The Border

On March 26, 2026, the neighbors on Zero Avenue in South Surrey, British Columbia erected a sign. The sign features a carved wooden cat figure. It says, in essence: watch for Louis Vuitton.

Louis Vuitton is a cat. He crosses the Canada-US border every day. He has no papers. Zero Avenue is exactly what it sounds like — a street where Canada ends and the United States begins. Louis crosses it. He crosses back. The neighbors watched him do this long enough that they commissioned a craftsman named Bob Christy (who is known for his Stumpies, which are characters he makes from scrap wood) to build a sign specifically about the cat.

The sign now stands on a street that already has speed bumps, which are there to enforce the 30 km/h limit. (The cat also ignores these.)

I want to be clear about what is happening at this border. Canada and the United States are currently engaged in a trade dispute involving tariffs, retaliatory tariffs, countermeasures, counter-countermeasures, and a number of strongly-worded statements about economic sovereignty and national dignity. This dispute has involved the governments of both nations, multiple cabinet-level officials, press conferences, and an indeterminate number of hours of congressional testimony. It has not been resolved.

Louis Vuitton's position on the tariffs is not known. His crossing rate is unaffected.

The cat is named Louis Vuitton. (I did not name him. A family in South Surrey named him. I understand the reasoning. He moves through international checkpoints with the confident indifference of someone who has never been asked to fill out a form.) The luxury brand Louis Vuitton — the company, not the cat — has a supply chain that crosses many international borders and is therefore directly subject to the trade dispute described above. I am not saying the cat and the brand are connected. I am saying they have the same name, and one of them is winning.

Bob Christy did not receive a government contract for the sign. He did not file a cross-border impact assessment. He did not submit environmental review documentation. He used scrap wood. The sign is handmade. It is, by all accounts, a good sign.

The solution to the trade war is unclear. The solution to the sign is also unclear — it warns drivers about the cat, but the cat has not read it, and will continue crossing regardless of whether you slow down. The speed bumps are also not working. But they are still there.

This is the plan.