The Current - Louise Penny cancels U.S. book tour over Trump’s threats

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Best-selling Canadian author Louise Penny has cancelled all upcoming appearances in the U.S., posting online that she doesn't feel she can visit the country amid “the ongoing threat of an unprovoked trade war against Canada by the U.S. president.” She talks to Matt Galloway about her decision. 

What does a mummified Egyptian child, the Parthenon marbles of Greece and an Irish giant all have in common? They are all stuff the British stole. Maybe. Join me, Mark Fennell, as I travel around the globe uncovering the shocking stories of how some, let's call them ill-gotten, artifacts made it to faraway institutions. Spoiler, it was probably the British. Don't miss a brand new season of Stuff The British Style. Watch it free on CBC Gem. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. It is the time of the year when people start to plan travel, perhaps for later on in the year, maybe a trip in the summer or the fall. Louise Penny was doing the same.

She is a beloved and bestselling Canadian author, a national treasure. As I mentioned earlier, you would know her best through her series of chief Inspector Gamache novels set in the fictional village of Three Pines, Quebec. Her latest, the 20th novel is The Grey Wolf, the top selling fiction book in North America when it was released. On Friday, Louise Penny posted a message on social media. Here's how it started. I can hardly believe I am saying this,

but given the ongoing threat of an unprovoked trade war against Canada by the US president, I do not feel I can enter the United States. Louise Penny joins us now. Louise, good morning. Hi, Matt. How did you come to this decision not to go to the United States? Walk us through this.

Well, it was immediate. I wish I could say there was a decision tree and I weighed the pros and the cons. It was instinctive. I just realized that when Trump brought in the 25 percent tariffs, that I just, I couldn't enter a country that had declared war on us. Is that how it felt, that the country declared war on us as Canadians? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it absolutely did. As you've just quoted, an unprovoked attack, but I'm fairly lucky.

I've enjoyed a certain amount of success. I probably won't affect me hugely, it's hard to tell, but I also live in, as you know, a small village south of Montreal in Nolton. My needs are fairly small. But I knew that a lot of Canadians, my neighbors and friends were facing ruin. The industries were facing ruin. So honestly, how dare I go into the United States and do a book tour for my own personal benefit while my countrymen and women are suffering?

The hypocrisy would have been something I couldn't live with. How do you understand the moment that we're in right now? You wrote also last week, so the tariffs have come in, support for Ukraine paused, what's next, who's next? How do you understand this moment? It's such a good question. Things are coming at us so quickly, it's hard to grasp, isn't it? You reach for one thing, the tariffs, and then that obscene event in the Oval Office happened, and the USAID, and women's reproductive rights. Trans, I'm not going to go on, it's just such a

I'm not going to go on, it's just such a parade of shame. You know, when it comes to mind, I've been thinking about Martin I. Moller, the, I believe it was Lutheran pastor in the Second World War, who wrote, first they came for the trade unionists, and I wasn't a trade unionist, so I did nothing. And then they came for the socialists, and I'm a trade unionist so I did nothing and then they came for the socialists and I'm not a socialist so I did nothing and then they came for the Jews and I'm not a Jew so I did nothing and then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me. That's what I see happening now. I don't think Matt there is a single country that has ever been invaded, a single people who haven't been targeted,

a single individual who hasn't been rounded up, who hasn't looked back and wondered what they missed. What moment, what window was there where this could have been stopped? Now, I don't know, there's no belief in me that my saying, declaring grandly that I'm not going to the States and we've cancelled the tour, is going to change anything. One voice is. But if we all do it, I can guarantee you, I can guarantee you if we are silent, nothing

is going to change. There's a cost to speaking out. I don't know whether you read the comments. The advice is to not read the comments, but when you, when you post things and you say, this is what I'm not going to do, there are people and many, many Americans who have said, this is a brave sense and that they support you.

And then there are people who say that they read you because they want to be taken out of the world that we're in right now. And they're not interested in political views and they don't want to hear those political views. Well, then they can go elsewhere. That's what you're saying, if they don't want you all of you.

I've had it. No, I've had it, I've had it, I've had it. If you're not interested in my views, and this isn't, I don't see this as political really, I see this as moral, I see it as ethical, which has no boundaries. If the Biden administration had done the same thing, I would have reacted in exactly the same way. But of course we all know the Biden administration

would not have done this. This isn't political. This is a moral issue. This is, as I said in the post, this is a moral wound. And it's up to us now to stand up and do something. You've also said that it's not about punishing Americans. That you, like so many of us, have friends and perhaps relatives, colleagues in the United States, people who we care deeply for. How do you see that? And because that can be a difficult needle to thread as well. Oh, you know, it is.

And I have huge sympathy for people, particularly those who have family there. And I'm not going to judge anyone for going across the border to see family or friends. I'm not going to impose my own actions and beliefs on anybody else. I'm really too busy judging Trump to judge anyone else. But I do feel for those people that I'm, you know, it is difficult. I have very close friends. I actually have a home in New York

that I know I'm not going to see perhaps for years. Yeah, so it's, I know that there are hundreds of millions of Americans who are even more appalled than I am. I had an email yesterday from a friend who was describing a tweet that she recently read and the tweet ran, I can't believe 77 million of you rebooked on the Titanic. That's what it feels like to them as well. I think this is not something that has a border or a boundary. You know, the attacks are worldwide.

Can I ask you about the border and the boundary? Because this next book, it was going to be launched at the Kennedy center, um, which, um, you said this would have been an event of a lifetime and the culmination of two decades of work and you canceled that launch and it's now going to happen at the national arts center in Ottawa, but there's also going to be a tour that will end at a very specific place, um, which is in many ways symbolic of that border between Canada and the United States.

This is the Haskell free library and opera in many ways symbolic of that border between Canada and the United States. This is the Haskell Free Library and Opera House that's right on the border between Quebec and Vermont. Yeah, it's an extraordinary place. It was built more than a hundred years ago by the two communities, the United States and Canada, as a symbol. They could have built it on one side or the other, but they chose to do it right on the border. And if you go there, I've been there, if you go there, the borderline, there's a line drawn straight through the opera house and free library. And yeah, so I wanted to start in the National Arts Centre as symbolic as well that we've pivoted from the major arts institution in Washington to the major one in Ottawa, then the tour and then ending it at this place that is symbolic

of this friendship, a very really important friendship between the two nations. And I would love for Americans to come to this event, and Canadians, and do what Trump is trying to destroy, and to prove that he can't, he can't. This isn't, what is happening is it cannot be undone, the friendship, the profound friendship between these two nations. So yeah, that's where we're going to end. At the end of January, Christine Noem, who is the Homeland Security Secretary, was in that library and kept hopping back and forth across that line. She was in the United

States and she would say USA, USA, number one, she would go across the line and she would say 51st state. Yeah, I mean, it's childish. But this is something, I mean, the idea of the 51st state, this book is coming out in the fall and am I getting this correct that there is some hint of what this 51st state business could have meant? You were thinking about this before this was unfolding and have captured it in this book? It's hard to believe, but yes, I wrote the book, The Black Wolf, a year ago, and in it there is part of the plot of what happens when a certain group decides

that Canada should become the 51st state because of our resources, because of the wealth that we have in minerals and in oil and water. What happens when the nation to the south is running out of all those things, particularly water and sees what we have? Yeah, so I wrote that about Canada becoming possibly the 51st state for the Black Wolf. But you know that, I have to say, my fear when I wrote that was, have I gone too far? People are going to believe this. And now, obviously, I don't think I've gone far enough. I'm going to let you go, but I just wonder, in this moment, one of the things that's happened is,

and we were talking about this last week on the program, you've seen it, there's a rally in Ottawa on Sunday with a thousand people or more gathered around talking about Canada and what this moment means for Canada and people kind of feeling stirred by something. What is this stirred up for you as a Canadian and how do we take this moment and make that, that sense of pride, that sense of feeling good

and positive about who we are as Canadians, and push that forward? You know, I've been thinking about that too, because I've never been prouder of being a Canadian, and I've always been very proud of being a Canadian, which is why I set the books firmly in Canada when I was advised not to. But this is remarkable what's happening, the unity, the speaking essentially with one voice,

the pride that we all feel, the bi-Canadian, the support of artists, the sense that maybe artists don't have to go to the States to prove themselves. Maybe being a success here in Canada is good enough. I'm also, I'm reminded too of, oh, who was it? It was Yamamoto. And now here's a quote, right? Going all the way back to the Second World War,

which of course a lot of people are seeing parallels. In this particular case, it's a Japanese Admiral who said that after the attack on Pearl Harbor, that he's afraid that the attack, that what he's essentially done is just awoken a sleeping giant and filled it with terrible resolve. And I think that's what's happened. They don't realize what they've done. They have filled us with a terrible resolve.

Which could be used for good. Oh, yes. Oh, no, exactly. us with a terrible result. Which could be used for good. Oh yes. Yeah. Oh no, exactly. We are resolved. Louise Penny, it's great to speak with you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matt.

Louise Penny, acclaimed and bestselling Canadian author. Her latest book is The Grey Wolf. She's not the only person in the cultural world who is thinking about our relationship with those south of the border. Blue rodeo's Jim Cuddy has been thinking about that as well and we'll hear from him coming up a little bit later on in the program.