Calmly Canadian

America, Harley-Davidson, and You. Let's not Raise the Volume. Let's Raise the Bar.

America, at its best and worst, has always reminded me of a Harley-Davidson.

Purposefully loud. Rough around the edges. Out of time, too big, too heavy, too fast—literally by design.

It rumbles onto the world stage with chrome gleaming and pistons pounding bang-bang-pop, demanding attention whether you’re ready or not. It’s inefficient, overpriced, often ridiculous—and yet, somehow, undeniably iconic.

You can roll your eyes at the showboating biker bullies and blowhards and still love the sound, the style, the feel of it. There’s something about that engine roar that taps into a deep, mythic part of the Western psyche. But here’s the thing: you don’t ride a Harley when precision matters. You ride it when you want to be seen, felt, and heard.

Here’s some deep dive Harley facts.

First, it didn’t have to be this way. America Harley set out to be an innovator.

“A machine so silent that it cannot be heard across the street.”

Then this happened:

Logic would dictate the arrangement on the left. A crank arrangement that balanced out the engine back to front and up and down, with sparks firing the cylinders in order. But, for reasons still unclear, Harley-Davidson chose the right path — everything turning at the same time, everything happening all at once. What could be more American?

You don’t have to know anything about engines. If you’ve ever heard a Harley-Davidson, or seen one rattle back and forth on its idle, you already know all about this. And America. It just doesn’t work right at rest.

Neither Harley nor America knows quite how to be quiet. How to be small. How to not be the story. That’s where Canada, and others, come in—not to replace them, but to offer a counterweight. A different idea of power. One that hums instead of shouts.

In 1989, as part of an intended to be innovative rebrand to assert itself as quintessentially American, H-D introduced the new (old) flagship model…

The Fat Boy™.

According to Harley lore, the name was a nod to toughness and swagger, a sort of red-white-and-blue belly laugh in leather. But the subtext was chilling: Fat Boy combines the nicknames of the two atomic bombs America dropped on Japan in 1945: Fat Man and Little Boy.

This was a motorcycle branded with the language of annihilation. A V-twin war drum wrapped in chrome. A nod, intentional or not, to American dominance at its most destructive. Even in the late 1980s, this was belligerently tasteless. But Harley wasn't backing away—it leaned into the symbolism. Bigger, badder, louder. It wasn't just selling a motorcycle. It was selling a statement: We won. We're still winning. Get on or get out of the way.

I was astonished to see the marquee on the company website this spring for a 35th model year.

And that, in many ways, is the same posture America often takes on the world stage.

The need to be the story.

The center of every room, the author of every plot twist, the protagonist, even when it’s someone else’s tragedy.

Even its cultural exports—Hollywood, hip-hop, hamburgers—carry that same DNA. Loud. Huge. Ubiquitous.

But here’s the problem: that kind of volume leaves little room for others to speak, let alone breathe.

It’s time for the world to push back—not with cannons, but with calm.

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My dad joined the RCN in 1947. His idea was to save up enough money to buy the Harley-Davidson in the showroom window near the recruiting centre in Hamilton, Ontario, where he joined up after running away from home to avoid the coal mine.

He went to Korea, and then served with the first United Nations peacekeeping missions in Cyprus, Suez, and even Wounded Knee. And he lost his taste for the Harley-Davidson. In my life, he only ever referred to Americans a Yanks... it was a truly derisive and dismissive comment from him.

He believed they were too big, too dumb, too jingoistic, too loud, too quick to fight, too inconsistent, too boastful, too acquisitive, and just too awful compared to any other people or country in the world. I know this because he spent his retirement yelling it at the TV.

That was the post-war period, and from garish design to music and movies, even their bombastic counterculture, you could see his point. But I feel like through the 80s, 90s and 2000s, that all tempered quite a bit, so we tend to forget. But now...

Trump seems less an outlier but more a return to form.

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Oh My Goodness, the difference between Carney - a leader of substance, achievement, humility, patriotism, and strength - and Trump - a leader of, well, you know - could not be more stark. His clothes fit him, and he looks comfortable in them. That’s a low bar, but surely it means something.

How is it that the Democratic Party could not find its own cast of such characters and offer a clear centrist, low drama alternative to their current carnival?

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In the aftermath of World War II, my old man (a ship’s term he used) enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy, a time when the war had ended but the world hadn’t calmed down. Korea, Suez, Cyprus, even Wounded Knee—he saw firsthand the difference between peacekeeping and war-making. And if you’d asked him, he’d tell you the Americans were always a little too eager to be the latter. In Korea, his ship would lob shells at coordinates given to them by the Americans. His job, in part, was to go ashore afterward and see what had been done. It wasn’t good. And, often, it wasn’t right.

To him, “Yanks” were:

• Too big – “How long does a car have to be?”

• Too dumb – “Particularly with geography”

• Too jingoistic – “The flags and fireworks are symbols, not the thing symbolized”

• Too quick to fight – “Cowboys in jets, with less poetry.”

• Too inconsistent – “One minute they’re saving the world, next minute they’re installing dictators with equal enthusiasm.”

• Too boastful – “They sell their own myths like hotdogs, and boy, can they eat.”

• Too acquisitive – “We just don’t need this much stuff.”

But by the 1980s and ‘90s, something happened. Americans got... better. Reagan had charm, the Cold War gave everyone a unifying villain, and Clinton could play sax. Bush and Obama were at least friendly. Suddenly, “Yank” didn’t hit quite as hard. I haven’t heard Yank used the way my father said it in many years. America had exported its cool, and we were buying wholesale.

Then came the 2000s. The Twin Towers fell, the flags flew, and “with us or against us” made a comeback. The wars returned. So did the cowboy diplomacy. But it was still coated in the language of freedom and global partnership.

And then came Trump.

Suddenly, the old "Yank" was back, in technicolor:

• Loud? Deafening.

• Dumb? Boasted about nuking hurricanes.

• Jingoistic? “Make America Great Again” sounded like it had been stitched by Betsy Ross herself while watching Fox News.

• Inconsistent? Allies one day, enemies the next, depending on Twitter.

• Boastful? Claimed he was the best at everything, even diseases.

• Acquisitive? Tried to buy Greenland. Seriously.

To those of us who had started to think America had grown up a bit—had learned subtlety, had tempered its fire with a little grace—Trump was not an aberration. He is a jet-propelled return to form. A spiritual reboot of Manifest Destiny with worse spelling.

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But here’s the thing.

He didn’t hate Americans. He expected more from them.

He fought alongside them. He drank with them. He danced to their music, and he mourned with their mothers. But he believed, with the blunt conviction of a man who’d seen the cost of careless power, that the loudest voice in the room should also be the wisest. And when it wasn’t, the rest of us had a duty—not to shout back, but to stand firm.

Canada’s role in the world has never been about volume. It’s been about steadiness. About showing up when it matters, speaking when it counts, and remembering that peace is not the absence of war but the presence of order, virtue, and restraint.

Trump may be a caricature of old America—but caricatures have a way of clarifying the features we want to correct. And maybe that’s the gift: a chance to see the old "Yank" clearly again, not to mock, but to remind ourselves why we chose another way.

So here's the hope.

That we don’t forget the lessons our fathers tried to pass down—not just about who the Yanks are, but about who we are when the noise starts rising again. That we build our country not in reaction, but in purpose. That we invest in leaders who wear their clothes—and their responsibilities—with quiet confidence. And that we remain, in the face of bombast and bluster, calmly Canadian.

Because when the cannons stop firing and the flags stop waving, someone still has to help clean up. And that, always, will be us.

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America and Harley-Davidson: both born of rebellion, both symbols of freedom, both now idling at a crossroads. Their engines once roared with unmatched confidence, but today, the sputters are hard to ignore.

Like the country it was born in, Harley built its legacy on brawn, noise, and myth. It sold freedom wrapped in chrome and leather—a ticket to the open road, throttle wide, hair blown back, nothing but frontier ahead. It didn’t matter that in reality the aging biker in full face helmet, intercom, stereo, leathers, pads, boots, fairing, and as often as not these days a tricycle design concerned with speeding tickets was about as far from that Wild One feeling (Brando actually rode a British 1950 Triumph Thunderbird 6T, his personal motorcycle, in the movie) as it’s possible to get and looking that way too. It didn’t matter that the bikes were heavy, outdated, mechanically finicky, or absurdly expensive. That was the point. It was attitude over efficiency. Muscle over finesse. It was the sound of a V-twin engine telling the world to get out of the damn way.

For decades, it worked. Harley sold identity. And so did America.

But the world changed. And so did America.

Younger generations weren’t buying.

The Sound

Harley-Davidson motorcycles are unapologetically loud, deliberately heavy, and unmistakably American. They're designed to turn heads, to assert presence, to embody a rugged individualism. Similarly, America has long projected power and confidence, often prioritizing might over nuance. Both were built to lead, not to follow.

The Feel

In their heydays, Harley and America were unrivaled. Harley dominated the motorcycle market; America led the free world. But times changed. Harley's sales have declined, its market share eroded by more agile competitors. America, too, faces challenges to its global leadership, with emerging powers questioning its dominance.

The Style

Harley's brand is steeped in nostalgia, appealing to a sense of tradition. Yet, this reliance on the past has defined possible innovation, making it less appealing to younger people. America's political landscape mirrors this, often clinging to past glories while struggling to address contemporary issues.

The Future

Both Harley-Davidson and America stand at pivotal junctures. Harley is exploring new markets and models, attempting to modernize without alienating its base. America faces a similar task: to evolve and lead in a changing world without losing its core customers. In his wonderful book THE INNOVATOR’S DILEMA, Clayton Christensen makes that argument clear — that’s not possible.

America is trying to redefine itself. But it keeps getting pulled back—by nostalgia, by fear, by the gravitational force of its own myth. The longing to be “great again” is the same as the longing to hear that old Harley growl echoing through small towns at dusk.

It’s powerful. It’s primal. But it might be over.