FIRST READING: Another 'elbows up' celebrity swears allegiance to the U.S. - National Post
Joni Mitchell at the 2026 Juno Awards in Hamilton, Ontario, Sunday March 29, 2026. Photo by Photo By Peter J Thompson/National PostArticle contentFirst Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.
In March, folk singer Joni Mitchell accepted her Juno lifetime achievement award with a speech that consisted mostly of praise for Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“We are so fortunate to have him,” she said of Carney, who stood alongside her on Hamilton’s TD Coliseum stage. The prime minister had presented her the award “on behalf of all Canadians.”
Gesturing to Carney, Mitchell, 82, added “we are so lucky” and referred to Carney as “our wonderful prime minister.”
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“This man is a blessing; you guys are so fortunate,” she said.
Just six months later, Mitchell officially announced that she had finally obtained her U.S. citizenship.
“A journey that began 62 years ago,” wrote Mitchell against an image of her waving a tiny U.S. flag in a California office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday.
Although she remains a dual citizen, like all newly minted Americans, Mitchell would have cited an oath explicitly forswearing her birth country and its king.
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen,” reads the first line of the official U.S. citizenship oath.
In doing so, Mitchell joins a coterie of Canadian-born celebrities who are known to be loudly Canadian when politically convenient, but are otherwise taxpaying, full-time residents of the United States.
During the 2025 federal election, Scarborough-born comedian Mike Myers appeared in a campaign TV ad with Carney popularizing the term “elbows up.”
“I’ll always be Canadian,” he tells Carney on a set rigged to resemble the sidelines of a hockey game.
Myers has lived full-time in the U.S. since 1988, and it was as recently as 2022 that he became emotional in describing his new status as a U.S. citizen.
“I’m an American citizen now, gratefully so,” Myers said in an interview on the daytime program Live with Kelly and Mark.
