This year has not been a record one for US/Canadian ties; the two nations on either side of the world’s longest unprotected border have been at odds about trade and other issues.
Maybe the situation will improve.
Or maybe it’ll end up more like a century ago, when there was a Canadian document called Defense Scheme No. 1, which was a plan to invade the United States.
This was in 1921, a time when the US and Canada were actually pretty good neighbors, though maybe not as tight as they would become in the post-World War II order.
So why did Ottawa cook up a war plan for its southern neighbor?
Because you never know what you might need, right?
Lt. Col. James “Buster” Brown came up with this very just-in-case planning document, reportedly at times heading into the US and doing some extremely under-the-radar recon work.
The main premise of his plan was that the Canadian military was not going to defeat the military of the United States, but it could make things difficult for its more powerful foe.
The Brown plan would have launched a surprise attack, sending troops to take cities across the northern United States, from Seattle to Detroit to Fargo to Albany, plus all of Maine.
That, he figured, would catch the Americans off guard and buy the Canadians time for a more powerful fighting force to arrive: one from the UK.
The plan figured that if Canadian/US relations were so bad that war was about to break out, London would eventually weigh in on the side of the Great White North.
Plus, he wrote, there might even be some Americans who would welcome their Canadian invaders, seeing as how it was Prohibition and the Canadian troops could bring barrels of whiskey with them!
Defense Scheme No. 1 didn’t ever go into effect; the only place it went was the fire.
Perhaps the Canadians who read it thought it was a recipe for national disaster and didn’t want to keep even a single copy.
It’s possible they realized this war plan would’ve really been hell on the hockey season.
Maybe they wanted to improve ties with their southern neighbors, or maybe they just didn’t know that in this era, the US had its own plan for invading Canada, known as War Plan Red.
Back in February 2013, authorities arrested a woman in Oklahoma who had made 59 harassing and obscene calls to 911 in a single day.
According to the criminal complaint the woman gave this as her rationale for repeatedly dialing a line for emergency services: “My job is to harass you bitches.”
Note: that was not actually her job.
Map of Canada’s “Defense Scheme No. 1” From The 1920s & 30s (Brilliant Maps)
“My Job Is To Harass You Bitches,” Explained The Woman Who Dialed 911 Operators 59 Times In One Day (The Smoking Gun)
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Photo by Spend A Day Touring LLC via Flickr/Creative Commons