I donât even know where to start here. Â Itâs Saturday night. Iâll start there.
Itâs Saturday night and this week Donald Trump was elected President of the United States of America. I had to re-read that sentence a few times. And, I just stared into space for a few minutes pondering that fact. Iâm still not sure what to make of it.
On Thursday the world got news that Leonard Cohen had passed on the Monday prior. I cried as I wrote that sentence.
Two seemingly unrelated realities. But to me, as for many others Iâm sure, the timing of these two events is so eerily profound.
 ** Later this evening Saturday Night Live would open to a powerful rendition of Hallelujah by Kate McKinnon in character of Hillary Clinton **
When I first heard the news of Mr. Cohenâs passing, two days after the tensely anticipated U.S election, my initial thought was this:
The death of a  ______________Â
The birth of a  ______________
I had my own thoughts, but I will let you fill those blanks in.
Because what Iâve learned in the last few days, more than Iâd imagined, perhaps naively so, is that we all interpret the reality of the rise of Donald Trump for ourselves.
For the most part, we collectively discredit Trump as outlandish, arrogant, immature, and his comments as racist, misogynistic, xenophobic and hateful.
To my dismay, and again, to my naivety, too many seem to have sided with Trump, regarding him as a âbreath of fresh airâ in this âoverly sensitiveâ and âpolitically correctâ world. And then there are those who claim to disapprove of his prejudiced speech, attempting to draw a line in the sand between themselves and the man who said them, as if their support of him does not, by action, attempt to discredit the effects of this divisive discourse â effects that have already resulted in a spike in racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic incidents throughout the country.
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
 In 2008 I saw Leonard Cohen live in Toronto. My mother had asked me to go with her. She lived in Montreal in the 1960s, was about a decade younger than Cohen and for a young, bohemian woman in Montreal at the time, I donât doubt the impact his poetry had on her. In fact, I remember her excitement that night, the look in her eyes. The impact his word â and voice â had on her, were not lost on me.
As a Montrealer myself, I was well aware of the pride my birthplace felt for Mr. Cohen. As an adult that appreciation grew into an understanding that helped me through some difficult times. Â Now, I felt the world was going through a difficult time, and yet we had lost a light in the darkness.
We lost so many great artists this year. The end of an era, I would think to myself, after hearing the news of each.
If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
Leonard Cohen may have been from Montreal but he lived in L.A. My family and I moved to Los Angeles in the 1980s, only to return a few yearâs later. The reason? Our parents wanted to raise us Canadian.
Now, I donât write that with any sort of disrespect to my American friends - none at all - in fact, for many years I lamented the fact that we left California⊠on purpose!
But now, as a 32 year old woman living in Toronto, the city I love and call home, I am struck with the magnitude of my parentsâ decision to have us raised as Canadians â in Canada.
We are not America. So American politics shouldnât affect us, right?
The reality is that American Culture, Politics and Finance have such a great and dynamic impact on the world at large. As Canadians, we are ultimately bound to American culture â whether or not we, or they, admit to it or not.
So this week, more than any other, we feel that proximity to our southern neighbours and, for better or worse, the magnitude of their election.
Where will things go from here?
They may get worse before they get better. But, ironically, the one thing getting me through this week is the profoundness of chosen words from our Poet Laureate of Loneliness himself, Leonard Cohen; a Montreal who found solace in American Culture. As so many of us do.
 I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
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