I can’t remember the last time we had such a crowd and so much turbulence here at the Fish or Cut Bait Society, well-known local fishing club.

Everybody’s weeping, wailing, gnashing their teeth and rending their garments.

Profanity, obscenity and blasphemy are in play. Our mascot, Sailor the Wonder Dog, is barking his head off.

“You can’t remember the last time because this is the first time,” Tiller just told me authoritatively. “I never had to call an emergency meeting before.”

Tiller is chairman of the steering committee. In the course of many years of leadership he’s broken several gavels while restoring order.

This time he rapped his gavel so hard that its head shattered. He wants to order a handsome new one made of Canadian maple but tariffs on the wood, glue and tools that are used in making it are so high that the club can’t afford it.

Virgil Victor Vernon (Vee) Hickle, the cop, said he felt silly standing at the door in uniform holding a pistol at port arms, with a bullet-proof vest on his chest and his everyday grin tightly zipped, sternly asking all of us for our IDs.

Vee felt silly because he knows every one of us very well, although some didn’t recognize him in his mirrored sunglasses. They mistook him for the captain in charge of a Southern prison chain gang.

When Sailor the Wonder Dog walked in from the dock out back, Vee demanded to see his ID too. Sailor was confused because he thinks that’s his job, and only necessary when furtive strangers approach.

“Tiller appointed me chairman of the Defense Committee and ordered me to active duty,” Vee whispered to me. “We never had a defense committee until 10 minutes ago. Why does a fishing club need a defense committee?”

Tiller just finished telling us what the emergency is. Now he’s waiting for the hysteria to subside and I’m trying to read the notes I scribbled: “Our future fishing trips to Canada have been called off,” Tiller told us. “Our visas have been revoked.”

Counsel, who’s a lawyer, interrupted to remind him that Americans don’t need visas to visit Canada.

“We need them now because Canada’s mad at us, not us personally but us nationally,” Tiller answered him. “Their consulate sent over a packet of visa applications, which we did not request. As soon as they got confirmation of delivery, they revoked the visas. We didn’t even know the applications were in our mailbox.

“I called the consul general and left a message saying that seemed kind of spiteful. He called back and left a message saying it was spiteful, not kind of.

“We had to leave voice mail messages because we’re not allowed to speak to each other. What if someone calls us disloyal lunatics?”

My phone just buzzed. It’s a text from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.

“As a U.S. citizen, you are disqualified from renewing your Ontario fishing license,” it says. “This is what you get for threatening to take over Canada.”

Tiller said that must be why our society’s Canadian visas were revoked. I showed my copy of the message to Headwind. He said that must be why Quebec, New Brunswick, Labrador, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and Yukon have stopped inviting me to come back right after ice out, eh?

I think it’s pretty daring of him to speak Canadian so openly, don’t you?

Tyro the new guy said he never heard of those places except New Brunswick, but that’s in New Jersey.

Headwind told him they’re all provinces of Canada, which has revoked the New Jersey town’s license to use that name.

Enormé Barrigón, who’s chairman of the beer committee, reported being notified that Panama and

Denmark expect high tariffs on beers they export to the U.S. so they won’t sell us their beers any more.

“Did anyone know Panama exports beer? Greenland either?” Tyro asked. He didn’t know Greenland exists.

Nobody did. Especially not Enorme Barrigón, who said his sources confided that it’s not about beer to them, but about threats to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal.

Tyro said he didn’t know those countries, where there’s good fishing, are enemies of ours. “Me neither,” the rest of us rose and said as one. A lot of us didn’t know they were our friends either, but that’s a different emergency.

Neither country has barred us from fishing — at least not yet — but Counsel said we’d better not plan to go to either of them because if we do and they find out we might be stuck at the center of diplomatic disputes.

“Trust me, you don’t want to be in a Canadian or Greendlandian jail on espionage charges for even a day,” he said. “Especially in winter. And never mind reminding me that my law practice is limited to overtime parking violations. One of my clients is a janitor at the federal courthouse. He overhears a lot of international law.”

As for Canadians, everyone in Florida knows many of them come to Florida in winter and early spring to do fishing and to hunt for alligators.

Headwind and I happen to know a lot of them.

Ordinarily we would be glad to say how come, but it might not be a good idea now. We’re afraid of being investigated, and the only lawyer we can afford is Counsel.

The Canadians are afraid that Florida will revoke their non-resident fishing and hunting licenses, just because they are Canadians who object to attacks on their national sovereignty.

“What’s wrong with attacking them? We just want to eat a few moose and bears,” I can hear a few of you saying.

We chatted with several Canadians recently at boat ramps. Citing reasons of personal safety, none were willing to tell us their real names.

A man who invited us to call him Zed pointed to his car’s Florida license tag just as Headwind was about to ask.

“It’s a rental,” he said. “We’ve always driven down in our own cars, with Ontario license plates, but not this time. Friends who came a little earlier warned us that Yanks would notice the plates, follow us around until we stop, and try to tell us how much better Canada would be if it became a united state of America.”

Zed said that happened to his friends. They laughed it off, but the people accosting them were not amused by their amusement. They called them radical anti-American lunatics, followed them all over and took pictures of their children.

“What’s wrong with that?” I can hear another few of them saying. “We just want to anger, intimidate and alienate our closest international friends, even if we don’t get to invade them.” I’m sure you agree that all this was ample reason for the Fish or Cut Bait Society to act out so boisterously, necessitating an emergency meeting.

You’ll also agree that next we need to channel those emotions into search, discovery and implementation of solutions. These are times that try men’s souls, as Thomas Paine wrote with the American Revolution a-borning.

Tiller, eager to begin at once, appointed an unstated number of ad hoc committees, with members whose names he classified Top Secret to protect them from harassment.

As for Thomas Paine, someone who hated being disagreed with nicknamed him Tom the Pain, called him a lunatic, noted that he was born in England and tried to revoke his Pennsylvania resident fishing license to make him buy a more expensive non-resident ticket.

“I’m outta here,” Tom said. He lit out for France before he could be prosecuted for conspiracy to fish with the wrong kind of license.

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