December 7, 2004 Making Peace The Canuck Way With a Wink and A Brew By Jordan Heath-Rawlings Well, at least one Canadian-American beef will be settled by the end of this week. When a New York advertising executive sits down with a Canadian consular officer to share a glass of draught, it will mark the end of surely the shortest, most good-natured border feud in the history of the two nations. It began in October, with a tiny ad in a newspaper in the Catskills town of Kerhonkson, N.Y., offering business space for rent, available to everybody. Well, almost everybody. "Jews, Blacks, Italians (and many others), Welcome," it said. "No Artists or Canadians." Placed by Harris Silver, it was intended as a tongue-in-cheek shot at nearby towns who had turned to the artistic community to revitalize their economies. "'No artists' just seemed to hang there. But when you added the 'no Canadians' to it, it made it clear it was a joke. Obviously it's absurd.... Of course everybody likes you guys." But the ad's content sparked a furor in the town of 1,700. Silver received more than 600 emails and dozens of calls, as the New York Times picked up the story. Most were from residents who took exception to his sarcastic description of the place as "a real town - not like some of the other quaint towns around these parts," turned over to galleries and overpriced shops. But one was from a Canadian. "My colleagues and I at the Canadian Consulate have been called a lot of things," began the note from Shelley Ambrose, an officer with the New York consulate. "But never have we been so offended and saddened as to see ourselves lumped together in the same category as artists." "I thought it was hilarious," Ambrose said yesterday. "The 'No Canadians' was so clearly just for fun that I thought it was really amusing." Assuming Silver had been misled by media portrayals of Canada as the home of "the decriminalization of marijuana, legalization of gay marriages, earlier Thanksgiving, longer summer holidays and, perhaps worst of all, Celine Dion," Ambrose invited Silver to share a glass of Canadian homebrew and clear up the misconceptions. "We want to reach out a hand ... containing a cold Canadian beer, or three," she wrote, before informing him that Canadians "walk amongst you, and you can't even tell we are here." Silver, 39, who was actually born in Montreal, said people were "just blown away" by that reaction. "It makes everyone up here just love Canada." He and Ambrose plan to meet at the consulate Thursday evening, with Consul General Pamela Wallin invited. "It's just a hilarious little thing," Ambrose said. "It's an outsider's sense of humour, which I think Canadians are very good at." Copyright (c) 2004 The Toronto Star