Where will you be when election night history is made?
It’s a thing, I guess, to remember where you were when extraordinary events happened. Some details are hazy for the earlier ones, but I do recall where I was for the 9/11 attacks, the 1980 and 1995 referendums, John Lennon’s murder in 1980, the moon landing of 1969, and the assassination of JFK in 1963. We’ll stop there.
And then there was the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States of America. I’ll never forget where I was that night. Dozens of American expats and other guests had gathered at the U.S. consulate in Quebec City for what the general consensus figured would be the slam dunk election of the first woman president of the U.S.
The prospect of a woman in the White House up until that point had been pretty much a phenomenon seen only on movie and TV screens. The first depiction of a female POTUS, according to Google, was the 1964 movie Kisses for the President. Polly Bergen played the plucky president and Fred Macmurray played her unamused husband.
After a series of zany international intrigues, including the “first husband” taking a South American dictator to a burlesque house, the movie ends with the president learning she is pregnant and resigning to take care of her growing family.
So there was a buoyant mood in the house, especially among the women, with the expectation being Hillary
Clinton was going to take down Trump, whose credentials as a predatory sexist pig had been exposed on the Access Hollywood tape only a few weeks before. On the other hand, James Comey, the soon-to-be-former FBI director, had launched a torpedo at Clinton’s campaign, a torpedo he tried vainly to unlaunch a few days before the vote.
As the decisive Florida votes came in, I happened to be standing next to someone from a southern red state who was likely one of the rare Trump supporters in the room. All I can remember him saying is he never expected Trump would actually win and probably neither did Trump.
How could this happen? That was the feeling in the room, stunned into silence with people discreetly slipping out to avoid the awkwardness. We felt for our U.S. diplomat hosts who would now have to deal with a Trump presidency … diplomatically.
And boy, did they. It just so happened Canada’s turn in the rotation to host a G7 summit was coming up, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had chosen - and fortified - the Charlevoix region. Had he known at the time Trump would be representing the U.S., he may have picked a more secluded location, like Baffin Island.
In the lead-up to June 2018, the little consulate outpost in Quebec City found itself at the epicentre of an unimaginable whirlwind of organization, logistics and protocol, preparing the ground for the visit of a president who had already demonstrated his volatility and unpredictability on the world stage.
As it turned out, he did not disappoint in his unpredictability, turning up late for meetings, and leaving the summit early, tweeting insults at Trudeau as he winged away on Air Force One to see his new BFF Kim Jong-un in North Korea.
Charlevoix was as close to Quebec City as Trump ever got, and, as it turns out, the G7 was Trump’s one and only official visit to Canada during his tumultuous term. For the record, the only presidents to visit the Quebec capital while in office are George W. Bush (2001, for the Summit of the Americas) and Ronald Reagan (1985, the “Shamrock Summit” with Brian Mulroney).
Prior to that, only Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited la vieille capitale as president, once in 1936, and twice for the wartime summits.
I already know where we’ll be watching the 2020 election results. It will be in a pandemic red zone, in a family bubble at home, maybe snacking on take-out from a shuttered restaurant.
Will there be another stunning outcome? Will the United States finally send a woman to the White House, this time a heartbeat from the presidency, with a credible shot for 2024? Trump probably doesn’t expect to win again. But will he?
Attachez vos tuques and pass the hand sanitizer.