This article is a long imageless article recounting the history of Canada though my eyes. I'm stepping down from the role of Presidency after 6 grueling months of leadership. For me this is the end, but for Canada it's only the beginning of a great new era.
The Dark Ages
For many months at the start of e-sim, Canada was in a dark age. I wasn't present for this time, but it was ruled by foreigners, and the presence of loyal Canadians was small. We were one of those lowly countries that got walked all over and very few people even glanced twice. But then
libertines came along. While some may say he was a shabby leader because of his poor diplomacy and worldly presence, in my eyes he was the founding father of Canada. He created the one and only significant baby boom Canada has ever witnessed. Between the days 150 and 200 over 50 people joined the game. While they weren't all Canadians in RL they were all avid gamers from another community dedicated to take Canada to the next level.
The Libertines Era
I joined on Day 203 on the tail end of this baby boom, and with this core of players, we slowly began to gain a few worthy allies. With
libertines ,
ouzobat and
colmc the main 3 at the helm of Canada the groundwork was laid down. Canada was accepted into TM (The Musketeers), an NAP/rental deal was signed with USA, and we invaded and conquered South Korea, our first offensive move in our country's history.
Unfortunately, around Day 300 (end of June) libertines had to dedicate more time to RL due to his upcoming wedding, and I have a hunch he was getting a little burnt out after 4 months of hard work. At that time I had 1 failed congress election, 2 congress terms with no cabinet experience, and outside of sCanada I had no friends. I was nothing but an enthusiastic n00b. This is why when the opportunity presented itself at the July 5th elections, I yelled out YOLO, wrote a massive block of text on why I should be CP and got elected.
The Owen Era
July & August
I remember when I went to my first HQ meeting for TM, and it was the elections for the new HQ, I was super excited, nervous and kinda worried about whether I'd be good enough or not. This was back when HQs were actually a big deal, alliance leaders and country leaders had tons of people constantly on IRC, and the e-sim community had double the people it has now. So here I was in a room full of important internet strangers, and my only thought was how I could make Canada more loved and respected. So I became friends with absolutely anybody and everybody, snagged a Military Commander position in HQ, and went to work.
Canada had a direct say is alliance military orders and we were represented daily on IRC. During the summer I was accompanied of a solid cast of players including the likes of
SpaceDyeVest who was my 2nd hand man, leading the way militarily and helping me out in diplomatic matters when I went on binge drinking weekend outings. And
cubuffs22 who is an economical mastermind. He doesn't say much, but throughout that summer he did so much work behind the scenes getting nearly no recognition, but he's a baller and just doesn't give 2 ***** about the fame (he only cares about the cash and the South Korean ladies I purchased for his pleasures).
During the month of August, we had just signed a fresh new deal with USA guaranteeing us a lot more money for CEC, and things were looking very bright. I knew it was time to take things to the next level for Canada. So I became the Supreme Commander of Unico. This was an exciting new position and presented many fun new challenges, but most importantly, it put Canada in an extremely powerful position, and this was and always has been my goal. During the 2nd half of August Omega fought hard for Canada to trim USA's wings. Unico and Canada stayed out and respected the deal, but USA had enemies that ignored whatever contracts the two of us had.
September
After we regained CEC, we launched an invasion on Taiwan in the month of September. This was needed to keep interest in e-sim as this was after secura was launched and the numbers started dropping in primera. It worked well and while our community grew tighter and lost few, many other countries lost drastic amounts of people. Still to this day we've lost a smaller % of citizens than most of the world.
We conquered half of Taiwan, but when we got to Penghu's doors, Poland left Omega, G7 was created, and most of our allied help was redirected elsewhere as the world heated up once again. We slowly got pushed out of Taiwan, and we were unable to kill the momentum as we got shoved out of South Korea as well. But we had regained Canada East Coast the previous month so this was no great loss in the big scheme of things.
October
Yes, I lied when I said it'd be imageless
November
So I was happy in early November when Ireland launched an attack on Canada East Coast with Spanish support and their hired Mercenary Unit BAY. They barely came off with a win, and once Canada had time to regroup and recover from the surprise and get our allies involved, Ireland was immediately dumped out of our borders. On a sidenote, this is when South Korea briefly owned Canada Pacific Coast (lol). So once we had repaid the help to our loyal allies, we went on and smashed South Korea conquering them fully once again.
December
Fast forward to the holidays since nothing exciting other than tits, booze and bacon happened between then (an average day in Canada). This was my 6th term and I was already seriously considering stepping down considering how boring e-sim had gotten. And then on christmas eve, USA decided to launch an attack on Canada East Coast. At that point I was really drunk, not even at home and did I say I was really drunk?

I logged on IRC from my phone and sent out messages to every single ally I had made over the previous 6 months as CP. And throughout the battle, seeing them all flock in and beat USA even when they did nearly 3X more damage than Canada was nearly poetic. To me it was the most perfect ending to my half a year stint as Canadian CP seeing all my hard work come to fruition in 1 intense battle that went down to the 14th round.
After the win, I figured hey, USA probably went into this because it was such a low risk, high reward situation right? I mean, they don't expect Canada will actually counter attack hard? haha so I went out and bought as many mercenaries as possible, attacked USA only hours after the CEC attack ended and flipped the tables winning against them in 14 rounds. I thought I had the perfect ending to my career before? This was just fantastic. So a deal was signed, and there was actually more planned to happen but the USA CP and myself kinda got carried away in the holidays and didn't get around to completely Part 2 of the plan. You may or may not see it carried out depending who is in office for both countries in January.
The Future
Following this crazy roller coaster ride of 6 months, I'm hanging up the skates so to speak. My time has passed, and it is time for a new passionate leader to emerge and lift Canada up to the great heights it belongs to. We were never and will never be a military giant in e-sim, but hopefully we can continue fighting for what we value most; loyalty, dedication, and maple syrup, and in return, our allies will return the favour as they have done in the past.
What's next for me? I'm taking on a 2 clicker role on Primera and will help the next CP as well as fight for allies when needed. But my efforts and dedication will be fully directed to Blitzkrieg on Secura. Some may scoff at my choice to choose Secura over Primera, but hear me out. I'm only a half-tank on Primera, that has played the loyal patriot role for 9 months. On Secura, I'm a mercenary that fights for $$$ and for my friends. I hang out with my closest e-sim friends every night on IRC and we have fun together. This is a type of fun I have never experienced on e-sim before and I want to explore the different challenges and experiences it brings me. Feel free to contact me on there if you feel like trying something new.
This has been probably my longest article yet, and I'm not surprised. I tend to ramble a lot, and I don't really care if only 10 people read this or if 100 people read this. I haven't cared about sub count since I confessed my love to plesen publicly many months ago and gained 200 subs from it

hehe damn I have many fond memories of e-sim, and I will never forget it.
<3
Much love,
OwenHargreaves
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