President George W. Bush
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, D.C.
U.S.A.

3217 Monica Drive
Mississauga, Ontario
Canada

November 20, 2004


Sir:

When I learned in February 2003, that our disgraced member of parliament, Carolyn Parrish, made headlines across Canada and elbowed her comments onto U.S. networks with her now infamous televised aside: "Damn Americans, I hate the bastards." I was dismayed. Obviously she doesn’t know the American people very well.

I and my Japanese-born wife have traveled quite extensively throughout the United States over the years and when my mother moved to the US in 1953 and lived there for fifty years before she died, I visited her a number of times and stayed at her homes in California and Hawaii for many months at a time.

As far as I am concerned, the American people are no different than Canadians. Both our nations have the bad with the good but I and my family and I think I speak for most if not all Canadians, consider ourselves very lucky to have such fine neighbors.

Every president always has detractors and you will find them up here also but they don’t speak for the Canadian people. When you visit our country and see the detractors with their placards, try to remember that the rest of us recognize you as the president of a neighboring country we love and that we appreciate the difficulty you are experiencing trying to do what has got to be one of the hardest tasks given to a human being ---- helping to bring peace and justice to our other neighbors world-wide.

Unfortunately, my wife and I don’t live in Ottawa so we won’t be able to cheer you when your motorcade drives by but our hearts will be with you. We hope that you and your wife enjoy yourselves while you visit Canada and that your visit will be a productive one for both Canada and the United States.

I remain,
Respectively Yours


Dahn (Dan) Batchelor