KEY POINTS:
The immigration officer checking my passport at Toronto airport dialled up my employment history in Canada on his computer and asked what my business had been.
When I told him I had helped launch Conrad Black's National Post, he responded: "He is sooo going down. I hate the
Post and I hate Conrad. He deserves everything he gets."
So much for the retiring Canadian national character we all hear about.
Despite this, I found the Toronto chattering classes to be far more in support of Black than the schadenfreude brigade in London.
The institutional media - Canada's two national newspapers and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - have given Black's racketeering trial in Chicago sober and generally balanced treatment.
Canada finds itself conflicted. At the height of his powers, Black controlled more than 50 per cent of newspaper circulation in that country and was very unpopular.
His papers were pro-American, pro tax cuts and free markets and tore into the Canadian liberal consensus.
His newspaper holdings - especially the National Post - were in a constant state of warfare with vast sections of the political and social firmament.
And it was in this context that the then Prime Minister of Canada raised an objection, based on some obscure political resolution with no statutory power, to Black's nomination for a peerage in Britain's House of Lords.
Black's decision to give up citizenship was not taken solely to clear a path to this end. It was the last gesture in a titanic struggle with the Canadian establishment - a struggle which I suppose he lost.
When he relinquished his citizenship and sold his newspapers, commentators in the media and the Federal Liberal establishment were delighted. But things have changed subtly. Having vanquished Black, and with his old newspapers declining in quality and political edge, Canadians appear ready for a rapprochement of sorts.
Many still see him as a right-wing plutocrat, but, by God, he is their right-wing plutocrat.
Canada is not known for internationally recognised personalities. The ones we do know about, such as Mike Myers and Jim Carrey, are the ones who travelled south and became Americans.
Since losing control of Hollinger, Black has been re-introducing himself to Canadian society. He has attended parties and fundraisers and reminded people that he is, citizenship or no citizenship, one of the country's best-known, homegrown personalities.
He reminded me recently, after both our exits from that newspaper, that "there is life after the Telegraph".
I detect a degree of solicitude for him among the media elites. At a Canadian Association of Media Directors dinner, most people I spoke to wanted, and even expected, an acquittal.
Canadians might have problems with Black, but they also despise America.
The spectacle of one of Canada's most famous (former) citizens being put on the rack by the US regulatory authorities has many uttering quiet words of sympathy and solidarity. Five years ago this would have been unthinkable.
Incidentally, those searching for an alternative and instructive take on the Black trial should consult the website of Macleans magazine (www.macleans.ca), where the pugnacious Mark Steyn is writing a daily blog.
I laughed aloud when he described how Gordon Paris's hair gel melted under cross-examination (Paris was Black's temporary replacement at the Hollinger helm).
Black's wife, Barbara Amiel, also writes a column for the magazine. Last week she paid tribute to the Windy City (Heaven and hell in Chicago) and apologised for calling the assembled media "vermin", comparing them with insects instead: "From the inside looking out, they resemble the clustered underbellies of insects trying to crawl up windowpanes only to fall back, antennae and legs sticking out at various angles."
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