Looking for My Country Finding Myself in America [Paperback]

Respected journalist Robert MacNeil did not receive a personal response from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he wrote to him in 1942 as an eleven-year-old boy living in Nova Scotia. He did, however, receive a personal letter and a large gift from the American consul. This gesture of generosity is the departure point for MacNeil's exploration of nationality, loyalty, and one of the reasons he eventually became an American citizen in 1997. Born in Canada and witness to many pivotal moments in history as a journalist in England and America, MacNeil's memoir integrates historical events from the past seventy years with his own personal story to provide an intimate glance at one man who became inseparably connected with America and her people. With a reporter's sharp analysis and an autobiographer's introspection, Looking for My Country delivers a story that is both touching and thought-provoking.

PRAISE FOR LOOKING FOR MY COUNTRY
“An unassuming, nicely qualified valentine to [MacNeil’s] adopted
country, a book that feels Canadian in tone and like a NewYorker’s in
spirit.Which makes perhaps the best argument . . . that there are, after
all, many ways to be American.”—NEWSDAY

THE LETTER TO FDR

In the winter of 1942, a couple of months after Pearl Harbor, I wrote to President Roosevelt.

I was eleven, living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was the third year of war for Canada, and our strategic port was a vital assembly point for convoys crossing the Atlantic to keep Britain's war effort alive. My father, a lieutenant-commander in the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve, commanded one of the corvettes protecting those merchant ships from Hitler's submarine wolf packs.

Even a boy my age could feel the high adrenaline of wartime Halifax. Men in the uniforms of many countries filled our streets; there were blackouts and air-raid drills, collections for scrap paper and metal, and tl-