US-Canada relations, concluded

The end of the story of my long-ago cross-border romance

Hello, dear Drawing Book readers. There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and there is so much we have to do to make things better! Sometimes stories and pictures can provide some relief from all that stress. I know that posting these comics from my old sketchbook journal series, “The Drawing Book,” provides some relief to me. It’s fun to look back on these old adventures… even when, like this one, they aren’t the happiest memories.

I’m kind of cheating by posting this story. I already shared part of it in an earlier Drawing Book newsletter, about one year ago. It was filed under “Bob Dylan Comics,” because, well, Bob Dylan makes an appearance. But the story starts with myself and my American boyfriend heading out on a trip to Italy in the spring of 2000. This is the third part of a story about this short-lived romance: the other parts are here and here.

I didn’t write a lot of comics on this trip. There was too much else going on! I was in a blur of Italian romance. But I did draw some pictures. We started our trip in the Cinque Terre, and travelled south…

We arrived in Florence, timing our arrival with the arrival of Bob Dylan, who was playing a concert there! I had met this boy at a Bob Dylan concert only a few months before! All my favourite things were gathered in one place.

The show was great. But, as I wrote in my earlier version of this story: “This trip was the longest time my long-distance boyfriend and I had spent in the same place, and we were starting to feel the strain of that too-much-togetherness.” We needed some space. And I needed to get back to Canada, to work! We parted ways. The end of the trip was not as blissful as the start.

“All things shall pass” was a dig at my boyfriend, who was a George Harrison fan (“Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning…”). And if you don’t know who Suze Rotolo was, she was Bob Dylan’s girlfriend… the one in the photo on the cover of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” She went away on a trip to Italy, which seemingly devastated the young Bob. He wrote a song about this, called Down the Highway. This was the same situation in reverse. My boyfriend stayed in Italy, and things went downhill from there. You can read more about my post-relationship adventures in some future Drawing Books.

For now, I hope this little tale provided some respite from the perils of 2025. My breakup with my American boyfriend was sad, but I turned out all right. Let’s hope the same for the current state of US-Canada relations.