OH Canada

Fieldnotes on Place

One year ago, I wrote a dozen posts covering the Canadian election. It was an experiment: to offer a lens for Americans on my place of origin – a place I love dearly, and to offer context inside the frenzy of social media where politicians and “money” now game the narrative, and to try out Substack without a paywall. I had spent close to two years learning how to write diplomatic notes for the UK (or HMG for the erudite), and I wanted to continue to hone that skill, which this paragraph fails to accomplish. (No adjectives! Present tense! Brevity!) Yet, the intelligence in here is rather personal, so it is likely more valuable.

More of you read and followed than I expected, and yet, I promised myself I would only cover the election, as interviews for new career roles became the priority. If you read until the end, I weave it into the breaking news that Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s longtime MP, former Minister of Transport, Finance, External Affairs, and more, has resigned under pressure. She is now the Economic Advisor to President Zelensky, which stirred controversy this week up north.

First to the personal…Three significant roles crossed my path in the first half of 2025, and I want to share them with you because, while I was not successful, each interview oddly turned to PLACE and has led me to think deeply about it, which I may write about if you are interested. The universe has been whispering: What is PLACE? Where is mine? Ping me if you want me to keep writing. I am still on the fence.

When each of these roles (all were deeply interesting to me) went to others, I leaned into my entrepreneurial side and joined a UK colleague to think about how we could create a Canadian Newsstand for Canadians and the world alike, which I will explain in a future post. Here is how the roles last unfurled:

The most exciting role was to be Opinion Editor of the Washington Post. It was the culmination of all of my experience and interests, and I was very sorry not to get it. It was a dream. AND, it meant moving to D.C. — every day. I choked at the end of the final 2-plus-hour interview, stumbled truly, after asking if I could fly in week on and week off or leave on Thursdays. Only the interviewers can confirm if I was almost there. There… Place.

Equally interesting was representing the Province of Newfoundland for Global Affairs Canada and the Newfoundland government, alongside business leaders and politicians, to explore business opportunities in critical minerals, hydro, oil and gas, tourism, and other sectors. Again place emerged. I prepared by reading about all the corners of that beautiful rock. I had romanticized the opportunity, but sensibly measured its heft given the geopolitics of today. It faces Greenland. I was intrigued. However, the role would be in the Consulate, every day, in a mall. That irony is not lost on me, to family friends.

Dear Canada, all business happens in Kendall Square or downtown Boston, not in Copley Mall. This is free advice. Take a few hundred thousand dollars of the money you give away and get a new location. The UK Consulate wisely sits in the heart of the most innovative square mile in the world: Kendall. The Germans sit next to Harvard Business School. Canada is in a mall. Very 80s.

I waited months to hear back. At an event for Canadian and US business leaders, I asked if there was news. Yes, they had filled the role. OK! So I asked around at the event, quietly by the coffee or near the entrance. One Canadian staffer told me that Global Affairs was worried about me having the role because I was now American. An American staffer at the Consulate told me it was because someone from Newfoundland was already in the wings. I felt like a Nomad. I texted my husband. “No country wants me.” He said that was ridiculous: Carney has three passports.

I walked away from the event with another Canadian living part-time in the US, a fellow at Harvard. I checked my phone. An email arrived from the Washington Post. I had not been given the role. It would go to a local (and excellent candidate, btw.) In a thirty-minute window, two roles were no longer mine to consider. Four months earlier, I left an interesting job on my own because there was nowhere to grow at the UK Consulate since I wasn’t a British diplomat. My home country of origin now questions my ability as an American and Canadian to serve. Place suddenly mattered, acutely. These are not complaints. They are observations. Which leads me to my neighbor, Harvard.

The third opportunity was with Harvard Magazine. The Editor role had opened up for the first time in 30 years. I knew it would be a long shot as a non-alumnus, but I had built TheEditorial.com on a shoestring from 2012-2018, and it was the precursor to what Harvard needed to be doing digitally at the time. They only interviewed me once for that role (although being hired at Harvard is now a smaller yield than being admitted to the College), and the next step, should I pass, is to be presented to the Board. The interviewer was kind and courteous, yet she began to apologize during the interview. Apologize that even with my talent and prototype in TheEditorial, and as the prior Future of Media Fellow at Harvard, and Director of Special Projects at the Kennedy School, and Head of Press and Politics at the UK Foreign Office, she could not muster an argument for the board, given I had never studied at Harvard, worked at the NYT, or the Washington Post. “How would I present you over the candidates who have that?” she asked quietly as though it was a struggle. “I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t have those PLACES in my repertoire. But what I do have is very deep experience covering the greatest and most innovative minds at Harvard and MIT. You could ask all the people I’ve interviewed what they think?” It’s OK, it wasn’t meant to be, but I kept missing PLACE. Look, we all know how hard it is to be hired these days. This is not a grievance. It is just an interesting reality that the reason kept showing up as PLACE. I was in the wrong place, or had the wrong place, or was missing a place.

Which brings me to Dear Canada politics. I am sharing these stories to explain my utter shock and frustration this week when Chrystia Freeland, an elected Member of Parliament in Canada, who has been shaming the rest of us for any pushback for a decade, showed up in my news feed being officially announced by the President of another country, Ukraine, as Zelensky’s new Economic Advisor. Wait, What? This news broke on X with fanfare by President Zelensky, not Prime Minister Carney. Are you kidding?

If you read my coverage last year, or go back and stick them into ChatGPT, you will see that I knew Carney would win because he had the global machine behind him, even before Trump started to threaten Canada. He had Bremmer and Butts and their funders at Eurasia Group, on Wall Street, and at Davos. These are not conspiracies; they are facts. It’s OK, every politician has big money behind them today, and as I discovered during my tenure as the Future of Media Fellow at Harvard, the money is VERY HARD to track, on all sides. Here again are my media indexes I created at Harvard to showcase who funds the media in Canada and the US.

The hubris continues. I really want to cheer for Carney. He is a terrifically qualified leader. He just needs new people around him. He needs to sweep and tell some of his backers to get lost. Somehow, he and Freeland saw no conflict with her accepting to work for a foreign country as a paid, and elected MP by taxpayers. The hypocrisy was astounding. The conflict of interest, of the highest level, and the lack of awareness of how others are operating in this world, let alone the precedent it sets for new MPs with allegiance to other nations, is galling.

If you follow me on X @heidilegg, be prepared for moments of heavy posting when I am engaged, especially when I am Gobsmacked. Monday, along with many other MPs, voters, and journalists (Read Robyn Urback at Globe and Mail), and 24 hours later, the full heft of the Editorial Board at the Globe and Mail explained why it mattered. In a functioning grown-up country, the whole situation should be investigated on the heels of another $2.5 billion going to Ukraine on December 27th on a tarmac in Halifax as Zelensky refueled, figuratively, on his way to meet President Trump. We should all support Ukraine. Putin is a terrible dictator. We should also remember that these are taxpayer dollars and must be given without some insider play. A focus on the US and building those relations with Americans who do not support President Trump’s annexation penchant should be a priority.

Freeland told Carney on Christmas Eve that she was taking this new role. He should have told us on December 26th. Now that she has resigned, the story will likely fade away, but in the context of my experience in 2025 with place, the Carney, Freeland, Trudeau, Bremmer, and Butts cohort feels more out of touch than ever, and plutocrats onto their own, operating above the rest of us with relationships forged abroad. The focus should be on Canada, for Canada. The US is integral to that reality, and those fanning Trump’s flames up north are not in it for Canada. In my opinion, they are in for someone else, some PLACE else.

Which leads me to this blog… Should I keep writing? What interests you below?

My interest is always going to be on Canada, the UK, and the US, three places I understand and love. How I fit into them is a question I am exploring. I am not sure New England is that foreign these days, Global Affairs Canada, or that living next to you in Cambridge for 20 years with my deep lens, Harvard, is unremarkable. In fact, it may be just what you need. Half my life in Canada and half of my life in New England, with time in London, and a blip in Silicon Valley, is a vantage point that may be useful from which to bridge these both innovative and difficult times.

Next time, I will tell you about the Great Canadian Newsstand.