Canada has a well-worn script for its most talented people. They head to Los Angeles or New York or the Bay Area, succeed brilliantly, and blend so seamlessly into American life that the world forgets where they came from.
There are so many examples I could list. We invented the smartphone and watched others own the category. We trained the pioneers of modern AI and watched the industry scale elsewhere. Exporting talent is practically a national industry.
Which is why the two Canadians I think about most are the ones who ran the script in reverse. They did not export themselves. They exported Canada.
