Special to WorldTribune.com

By Sol W. Sanders

This column was written on Oct. 17. On Oct. 19, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals swept to power in Canada’s elections and Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced his resignation from the Conservatives.

Americans were reminded this week of what a tried sand true friend it has in its Canadian neighbor, a relationship virtually unique in the world.

Ken Taylor, Canada’s ambassador to Iran who snook Americans into his residence during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, passed away this week. He was 81, suffering from colon cancer.

It was during the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran by the Islamic terrorists and their then Communist allies that Taylor hid the Americans at his home and that of his deputy, John Sheardown. He risked that he and his embassy, too, would come under fire. Three months later, Taylor arranged their escape by persuading the Ottawa government to issue counterfeit passports. Former Prime Minister Joe Clark, who cooperated with Taylor, just tweeted that his friend was a hero.

When six of the American hostages managed to sneak away – the other fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days [Nov.4, 1979, to Jan. 20, 1981], Taylor took them in. It wasn’t until President Ronald Reagan entered the White House that the others were freed.

Taylor’s wife recalling the scene said Taylor never hesitated. And Taylor’s friends were outraged when a film, “Argo” , opened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012 depicting the whole episode as a brilliant CIA plot.

Taylor’s exploits and the false narrative about them characterize that special, intimate and complex U.S.-Canada relationship. It has blossomed recently under Prime Minister Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper despite several big issues dogging it.

First of all, Harper, a Western plains conservative, couldn’t be more different than President Barack Obama, in strategies and temperament.

And, in fact, under Harper, Canada stepped out a bit more from America’s shadow internationally, taking a firm pro-Israel line in the Mideast in contrast to the kind of ambiguity recently demonstrated by Obama in reacting to the growing Palestinian violence. Harper also has had to deal with the issue of the Keystone Pipeline, lobbying openly in the U.S. for its authorization against Obama’s dithering, threatening to go west with the oil and gas to the China market rather than using the Houston international exit for other customers.

But this has been part of Harper’s skillful management of a growing China trade and taking Beijing to task publicly and privately on its civil rights and and its aggressive feints in Western Pacific waters.

This era of more or less smooth collaboration may soon run into trouble waters if the polls are right.

Harper appears to be losing in Canada’s multi-party, infinitely federal-provincial elections scheduled for Oct. 19. His chief opponent, Justin Trudeau and his Liberals, seem to be a chip off the old block of Trudeau’s father, Pierre Eliott Trudeau, Canadian prime minister during the decade of the 70s. Young Trudeau tempted to use his father’s plucking tailfeathers from the American eagle, always a useful tool among the Ontario Tory voters, descendants of the American Revolution. He has also stirred the nasty beast of French Canadian nationalism in Quebec to try to regain the Liberals’ base there.

On the American side, leading Democrat Candidate Hillary Clinton in our own 2016 elections is stirring the American pot too by more or less gratuitously coming out against the Keystone.

Clinton like most of its diehard American environmental critics ignore that it would also be carrying American Dakota/Montana crude to U.S. refineries, reducing the growing threat of overloaded tankcars railway accidents.

But, Hillary or Trudeau notwithstanding, we know the incredible deep and abiding close American-Canadian relationship that Taylor so personified is going eventually to win the day.

And, of course, the ahistorical mainstream American media do need something to talk about so a successful Clinton and Trudeau would provide the verbiage.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is a contributing editor for WorldTribune.com and Geostrategy-Direct.com

  RIP, Sayonara pro-U.S. conservative Stephen Harper; Canadian friend Ken Taylor, WorldTribune.com