, which Trump has now paved over for a patio like many of his tacky hotels.
In his forward to the book, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau wrote in part:
This book is also a celebration—a joyful celebration of the striking triumph of the human spirit reflected in the atmosphere of peace and friendship between two proud and free nations…No one should think it strange that Canadians should observe of the American anniversary. Over hundreds of years we have worked and played together, fought side by side against common enemies. Our own two people have helped each other repair the havoc of natural disasters and applauded each other, opened our hearts and homes to each other as to valued and welcomed friends.
Let no one seek to devalue the achievements of our friendships by glossing over its occasional difficulties. It is true that, as in not uncommon among lifelong friends, we have sometimes had serious differences of opinion, misunderstood each other, struggled against competing ambitions… The true nature of our international relationship, however, is revealed by the fact that it is defined not by our differences but by our capacity and eagerness to resolve them.
On 9/11 Canadians “opened our hearts and homes” to stranded Americans. Now many Canadians see the United States as a potential enemy.
Under the current presidency of Donald Trump and his sycophantic followers, that life long friendship, as Prime Minister Mark Carney has observed, been “ruptured.” With its cuts to science and emergency management, the Trump administration is increasing, not decreasing the “havoc of natural disasters.” That doesn’t mean Canadians still won’t respond to a major disaster in the United States.
This year of 2026, it is highly unlikely that many Canadians want to observe the American anniversary no matter how many friends and relatives they have south of the border.
Just two weeks ago, the latest figures that Canadian travel to the United States, as tracked by cell phone data, was down 42 per cent from 2025, much higher than the official border crossing statistics that showed trips down by 25 per cent. Travel is not only down to the snowbird locations in the southern United States but to places like New York and Las Vegas.
As far as I can find out, Canada has no plans to give any kind of formal gift to the United States. In 1976, many other nations and individuals gave the US birthday presents. If there are any this year, the gifts will probably be gold plated bling for Donald Trump from nations seeking his favour.
I wish I could say that the now hardened border is still “between friends.” Trump has ruptured the friendship and that only gets worse. The border Is getting harder both physically with surveillance, practically with ICE agents seeking arrest quotas and in the minds of many Canadians. The border will become more of a barrier over the next two years of the Trump administration and continue if he succeeds in putting chosen successors in the Oval Office.
As Canadian Joni Mitchell has observed, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Canadians already realize this. Americans are just beginning to.
Postscript
Ignore the gladiatorial cage fight. There is one thing worth celebrating in America 250, a parade of sail, an event that actually celebrates history rather than ego.
In 1976, Operation Sail, a parade of sixteen tall ships, included two from the then Soviet Union, supported by 113 other sailing vessels, including Canada’s Bluenose II.
This year, there will be a similar festival of tall ships, in New Orleans, Norfolk , Baltimore, New York and Boston. Two Canadian vessels are taking part the Bluenose II and HMCS Oriole, the Royal Canadian Navy sail training ketch based in Halifax.
Note: The tear in the book cover has been there for years, altthough appropriate it was not added for this post.