Canada will be watching the United States closely for teachable moments in the coming weeks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday, April 23, 2020, as regional leaders in both countries began taking tentative steps along the road to recovery in an unfamiliar new post-pandemic era.

The partisan cracks in America's collective effort to combat COVID-19 are growing wider by the day — growing, some say, not due to grassroots sentiment but by political forces both within and outside the United States.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to let Donald Trump down gently on Thursday, April 16, 2020, warning that Canada is still a long way from being ready to agree to relax mutual travel restrictions along its border with the United States.

Now is not the time to point fingers or assign blame for COVID-19, Canada's federal government said on Wednesday, April 15, 2020, after Donald Trump, his re-election hopes hijacked by a deadly global pandemic, turned his populist cannons on the World Health Organization.

President Donald Trump signalled on Wednesday, April 15, 2020, that he's prepared to support easing travel restrictions along the Canada-U.S. border sooner rather than later — although the feeling may not be mutual, given the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States.

In the time of the novel coronavirus, Canada and the United States seem to be playing to type: the friendly apologizers of the Great White North coming together against a common enemy, America's combative revolutionaries threatening to tear each other apart.

In war, as the saying goes, truth is the first casualty. In a global pandemic, it seems trust doesn't fare too well either.

Canada's relationship with the United States has always required "constant gardening," but never more so than in the throes of a global pandemic, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Wednesday, April 8, 2020, as she cheered the partial arrival of a shipment of face masks.

Americans and Canadians alike are used to seeing gauzy, pastel-coloured pitches for medicines, therapies and treatments on cable television. They're less accustomed to hearing them delivered live from the White House briefing room.

One of America's largest manufacturers of medical face masks rode to Canada's rescue on Monday, April 6, 2020, forging an agreement with the White House that allows it to provide millions of its precious N95 respirators to the U.S. market without sacrificing supply bound for north of the border.