When the Colonials Leave Canada

"You stole our land - now go away," said a Canadian First Nations protester recently to the descendants of colonial settlers. So, what if 37.6 million Canadians agree to leave?

"Be careful what you wish for, in case it comes true", goes the old saying. Let's do a thought-experiment: what would happen next, if First Nations people got their wish and non-aboriginal Canadians self-exiled?

With descendants of Colonials the more recent immigrants also depart -- including the very last one from wherever s/he came in the world whose people Canada had welcomed in. After the 37.6 million Canadians leave, one and a half million First Nations people remain.

What's life like now, for the 1.5 million? The tax base is gone: no federal or provincial governments are left, meaning no more subsidies, no support for Band Councils, no welfare, housing programs, native health services remain.

The hated "colonial" education system is gone. Illiteracy grows, quickly and alarmingly. Roads deteriorate, no engineers remaining to maintain them. Ferries stop running. Avalanches are not cleared nor bridges repaired. Auto repair businesses are gone: no brake checks, no oil changes. No oil is refined or imported.

The railways, closed down by protesters in February 2020, stay closed for good. Food, gas and heating fuel are no longer distributed. Universities are abandoned. Professionals in all fields disappear. Their buildings -- universities, hospitals and offices -- are emptied, and then looted. Police forces have left -- sent away like everyone else employed by colonial institutions. Air traffic controllers too are gone, their towers abandoned. Planes from elsewhere cannot land. They try, and collide, and everyone on board is killed.

Parliament and Legislative buildings in each capital are abandoned. Homeless people move into them. They quarrel. One invention aboriginals were glad to inherit from "settlers" was guns. They use them. The justice system that ran the courts has disappeared, de-populated of experts. Anyone can be a lawyer now -- practicing indigenous law. People don't feel that justice is being done, so the tribes replay the wars of the past. Raids happen, rivals are killed, slaves are taken once more.

With skidoos, all-terrain vehicles and ferries un-serviced, breaking down and their parts not imported, and grocery stores emptying of food, aboriginal people are now able to return to "traditional lifestyles". The Nature they considered themselves the guardians of no longer seems welcoming however, for winter temperatures kill when there's no heating fuel. Only foraged wild plants are available to eat, once food-importing colonialist grocery chains are gone. Animals are killed with extreme cruelty, once the bullets are used up: now spears and primitive traps do the job -- slowly. Off the west coast, some people decide to hunt orcas again. Calves are killed, mother orcas mourn, hunters drown.

In the decaying cities, elevators get stuck, often with people inside them, trapped until they die there. Rats take over the high-rises. Banks are closed; no money can be withdrawn from cash points. On reserves, pipes freeze and crack in the houses. Hot water heaters aren't replaced. Once the plumbing fails hygiene goes out the windows -- which aren't replaced when they break. Drug stores run out of medication; what's left is looted and sold on a black market. People begin burning books as fuel, looting them from the public libraries with relish, as hated records of "colonialist" thought and culture.

The printing presses fall silent, newspapers die, the whole publishing industry dies with no means of production and no customers for consumption. No service providers remain to maintain cellphone coverage. Gradually, tablets and laptops reach their planned obsolescence and aren't replaced. The Last Nations gather around their book-fueled fires, beating drums and telling stories about the time they got what they wished for: the time when the colonials were banished and their traditional lifestyle came back.