Some 25 years ago, a 12-year-old me was being bullied in high school.

I was chubby. I was nerdy. And I was “different” — because back then, being a gay teenager wasn’t yet considered “cool.”

Those ingredients made me a perfect target for the school’s older, more confident bullies.

Fortunately, that didn’t last too long, as I soon learned that the more you react to their constant attacks, the more you feed their appetite for more reaction.

No reaction? No more reason to poke the bear.

So I started ignoring their insults and, outsmarting them, they quickly grew tired of bullying me for nothing.

But this isn’t a story about me. It’s about Canada once again being the target of a bully — and, to add insult to injury, none other than its closest neighbour and ally.

The lessons I learned in high school a quarter-century ago might as well apply to our current situation as a country. Because in reality, retaliating against U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tariff salvo........

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