NORTH LAND LURES.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

Thousands of politically liberal Americans, feeling spurned by last month's election results, have been suddenly flirting with their northern neighbor.

Canada's official immigration Web site has been flooded with hits, and immigration lawyers, civic boosters and real estate agents are eager to play matchmaker for Americans seeking a rebound relationship. They are publicizing seminars are delivering Internet pitches, offering to help gay couples and liberal Americans establish residency and find new homes in the land of loose marijuana laws, same-sex marriage and universal health care.

But it's far from clear if the post-election interest in Canada among disconsolate Democratic voters will translate into an increase in actual immigration there from the United States.

Traffic on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada Web site from American Internet providers spiked to a record 115,628 hits on Nov. 3.

But U.S. traffic has since trickled to about 22,000 daily hits, close to the typical level before the election, said spokeswoman Maria Iadinardi.

"Whenever there's government changes or fear of changes or emotions, people will visit our Web sites," she said, noting that despite the initial surge in Internet interest, officials have seen no increase in actual applications from people in the United States. "Putting the pen to paper and actually coming in to our visa missions is another story."

A big life change

The cooling off of this Canadian infatuation comes as no surprise to some from the Eugene area who were already pursuing such a move before the 2004 election. They say immigrating to a new country - even a mostly English-speaking nation that shares a border and a similar culture - is too big a life change to be undertaken on a whim.

University of Oregon professor Chuck Hunt's planned move to Canada is hardly the result of sudden infatuation.

If anything, it's a choice made after decades of struggling to make peace with the land that his ancestors fought for in the Revolutionary and Civil wars and later homesteaded in Nebraska.

"I have a lover's quarrel with this country," he said, paraphrasing a Robert Frost poem, "and it just drives me nuts."

Hunt, an adjunct professor of sociology, said he and his wife Kathy plan to retire next year to Vancouver Island. The 58-year-old Eugene man said Bush's election "makes it easier" to leave the United States behind, "but we'd be going to Canada if (Democrat John) Kerry had been elected."

Hunt said his reasons for leaving are both practical and philosophical. With the prospects of paying $1,100 a month for health insurance through the UO after his professorship there ends, the universal health care of Canada is appealing. But the political bent of the United States - especially its military aggression in Iraq, Latin America and Southeast Asia - has fueled decades of discontent for Hunt.

"I don't want to pay taxes anymore to a war criminal and a torturer," he said.

`Love it or leave it'

Hunt spent 12 years in northern Alberta in the 1970s and '80s. He was a farmer, a commercial beekeeper and a community volunteer before moving to Eugene to pursue a doctoral degree and eventually teach sociology at the UO. His wife is a native Canadian and his two grown sons are dual citizens.

"I'm as American as apple pie," said Hunt, who speaks of a "duality about America" and a "dark side" that is much larger than this election.

Openly discussing his emigration plans has invited scorn. After the UO student newspaper, the Oregon Daily Emerald, published a Nov. 11 story about Hunt's plans, a response was posted on the Web edition by someone identified only as Seattle tax accountant "Mark," which read in part, "Professor Hunt, you can do your country a tremendous service by taking as many far-left America haters with you as you possibly can."

Hunt said that "love it or leave it" mentality has always riled him, although he has a theory as to why it is so prominent in the psyche of a self-proclaimed "nation of immigrants."

"This is, in its mythology, supposed to be the best place in the world to live, and when you leave, you say it isn't, and that's very disturbing to people," he said. "They get very angry with you."

Deciding factors

Former Creswell area residents Jackie Bilello and Gregory McKernan left Oregon a year ago with plans to go to the rugged hill country of central Ontario.

But the complexities of establishing permanent residency as unsponsored self-employed immigrants forced them to delay their plans.

The couple are currently living in the northern Michigan town of Belleaire, where they're helping fix up the home of McKernan's brother and finishing the laborious task of applying for Canadian residency as noncitizens.

As makers of hand-crafted woolen hats who sell their wares at craft shows and markets, Bilello and McKernan faced an enormity of import-export issues if they tried to sell across the U.S.-Canadian border.

But even for Americans seeking to simply live and work in Canada, the application can be exhaustive and often takes 24 months, Bilello said.

"I swear it's this huge list of things. You have to get your certified school records, a clean police report, a lot of things that I wasn't aware would be required if you're contemplating immigrating to Canada," she said. "It is a foreign country. It's not like just going to California."

No doubt, she said, leaving behind a country that had handed a second four-year term to Bush was a plus, but hardly a deciding factor.

"That was not my motivation, because I hated my president - even though I do," she said.

Bilello said she'd grown too frustrated with the way neighbors treated the land in the forested area she used to live in outside of Creswell. Bulldozers filling creeks with dirt. Chain saws buzzing down trees. And her search for land elsewhere in the American West - Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana - proved just as disappointing.

"I guess I just can't get past the cavalier attitude they have toward the land," she said. "It's a lark to go shoot coyotes on a Saturday night. Cattle is king. It's hard to get past a lot of that mentality."

Canada's attractions

Eugene's Eric Sprado, 60, said he has been making trips for years to central British Columbia, scouting for acreage where he and his wife and daughter could relocate.

Sprado, who considers himself "a liberal person and a thinking human being," said the recent election result in the United States is "a strong influence, but not the final straw." Likewise, Canada's relatively harmonious acceptance of decriminalized marijuana possession, gay marriage rights, government-provided health care and the general notion of the welfare state are attractive, but not enough to make him want to leave the United States for Canada.

"We are looking in Canada because I would like to get away from the basic war-like stance of the United States as a whole," said Sprado, a former rancher who now sells real estate.

The one factor that could keep him in the United States has little to do with the two countries' policy choices or political climates.

"The main thing that may keep us from settling there would be the distance from our family," Sprado said.

For each American seriously pursuing relocation to Canada, it seems there are dozens who have vented their frustration by talking up such a move, but aren't truly ready to abandon their homeland.

Real intentions

Eugene resident Larry Malmgren's e-mailed response to the inquiries of a Vancouver Island weekly newspaper reporter suggested that moving to Canada might be an option.

"I woke up at 3:30 and want this to be a nightmare that one can wake up from," he wrote the Sooke News Mirror. "Property in Canada ...... Maybe."

But Malmgren, 67, said later that he had no real intention of leaving the United States - even if he was disheartened by the election.

"I'm not ready to pack my bags," said Malmgren, who is not prepared to move far away from his grandchildren or leave behind his country when it needs him.

"I'm not depressed," he said. "I'm going to put forth a lot of energy to see if we can turn this around."

CAPTION(S):

University of Oregon adjunct professor Chuck Hunt cites the cost of health care as his primary motive for retiring to Canada with his wife, Kathy, next year. But American politics also fuel Hunt's discontent.