Diary: Canada gets ready to celebrate

Margaret Carlson has been Washington Bureau Chief for Esquire, managing editor of the New Republic, columnist for Bloomberg News, and covered four presidential elections for Time.

It’s inaugural week, and a town that advances on its stomach turns its mind to parties. There’s the Italian Embassy (carbonara and Chianti), the French (one year its fully decorated Christmas tree hung upside down from the ceiling), and the British where, in an earlier era, departing Ambassador Karen Pierce, turned her eight-acre English garden into a pink wonderland for the premiere of “Barbie.” Rep. Matt Gaetz wore a pink blazer, and his wife, Ginger, seemed to enjoy posing in Barbie’s Dream House — but then urged a boycott of the film. “Disappointingly low T from Ken,” she complained.

But I found myself in the pre-inauguration rush at the Canadian Embassy, ready to cover the invasion from the south. That embassy last made a splash during the Reagan Administration when Sondra Gotleib, the wife of Canadian Ambassador Allan Gotlieb, in the middle of greeting 200 guests for dinner, was informed by her social secretary that a deputy Treasury secretary, a prized dinner companion only in Washington, had cancelled. Gotleib slapped the bearer of bad news in the face, and she ran from the room. Not that it was a good thing, but no humans were harmed in the making of that drama. The event made headlines in both countries and put Canada on the social map.

Still, Trump now wants the country for himself. He’s redrawn the map of North America, pushing out its borders to encompass everything to the north. I am not sure it’s entirely his sort of place–summer lasts six weeks. But the embassy garage is a good place to get a flat tire. An attendant bearing a jack and a lug wrench had the spare on in five minutes. He thanked me.

The Canadians were, I can report, relaxed and didn’t seem rattled by Trump’s threats. The evening was a farewell to David Cohen, the retiring U.S. Ambassador to Ottawa, who holds the unofficial record for most kilometers travelled, most hockey games attended, and most visits (three) to the Northern Lights during his four years in Ottawa. The balding, understated lawyer was The Man to See in Ed Rendell’s Pennsylvania, a major figure in A Prayer for the City, Buzz Bissinger’s second classic after Friday Night Lights (“clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose”). Bissinger spent a year following Rendell, the Philadelphia Mayor (later to be the Keystone State’s two-term Governor,) and chief of staff Cohen from dawn till dusk to chronicle the turnabout of a near- bankrupt, crime-ridden city. The recovery was so successful, Republicans chose Philly over New York for their 2000 convention, the first of many disappointments to befall Rudy Giuliani.

Canada is unlikely to become more social after the 20-hour a day Cohen leaves and ambassador-designate, former Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra, arrives. He’s been out of active politics since 2012. He hit a rough spot in his race for the Senate after running an ad during the Super Bowl that opened with the sound of a gong and a pretty Chinese girl riding a bike alongside a rice paddy, fake-thanking incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow in broken English for making the U.S. economy “very weak” while the Chinese economy “get very good.” He lost the election by 20 points.

The best way to let people know there’s a new sheriff in town is for Hoekstra to throw a party for himself. There isn’t anyone who didn’t know the Canadians had arrived in town after the party with The Slap.The public affairs officer apologized, as Canadians do, but Sondra Gotleib wrote a breezier column about the incident for the Washington Post. Her dining room became the hottest ticket in town.

Inauguration week, the hottest ticket is a reception where Trump’s nearest and dearest will zuck it up with the Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who’s hosting it with big donors like Miriam Adelson, owner of the Las Vegas Sands and Dallas Mavericks. Crashers, forget about it. The location will be revealed only with the return of an RSVP that asks for everything but your mother’s maiden name.

Monday, Canada will be the place to be. Most embassies, like the British, are way out of town on Embassy Row but Canada flies its maple leaf flag over such a prime piece of real estate at the base of the Capitol, you might be able to hear the swearing in from the embassy balcony while lunching on beavertail.

As Trump arrives at the White House from the Rotunda, it will almost be as if he never left. The last traces of the Bidens will be in a moving truck on their way to Delaware minus, we assume, classified documents. Trump’s every red tie and golf shirt will be in its proper place. The old is new again.