Today – exactly 2 weeks prior to the monthly billing date of my initial subscription on February 25th last – I cancelled the Zips Car Wash card in anticipation of our departure from Hilton Head Island and return to Canada at the end of March. The cancellation signifies the commencement of our decline and withdrawal from Hilton Head Island for what I expect may be the last time. As you may surmise it is a transition not without its fervent import, a combination of the felicitous and the execrable, gratitude and remorse, refreshment and recollection. The shady corridors within Sea Pines plantation are at once exhilarating and repetitive, both welcoming and yet strangely all too familiar, the insinuating mystic depths competing with the lingering particles of commercial estrangement provoked especially by a new national American government reputedly dedicated to the expropriation of Canada as the 51st state, a battle apparently to be fought by instigating the economic ruin of Canada at the expense of the American people. It cannot be denied that Hilton Head Island in spite of its many favourable features is still not home. It will forever be a vacation destination (as is the eponymous name of our much valued estate agency under the particular guidance of Mrs. Gail Edmonds and of late with the very capable assistance of Ms. Ashley Dyar).
By coincidence we reviewed a newsletter this morning from Boca Raton, Florida in which is stated:
BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2025 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — Canadian citizens are being warned by attorneys in the United States that they may need to be fingerprinted. It’s part of a new federal rule that goes into effect on April 11th. The rule requires any Canadian citizen that spends more than 30 days in the United States to register with the Department of Homeland Security. The Canadian must also be fingerprinted. The rule will be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday. Here are key elements, according to Immigration Attorney Rosanna Berardi:
1. Most Canadians who drive across the border are NOT currently issued Form I-94 documents, meaning they lack proper registration documentation.
2. New Legal Obligation: Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, Canadians staying in the U.S. for 30+ days (which includes virtually all snowbirds) must register and be fingerprinted.
3. Required Action: Canadians who have been in Florida for 30+ days will need to complete the new Form G-325R online at https://my.uscis.gov/ and attend a biometrics appointment.
Naturally we completed and submitted the forms out of an abundance of caution.
Removing oneself from a beloved venue is for us an odd and somewhat displeasing enterprise. The particular circumstances of the detraction are additionally associated with unmistakably sour economic repercussions which have precipitated worldwide consequences of noticeable affect. Indeed the American image of beneficence is being deliberately eclipsed by an increasingly indigestible conservative platform which has resounded about the globe, transforming entire political movements from anything resembling the chaos, uncertainty and maliciousness promoted by Trump in the name of his billionaire cronies. Today, while the Dow Jones plummeted, Trump and his buddy Elon Musk (curiously with his infant child in tow) paraded about the White House lawn advertising to disadvantaged Americans the purchase of a Tesla motor vehicle.
Meanwhile Canadians, the erstwhile best neighbours of Americans, are being driven backwards into an apocalyptic state of seeming fisticuffs to protect our nationality and identity. The immorality of suggesting overtaking an entire country by force is nothing short of maniacal. The question however is whether and when Americans will awaken to the same conclusion; or, whether – by some supremely unimaginable absurdity – they will embrace their national leader and his party of sycophants in the process. If Trump is to be afforded any credibility whatsoever in this advertised mandate it will soon fall to his people to express themselves one way or another because it is certain from what is emanating from Canada that the venture will not be effected without controversy and objection of the strongest degree. If Trump is allowed by his enablers to continue with this manifestly daemonic enterprise, then they have no alternative but to fall in line. Indeed I must ask that I be forgiven should I lapse into the vernacular in accounting these odious details. After having spent close to 6 months each year for the past decade in the United States of America, these perverse political machinations over the past 51 days have constituted a most disagreeable exit. Tolerance of political grandstanding is one thing; but calculated effort to disrupt a global stability is hardly worthy of approbation by any account.
For the record however I am bound to exhort my personal belief that Americans will not clasp to their bosom this manifestly controversial undertaking. Trump’s success at garnering the support of everyday Americans does not in my opinion include overtaking one of the largest countries in the world solely for the benefit of its natural capital. Americans have already within their treasury of talent and resources yet untouched value. I cannot sanction the metaphorical equivalent of a Hummer for national improvement when cooperation and agreement are far more nutritious and manageable.
CANADIANS IN FLORIDA WARNED: YOU MUST REGISTER AND BE FINGERPRINTED