Bush concluded his two-day trip to the north with an address in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in which he sought to mend fences with expressions of affection and humor, while unambiguously re-embracing a course that most Canadians have condemned.
''Sometimes even the closest of friends disagree, and two years ago we disagreed about the best course of action in Iraq,'' Bush recalled, alluding to Canadians' overwhelming opposition to the American-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
''Yet as your prime minister made clear in Washington earlier this year, there is no disagreement at all with what has to be done in going forward,'' Bush went on, with Prime Minister Paul Martin listening respectfully. ''We must help the Iraqi people secure their country and build a free and democratic society.''
In robustly defending his own foreign policy before a nation of skeptics, Bush invoked the memory of Mackenzie King, Canada's prime minister during World War II.
''Of course, we should protect our coasts and strengthen our ports and cities against attack,'' Bush said, recalling King's words. ''The prime minister went on to say, 'We must also go out and meet the enemy before he reaches our shores. We must defeat him before he attacks us, before our cities are laid to waste.'''
American and Canadian officials had described Bush's two-day trip to Canada (the first presidential visit to the country in a decade) as an effort to burnish the United States' image in the face of lingering anger over the war in Iraq, and as a warm-up to his visit early next year to European capitals, where opposition to the Iraq campaign also runs deep.
The Toronto Globe and Mail, in a report on its Web site Wednesday, said that while Bush's aides had previewed the speech as an effort to begin rebuilding ties with countries that opposed the Iraq invasion, ''his message was defiant and largely familiar.''
In other signs of Canadian discontent with Bush, the Halifax Peace Coalition conducted a mock trial of Bush on Tuesday after a protest march downtown. Thousands marched on the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa as the president's motorcade passed by.
