Part 33 - The New China, France and the Commonwealth and The Great San Bernardino Earthquake
Part 33 - The New China, France and the Commonwealth and The Great San Bernardino Earthquake
By the time 2035 came around, the world of geopolitics was becoming ever more of a closer contest, one which had its own upsides and downsides. For cosmopolitan Canada it meant that more than ever before wealth, knowledge and influence flowed in all directions, both in coming to Canada and in going out of it to other nations, as technological achievements made possible greater economic co-operation while at the same time opening up rivalries that otherwise would never exist. While the wealth of the Western nations was unquestioned, it also had to be said that the East was very much catching up, and the post-World War II booms had themselves led to new nations joining the ranks of the world's power brokers. Big newcomers like India and China and regional heavyweights like Russia, Iran, Brazil, South Africa and Turkey had created all kinds of new advancements, but also more than a few flashpoints due to old gripes and new competitions. All of these nations saw the world's long-standing power structures as something to be challenged and then joined, as few among the world's powerful nations saw the advancements of their society as anything but a good thing.
China was perhaps the greatest example of this. Having finally begun to shed off 75 years of authoritarian rule in the mid-2020s (after effectively being forced into it as a result of global outrage over COVID-20's gestation) China saw a return to economic progress but saw dramatic societal changes, perhaps the most notable was the seeking by Chinese to settle the chasm that had developed between residents of mainland China and Chinese populations abroad. This began first and foremost with cultural transfers in both directions, but by 2035 the dynamism of Chinese populations abroad (and especially places like Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan and the Chinese populations of Canada, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom) had rubbed off on China's domestic populations, and the opening up of society in China led to a steady move towards greater civil and human rights in China and greater local autonomy, and eventually starting in 2032 elections for local positions in a number of Chinese provinces. This steady growth in the direction of democracy was warmly welcomed by the rest of the world, and came with it a steady growth in Chinese involvement in the world economy. By 2040 China's societal growth had all but swept away most of the history of propaganda directed at them, creating a glasnost-style situation where China's leaders were forced to admit to numerous mistakes of the past. The era of Xi Jinping became something of an unhappy time in Chinese history (and COVID-20 became a particular black mark), but Jinping's successors in Tian Zhenya and Lai Zhaolui proved the capable leaders needed to bring China into the modern world, and with it came the rapid transformation of the Communist Party of China into a much more benevolent organization and an end to the cult of personalities of the past and the party's harsh stances towards other beliefs. The economic progress in China couldn't be centered on heavy industry - China was already one of the world's centers for this - and so China began to copy what Russia had done in the decades prior, take advantage of its considerable resources to develop a modern service and intelligence economy to add to and eventually replace the heavy industry one they already had.
If any place benefitted most from this, it was Hong Kong. Having grown very comfortable with its identity as a semi-autonomous outpost of the United Kingdom, Hong Kong watched the transformation of China with both pride and some trepidation, still believing (and quite loudly so) that Beijing had forsaken them long ago and that they related more with their fellow Chinese in other nations. It didn't hurt in this regard that nearly all Hong Kongers by 2025 were fluent in English and many aspects of its former identity were quite strong indeed, even if one was never going to mistake the tropical, towering, over 90-percent-Chinese Hong Kong with any place in the United Kingdom. In the aftermath of the 2020 Olympics and the massive growth in biotechnology in Hong Kong that stemmed from COVID-20, Hong Kong became one of the richest and most advanced cities on Earth, and its population grew considerably in the 2020s both from other Chinese and from those from across the Commonwealth who came to live and work in Hong Kong. During the Chinese Revival the CCP began to eventually start considering letting Hong Kong's status be normalized, a situation mirrored with Taiwan, which also found Beijing much easier to work with in later years.
Of particular note in Canada was the growing relationship between the French-led Francophonie and the Commonwealth. Being a charter member of both and having proudly supported Canada's French-Canadian heritage for the best part of a century, the watershed change in relations between Britain and France that had been a result of the European Union (and indeed the Channel Tunnel) had led to the French seeing the Francophonie's future as an alliance of nations similar to what the Commonwealth had become. Despite the pride both Britain and France had long had - French author José-Alain Fralon had wrote of the relationship between the two countries by describing the British as "our most dear enemies" - it was clear the Commonwealth had achieved something no other colonial power had, and so in August 2022 in the aftermath of the COVID-20 pandemic, France made a formal appeal to be part of the Commonwealth of Nations, desiring not only to be a part of the Commonwealth but also be part of the Central Commonwealth, fully aware of what would be required to do so.
While this led to be a bit of consternation in Britain, it was widely supported in much of the rest of the Commonwealth. Canada in particular pointed out that France was a powerful nation that had extensive relations with virtually all of the Commonwealth members, and that the Entente Cordiale had served both well throughout the 20th Century and that both countries were already very well versed in military and diplomatic co-operation. The Netherlands followed this up by seeking membership itself, this move also proudly supported by the Canadians. Ultimately both France and the Netherlands joined the Commonwealth of Nations as members in September 2023, and following the necessary legal changes, both joined the ranks of the Central Commonwealth, joined at the same time by the Maldives and Chile, on January 1, 2026. The entry into the Central Commonwealth saw the interests of the French and Dutch in the Commonwealth grow rapidly in the years to come, it also went the other way to a vast degree. Perhaps the greatest effects were in terms of the influences of language - already by far the second-most common language in Canada, French's use spread throughout other parts of the Commonwealth as well, while scientific co-operation also grew dramatically. The use by citizens of the Commonwealth to use France and the Netherlands as gateways to Europe also swelled, and India also took full advantage of the opportunities to advance its own interests within the two new members. The entry of France and its territories completely reshaped the trade and travel situation in the Caribbean for Canada, as now the islands all the way from the Virgin Islands to Trinidad were open for travel and visitation.
For the Francophonie, it led to calls to dramatically change the organization to one that allows the French and its former allies more connections and interest, and the French particularly sought this out in Africa, seeking more connections with its former colonial possessions and abandoning many of the previous problems with respect for human rights. As the Commonwealth had since the Melbourne Declarations in 1986, the Francophonie began limiting its full membership and full rights to nations that respected individual rights, in the process making the Commonwealth do the same more effectively, in essence making both organizations push each other on the issue, and the "Merry Madhouse" (as Le Devoir put it) of the Francophonie began to shift towards nations with greater cultural connections, though in fairness many pointed out that Chile had never been a British colony.
By the late 2020s, one of the joint projects of these alliances was being seen in Haiti. Easily the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere at the turn of the century, after the devastating 2010 earthquake Canada and the United States led the efforts to finally begin helping Haiti return to being a well-functioning nation once and for all. The UN mission to Haiti had by then earned a bad reputation, made worse by a cholera outbreak that was ultimately traced back to Nepalese troops stationed as part of the UN mission in Haiti. On July 16, 2011, Canada and France got UN approval to take over the mission, resulting the replacement of many of the international armed forces delegations in Haiti with Canadian and French troops, who were soon backed up by a large number of volunteers from Canadian, French and Australian police units, with senior RCMP and French National Police officers leading the policing side of the operation and training the Haitian National Police. The efforts to bring lawful order to Haiti proved a monumental challenge, but by the end of the 2010s it had bourne fruit and Haiti's rate of corruption and crime had been dramatically reduced from even a few years before. Haiti spent the 2020s as one of the world's fastest growing economies (though it's incredibly-poor starting point made sure that even such rapid progress merely meant the nation made headway in catching up to the region around it) and working on its many serious environmental problems. Haiti's massive population density led to pushes for industrialization in the major cities, while tourism became a major industry once again in the 2020s, joining the growth of cash crops - coffee, cocoa, tropical fruits, sugar, cotton - and the development of industrial products, particularly clothing, cellulosic ethanol, aluminum and metal castings, alcoholic beverages and electric motors. Haiti's progress was matched by the nations around them, as the steady improvements led to the return of more than a few members of the Haitian disapora.
For Canada, the success in Haiti came as little surprise, owing to the country's century-long expertise in providing aid to others and their access to both a large air force and huge civilian air cargo transport abilities, making the ability to deliver supplies just about anywhere not particularly difficult at all. The RCAF's fleet of airlifters - from the smaller CC-130 Hercules, CC-176 Airmaster, CC-178 Shogun airlifters to the massive CC-166 Ascension, CC-177 Globemaster III, CC-180D Commander, CC-194 Galaxy and CC-195 Pallas[1] - allowed massive aid to be delivered all over the world, and the RCAF was by the 2020s absolute masters at the task of chasing value from its airlifter fleet, adding the Ascension and Pallas to its fleet as a result of purchases of aircraft that were being written off by civilian operators but which had a lot of life left in them - the Ascensions, for example, had been built for Thai Airways, Emirates and Air France before higher fuel costs saw them prematurely retired, and then purchased by the RCAF. The RCAF's fleet by the mid-2020s also included eight special Galaxy aircraft modified to serve as flying medical stations focused on support for quality-of-life medical care issues such as eye care and dental care, and they always flew alongside another airliner that carried the staff needed for the flying hospital and additional supplies needed for the operations needed. The Royal Canadian Navy also added the medical support capabilities of the nation by the operation of the Sanctuary-class hospital ships, which were replaced by the ultramodern Apollo-class ships in the 2020s. The Apollo-class vessels were the most advanced such ships in the world when they entered RCN service in 2026, built to Neopanamax dimensions - 1,160 feet long, 145 feet in beam and 33 feet in draft, displacing some 76,000 tons - and were incredibly advanced vessels, pebble-bed nuclear reactors providing limitless range at a speed of 25 knots and the ship being equipped with two helipads, two hangars and four helicopters or tiltrotors, as well as having most of the capabilities of a proper hospital - beds for 1,050 patients, 66 ICU beds, 18 operating rooms, radiological department, pharmacy, specialized burn unit, two CT scanners, MRI machine, optometry machines, blood bank, a dedicated trauma centre unit and four oxygen-producing plants. HMCS Apollo and sister ship HMCS Artemis were the most expensive non-aircraft carrier vessels ever purchased by the Navy at $2.25 Billion each, but few objected to the ships' purchase and development, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, and the two vessels would see many miles in the years to come, and Apollo was on the move within weeks of its commissioning, as a result of one of the events that would change the course of the 21st Century for the United States.
The San Andreas Fault had been known to have been a concern for the state of California for virtually its entire history, and was known to have caused the devastating 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, but even California wasn't prepared for what erupted from the fault at 8:25 AM on September 15, 2026. The Great San Bernardino Earthquake's Epicenter was literally directly under the northern sections of the city of San Bernardino, roughly 85 kilometres to northeast of Los Angeles. Having not shown any earthquakes on that section of the fault in over 300 years, the southern end of the Fault's eruption was one of the largest strike-slip Earthquakes ever recorded, recording a magnitude of 8.4 on the Richter Scale and reaching a XI on the Mercalli Scale. The Earthquake lasted for four and a half minutes, with the movements shifting the entire fault as much as nine feet in place and shifting the faults all the way from the Gulf of California as far north as Parkfield in Monterey County, a distance of some 330 miles.
The effect on Southern California was best described as horrific. The shaking was still ranked a X on the Mercalli scale when the waves of the Earthquakes reached Los Angeles, causing the collapsing of tens of thousands of buildings. The single worst building loss was suffered when the Aon Center, damaged by fire in 1988, broke almost exactly at the point where the building had been damaged by fire and toppled over, over 500 people in that one building losing their lives as the 62-story tower toppled down onto the California Club building across the street. Numerous other buildings, including a number of other famous ones, collapsed or suffered serious structural damage - the Staples Center, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Library Tower, Los Angeles' City Hall and Central Library, Dodger Stadium, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the Capitol Record Building, Los Angeles Union Station. Every single freeway was blocked by broken bridges, both Union Pacific and Southern Pacific rail lines in Cajon Pass were blocked by landslides and broken trackage, The Children's Hospital Los Angeles and Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center both partially collapsed in the Earthquake, making the sudden and gargantuan healthcare crisis that much more acute, and thousands of fires erupted from everything from broken gas mains to electrical fires, the largest of which was Chevron's El Segundo Refinery, which was almost totally destroyed by fires that took over several days just to contain. An estimated one million people were injured in the disaster to some degree or another, some of them very seriously, and the final toll of dead and missing was tallied as 6,765, the deadliest natural disaster to effect the United States in over a century.
But starting in the moments after the Earthquake's last waves finally died, the people of Southern California took it upon themselves to try to save lives in any possible way, and from all possible walks of life. With the city's mayor among the dead (along with three of its city council members) and its police chief among the dying (he suffered serious head injuries in the Quake and passed away five days later) central command and control was in enormously short supply, not that that stopped locals from trying. Lost power to the remaining hospital facilities at USC were restored by diesel locomotives being wired into the hospital. Traffic helicopters for Los Angeles' ubiquitous radio stations were quick to direct what emergency units that they could around bottlenecks, larger vehicles from pickup trucks to 18 wheelers began to be used as makeshift ambulances, tanker trucks acted as water tankers for firefighters and everyone who could help dug into rescue efforts, using everything from construction equipment to gardening tools to rescue people trapped in wreckage. The story of three Los Angeles Police Department officers racing into a burning building in Watts to rescue a woman and her son trapped in a fire (one of whom suffered debilitating injuries in the process) became legend in Los Angeles, and so many volunteers were available to assist that the short-handed Los Angeles Fire Department began organizing volunteers to assist firefighting units. NBA legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson added to his considerable legend when he spent over 60 solid hours as part of rescue efforts before collapsing from exhaustion, and numerous other members of Los Angeles' rich and famous, from famous bodybuilder Arnold Schwarenegger to boxer Floyd Mayweather to models, actors and musicians too many to name were known to have to jumped into it. Singer Taylor Swift (badly cut left hand and arm), actor Chris Evans (broken ribs from a fall), retired NFL legend Tom Brady (burned right arm), director Luc Besson (broken leg) and rapper O'Shea "Ice Cube" Jackson (concussion after being hit on the head by debris) all actually sustained injuries attempting to rescue others. Numerous pictures taken of the rescuers of Los Angeles both amateur and professional were front page stories across the world within days if not hours, even though it took several hours before all of the city's radio and television stations were back on the air.
HMCS Apollo was dispatched to Los Angeles from its home base at Everett, British Columbia within hours, and it made the trip in just over five days, while units of the Royal Canadian Air Force were dispatched to the area - and in the case of the three helicopter squadrons at CFB Lewis in British Columbia, they asked for (and got) approval to fly down to Los Angeles on their own, carrying their own support equipment and personnel with them, stopping several times for refueling on the way but making it to California early the morning after the quake. Mexican Air Force units got there even faster, and response from the United States was rapid, even if the job facing them was gargantuan. Just as soon as room could be made at every airport and airfield that could be found, help from around the world came. Canada's famed DART disaster relief unit was deployed to the United States for only the second time in its history (Hurricane Katrina was the first time) and was on the scene within 48 hours, and five Canadians in Los Angeles involved in the rescue efforts - Aidan Ryan, James Beauchamps, Dr. Serenia Nijlon, Paul Renalli and Nathaniel Berthon - were awarded the Cross of Valour for their efforts. Canadian disaster relief units were in Los Angeles for over six weeks, saving countless lives and being instrumental in getting Los Angeles' water system working once again - actions that earned the DART Team, HMCS Apollo and the 427, 455 and 479 Squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force all the special Presidential Unit Citation that was awarded to units that responded to the Earthquake. Dr. Nijlon not only got the Cross of Valour for her actions but was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for being part of medical efforts in the aftermath of the initial rescue efforts.
For Canada, what happened in Los Angeles was a sobering thought of what could be in earthquake-prone areas, which included the Salish Sea region, and in the years after that efforts to improve the Earthquake Resistance of buildings in British Columbia went quite a lot faster. Perhaps more of an immediate effect was the holding of events across North America in the fall of 2026 and winter of 2027 to raise money for rebuilding Los Angeles after the disaster. As was perhaps now typical of Canada, Canadian contributors to these efforts were considerable, and the effects of the hours, days and weeks after the disaster had a marked effect on the City of Los Angeles, the state of California and the United States. While Americans' collective sense of patriotism had never been lacking and their collective efforts after traumatic events had always been notable, the efforts of millions of Los Angeles residents had a major effect. As Los Angeles was rebuilt, it was built with much better civic amenities - indeed the mayor of Los Angeles would by 2035 be boasting of the thousands of new parks built in the city since the Quake - and with a much greater civic pride. Areas that had been completely by the quake or by fires that resulted from it rose back far greater than they had been. Virtually every highway overpass was rebuilt with much more style to the bridges (as well as much greater earthquake resistance, of course), roadways gained landscaped center medians with towering palm trees, the city's mass transit dramatically grew (this had been a necessity with all of the freeway collapses, but as with the growth of Metrolink after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the effects remained long after the freeways had been rebuilt) and many neighborhoods differentiated themselves with the use of streetcars, creating what would become a considerable network of streetcars that ran along the edges of roads. Mid-rise apartment buildings and co-op buildings allowed for higher population densities in desirable neighborhoods of Los Angeles but still have nice places for people to live, the growth on water supply from graphene desalination made pools almost de rigeur for middle class and better Los Angeles neighborhoods. The City's once-infamous housing projects got major overhauls and ones knocked down by the Earthquake were rebuilt in grand fashion, creating the genesis of "California's Sky Cities" in the 2030s that began in Los Angeles but soon spread across the state. Los Angeles' transit authorities were partnered with the TTC for years after the quake, and one of the TTC's largest lessons was that buses were best when as frequent as possible and that they were best when well integrated with the rest of the system inside of fare-paid areas, and Los Angeles made a point while dramatically growing its transit system to massively grow its bus fleet to support the new trains, going from a fleet of 2600 before the pandemic to over 5000 by 2032.
[1] The CC-178 Shogun is the Canadian Forces designation for the Bombardier/Kawasaki C-2, CC-176 Airmaster the Airbus A400M, the CC-166 Ascension the Airbus A340-500, CC-180D Commander the Boeing 747-8, the CC-194 Galaxy the Bombardier WA325 and the CC-195 Pallas the Vickers VC-24
By the time 2035 came around, the world of geopolitics was becoming ever more of a closer contest, one which had its own upsides and downsides. For cosmopolitan Canada it meant that more than ever before wealth, knowledge and influence flowed in all directions, both in coming to Canada and in going out of it to other nations, as technological achievements made possible greater economic co-operation while at the same time opening up rivalries that otherwise would never exist. While the wealth of the Western nations was unquestioned, it also had to be said that the East was very much catching up, and the post-World War II booms had themselves led to new nations joining the ranks of the world's power brokers. Big newcomers like India and China and regional heavyweights like Russia, Iran, Brazil, South Africa and Turkey had created all kinds of new advancements, but also more than a few flashpoints due to old gripes and new competitions. All of these nations saw the world's long-standing power structures as something to be challenged and then joined, as few among the world's powerful nations saw the advancements of their society as anything but a good thing.
China was perhaps the greatest example of this. Having finally begun to shed off 75 years of authoritarian rule in the mid-2020s (after effectively being forced into it as a result of global outrage over COVID-20's gestation) China saw a return to economic progress but saw dramatic societal changes, perhaps the most notable was the seeking by Chinese to settle the chasm that had developed between residents of mainland China and Chinese populations abroad. This began first and foremost with cultural transfers in both directions, but by 2035 the dynamism of Chinese populations abroad (and especially places like Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan and the Chinese populations of Canada, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom) had rubbed off on China's domestic populations, and the opening up of society in China led to a steady move towards greater civil and human rights in China and greater local autonomy, and eventually starting in 2032 elections for local positions in a number of Chinese provinces. This steady growth in the direction of democracy was warmly welcomed by the rest of the world, and came with it a steady growth in Chinese involvement in the world economy. By 2040 China's societal growth had all but swept away most of the history of propaganda directed at them, creating a glasnost-style situation where China's leaders were forced to admit to numerous mistakes of the past. The era of Xi Jinping became something of an unhappy time in Chinese history (and COVID-20 became a particular black mark), but Jinping's successors in Tian Zhenya and Lai Zhaolui proved the capable leaders needed to bring China into the modern world, and with it came the rapid transformation of the Communist Party of China into a much more benevolent organization and an end to the cult of personalities of the past and the party's harsh stances towards other beliefs. The economic progress in China couldn't be centered on heavy industry - China was already one of the world's centers for this - and so China began to copy what Russia had done in the decades prior, take advantage of its considerable resources to develop a modern service and intelligence economy to add to and eventually replace the heavy industry one they already had.
If any place benefitted most from this, it was Hong Kong. Having grown very comfortable with its identity as a semi-autonomous outpost of the United Kingdom, Hong Kong watched the transformation of China with both pride and some trepidation, still believing (and quite loudly so) that Beijing had forsaken them long ago and that they related more with their fellow Chinese in other nations. It didn't hurt in this regard that nearly all Hong Kongers by 2025 were fluent in English and many aspects of its former identity were quite strong indeed, even if one was never going to mistake the tropical, towering, over 90-percent-Chinese Hong Kong with any place in the United Kingdom. In the aftermath of the 2020 Olympics and the massive growth in biotechnology in Hong Kong that stemmed from COVID-20, Hong Kong became one of the richest and most advanced cities on Earth, and its population grew considerably in the 2020s both from other Chinese and from those from across the Commonwealth who came to live and work in Hong Kong. During the Chinese Revival the CCP began to eventually start considering letting Hong Kong's status be normalized, a situation mirrored with Taiwan, which also found Beijing much easier to work with in later years.
Of particular note in Canada was the growing relationship between the French-led Francophonie and the Commonwealth. Being a charter member of both and having proudly supported Canada's French-Canadian heritage for the best part of a century, the watershed change in relations between Britain and France that had been a result of the European Union (and indeed the Channel Tunnel) had led to the French seeing the Francophonie's future as an alliance of nations similar to what the Commonwealth had become. Despite the pride both Britain and France had long had - French author José-Alain Fralon had wrote of the relationship between the two countries by describing the British as "our most dear enemies" - it was clear the Commonwealth had achieved something no other colonial power had, and so in August 2022 in the aftermath of the COVID-20 pandemic, France made a formal appeal to be part of the Commonwealth of Nations, desiring not only to be a part of the Commonwealth but also be part of the Central Commonwealth, fully aware of what would be required to do so.
While this led to be a bit of consternation in Britain, it was widely supported in much of the rest of the Commonwealth. Canada in particular pointed out that France was a powerful nation that had extensive relations with virtually all of the Commonwealth members, and that the Entente Cordiale had served both well throughout the 20th Century and that both countries were already very well versed in military and diplomatic co-operation. The Netherlands followed this up by seeking membership itself, this move also proudly supported by the Canadians. Ultimately both France and the Netherlands joined the Commonwealth of Nations as members in September 2023, and following the necessary legal changes, both joined the ranks of the Central Commonwealth, joined at the same time by the Maldives and Chile, on January 1, 2026. The entry into the Central Commonwealth saw the interests of the French and Dutch in the Commonwealth grow rapidly in the years to come, it also went the other way to a vast degree. Perhaps the greatest effects were in terms of the influences of language - already by far the second-most common language in Canada, French's use spread throughout other parts of the Commonwealth as well, while scientific co-operation also grew dramatically. The use by citizens of the Commonwealth to use France and the Netherlands as gateways to Europe also swelled, and India also took full advantage of the opportunities to advance its own interests within the two new members. The entry of France and its territories completely reshaped the trade and travel situation in the Caribbean for Canada, as now the islands all the way from the Virgin Islands to Trinidad were open for travel and visitation.
For the Francophonie, it led to calls to dramatically change the organization to one that allows the French and its former allies more connections and interest, and the French particularly sought this out in Africa, seeking more connections with its former colonial possessions and abandoning many of the previous problems with respect for human rights. As the Commonwealth had since the Melbourne Declarations in 1986, the Francophonie began limiting its full membership and full rights to nations that respected individual rights, in the process making the Commonwealth do the same more effectively, in essence making both organizations push each other on the issue, and the "Merry Madhouse" (as Le Devoir put it) of the Francophonie began to shift towards nations with greater cultural connections, though in fairness many pointed out that Chile had never been a British colony.
By the late 2020s, one of the joint projects of these alliances was being seen in Haiti. Easily the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere at the turn of the century, after the devastating 2010 earthquake Canada and the United States led the efforts to finally begin helping Haiti return to being a well-functioning nation once and for all. The UN mission to Haiti had by then earned a bad reputation, made worse by a cholera outbreak that was ultimately traced back to Nepalese troops stationed as part of the UN mission in Haiti. On July 16, 2011, Canada and France got UN approval to take over the mission, resulting the replacement of many of the international armed forces delegations in Haiti with Canadian and French troops, who were soon backed up by a large number of volunteers from Canadian, French and Australian police units, with senior RCMP and French National Police officers leading the policing side of the operation and training the Haitian National Police. The efforts to bring lawful order to Haiti proved a monumental challenge, but by the end of the 2010s it had bourne fruit and Haiti's rate of corruption and crime had been dramatically reduced from even a few years before. Haiti spent the 2020s as one of the world's fastest growing economies (though it's incredibly-poor starting point made sure that even such rapid progress merely meant the nation made headway in catching up to the region around it) and working on its many serious environmental problems. Haiti's massive population density led to pushes for industrialization in the major cities, while tourism became a major industry once again in the 2020s, joining the growth of cash crops - coffee, cocoa, tropical fruits, sugar, cotton - and the development of industrial products, particularly clothing, cellulosic ethanol, aluminum and metal castings, alcoholic beverages and electric motors. Haiti's progress was matched by the nations around them, as the steady improvements led to the return of more than a few members of the Haitian disapora.
For Canada, the success in Haiti came as little surprise, owing to the country's century-long expertise in providing aid to others and their access to both a large air force and huge civilian air cargo transport abilities, making the ability to deliver supplies just about anywhere not particularly difficult at all. The RCAF's fleet of airlifters - from the smaller CC-130 Hercules, CC-176 Airmaster, CC-178 Shogun airlifters to the massive CC-166 Ascension, CC-177 Globemaster III, CC-180D Commander, CC-194 Galaxy and CC-195 Pallas[1] - allowed massive aid to be delivered all over the world, and the RCAF was by the 2020s absolute masters at the task of chasing value from its airlifter fleet, adding the Ascension and Pallas to its fleet as a result of purchases of aircraft that were being written off by civilian operators but which had a lot of life left in them - the Ascensions, for example, had been built for Thai Airways, Emirates and Air France before higher fuel costs saw them prematurely retired, and then purchased by the RCAF. The RCAF's fleet by the mid-2020s also included eight special Galaxy aircraft modified to serve as flying medical stations focused on support for quality-of-life medical care issues such as eye care and dental care, and they always flew alongside another airliner that carried the staff needed for the flying hospital and additional supplies needed for the operations needed. The Royal Canadian Navy also added the medical support capabilities of the nation by the operation of the Sanctuary-class hospital ships, which were replaced by the ultramodern Apollo-class ships in the 2020s. The Apollo-class vessels were the most advanced such ships in the world when they entered RCN service in 2026, built to Neopanamax dimensions - 1,160 feet long, 145 feet in beam and 33 feet in draft, displacing some 76,000 tons - and were incredibly advanced vessels, pebble-bed nuclear reactors providing limitless range at a speed of 25 knots and the ship being equipped with two helipads, two hangars and four helicopters or tiltrotors, as well as having most of the capabilities of a proper hospital - beds for 1,050 patients, 66 ICU beds, 18 operating rooms, radiological department, pharmacy, specialized burn unit, two CT scanners, MRI machine, optometry machines, blood bank, a dedicated trauma centre unit and four oxygen-producing plants. HMCS Apollo and sister ship HMCS Artemis were the most expensive non-aircraft carrier vessels ever purchased by the Navy at $2.25 Billion each, but few objected to the ships' purchase and development, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, and the two vessels would see many miles in the years to come, and Apollo was on the move within weeks of its commissioning, as a result of one of the events that would change the course of the 21st Century for the United States.
The San Andreas Fault had been known to have been a concern for the state of California for virtually its entire history, and was known to have caused the devastating 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, but even California wasn't prepared for what erupted from the fault at 8:25 AM on September 15, 2026. The Great San Bernardino Earthquake's Epicenter was literally directly under the northern sections of the city of San Bernardino, roughly 85 kilometres to northeast of Los Angeles. Having not shown any earthquakes on that section of the fault in over 300 years, the southern end of the Fault's eruption was one of the largest strike-slip Earthquakes ever recorded, recording a magnitude of 8.4 on the Richter Scale and reaching a XI on the Mercalli Scale. The Earthquake lasted for four and a half minutes, with the movements shifting the entire fault as much as nine feet in place and shifting the faults all the way from the Gulf of California as far north as Parkfield in Monterey County, a distance of some 330 miles.
The effect on Southern California was best described as horrific. The shaking was still ranked a X on the Mercalli scale when the waves of the Earthquakes reached Los Angeles, causing the collapsing of tens of thousands of buildings. The single worst building loss was suffered when the Aon Center, damaged by fire in 1988, broke almost exactly at the point where the building had been damaged by fire and toppled over, over 500 people in that one building losing their lives as the 62-story tower toppled down onto the California Club building across the street. Numerous other buildings, including a number of other famous ones, collapsed or suffered serious structural damage - the Staples Center, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Library Tower, Los Angeles' City Hall and Central Library, Dodger Stadium, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the Capitol Record Building, Los Angeles Union Station. Every single freeway was blocked by broken bridges, both Union Pacific and Southern Pacific rail lines in Cajon Pass were blocked by landslides and broken trackage, The Children's Hospital Los Angeles and Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center both partially collapsed in the Earthquake, making the sudden and gargantuan healthcare crisis that much more acute, and thousands of fires erupted from everything from broken gas mains to electrical fires, the largest of which was Chevron's El Segundo Refinery, which was almost totally destroyed by fires that took over several days just to contain. An estimated one million people were injured in the disaster to some degree or another, some of them very seriously, and the final toll of dead and missing was tallied as 6,765, the deadliest natural disaster to effect the United States in over a century.
But starting in the moments after the Earthquake's last waves finally died, the people of Southern California took it upon themselves to try to save lives in any possible way, and from all possible walks of life. With the city's mayor among the dead (along with three of its city council members) and its police chief among the dying (he suffered serious head injuries in the Quake and passed away five days later) central command and control was in enormously short supply, not that that stopped locals from trying. Lost power to the remaining hospital facilities at USC were restored by diesel locomotives being wired into the hospital. Traffic helicopters for Los Angeles' ubiquitous radio stations were quick to direct what emergency units that they could around bottlenecks, larger vehicles from pickup trucks to 18 wheelers began to be used as makeshift ambulances, tanker trucks acted as water tankers for firefighters and everyone who could help dug into rescue efforts, using everything from construction equipment to gardening tools to rescue people trapped in wreckage. The story of three Los Angeles Police Department officers racing into a burning building in Watts to rescue a woman and her son trapped in a fire (one of whom suffered debilitating injuries in the process) became legend in Los Angeles, and so many volunteers were available to assist that the short-handed Los Angeles Fire Department began organizing volunteers to assist firefighting units. NBA legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson added to his considerable legend when he spent over 60 solid hours as part of rescue efforts before collapsing from exhaustion, and numerous other members of Los Angeles' rich and famous, from famous bodybuilder Arnold Schwarenegger to boxer Floyd Mayweather to models, actors and musicians too many to name were known to have to jumped into it. Singer Taylor Swift (badly cut left hand and arm), actor Chris Evans (broken ribs from a fall), retired NFL legend Tom Brady (burned right arm), director Luc Besson (broken leg) and rapper O'Shea "Ice Cube" Jackson (concussion after being hit on the head by debris) all actually sustained injuries attempting to rescue others. Numerous pictures taken of the rescuers of Los Angeles both amateur and professional were front page stories across the world within days if not hours, even though it took several hours before all of the city's radio and television stations were back on the air.
HMCS Apollo was dispatched to Los Angeles from its home base at Everett, British Columbia within hours, and it made the trip in just over five days, while units of the Royal Canadian Air Force were dispatched to the area - and in the case of the three helicopter squadrons at CFB Lewis in British Columbia, they asked for (and got) approval to fly down to Los Angeles on their own, carrying their own support equipment and personnel with them, stopping several times for refueling on the way but making it to California early the morning after the quake. Mexican Air Force units got there even faster, and response from the United States was rapid, even if the job facing them was gargantuan. Just as soon as room could be made at every airport and airfield that could be found, help from around the world came. Canada's famed DART disaster relief unit was deployed to the United States for only the second time in its history (Hurricane Katrina was the first time) and was on the scene within 48 hours, and five Canadians in Los Angeles involved in the rescue efforts - Aidan Ryan, James Beauchamps, Dr. Serenia Nijlon, Paul Renalli and Nathaniel Berthon - were awarded the Cross of Valour for their efforts. Canadian disaster relief units were in Los Angeles for over six weeks, saving countless lives and being instrumental in getting Los Angeles' water system working once again - actions that earned the DART Team, HMCS Apollo and the 427, 455 and 479 Squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force all the special Presidential Unit Citation that was awarded to units that responded to the Earthquake. Dr. Nijlon not only got the Cross of Valour for her actions but was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for being part of medical efforts in the aftermath of the initial rescue efforts.
For Canada, what happened in Los Angeles was a sobering thought of what could be in earthquake-prone areas, which included the Salish Sea region, and in the years after that efforts to improve the Earthquake Resistance of buildings in British Columbia went quite a lot faster. Perhaps more of an immediate effect was the holding of events across North America in the fall of 2026 and winter of 2027 to raise money for rebuilding Los Angeles after the disaster. As was perhaps now typical of Canada, Canadian contributors to these efforts were considerable, and the effects of the hours, days and weeks after the disaster had a marked effect on the City of Los Angeles, the state of California and the United States. While Americans' collective sense of patriotism had never been lacking and their collective efforts after traumatic events had always been notable, the efforts of millions of Los Angeles residents had a major effect. As Los Angeles was rebuilt, it was built with much better civic amenities - indeed the mayor of Los Angeles would by 2035 be boasting of the thousands of new parks built in the city since the Quake - and with a much greater civic pride. Areas that had been completely by the quake or by fires that resulted from it rose back far greater than they had been. Virtually every highway overpass was rebuilt with much more style to the bridges (as well as much greater earthquake resistance, of course), roadways gained landscaped center medians with towering palm trees, the city's mass transit dramatically grew (this had been a necessity with all of the freeway collapses, but as with the growth of Metrolink after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the effects remained long after the freeways had been rebuilt) and many neighborhoods differentiated themselves with the use of streetcars, creating what would become a considerable network of streetcars that ran along the edges of roads. Mid-rise apartment buildings and co-op buildings allowed for higher population densities in desirable neighborhoods of Los Angeles but still have nice places for people to live, the growth on water supply from graphene desalination made pools almost de rigeur for middle class and better Los Angeles neighborhoods. The City's once-infamous housing projects got major overhauls and ones knocked down by the Earthquake were rebuilt in grand fashion, creating the genesis of "California's Sky Cities" in the 2030s that began in Los Angeles but soon spread across the state. Los Angeles' transit authorities were partnered with the TTC for years after the quake, and one of the TTC's largest lessons was that buses were best when as frequent as possible and that they were best when well integrated with the rest of the system inside of fare-paid areas, and Los Angeles made a point while dramatically growing its transit system to massively grow its bus fleet to support the new trains, going from a fleet of 2600 before the pandemic to over 5000 by 2032.
[1] The CC-178 Shogun is the Canadian Forces designation for the Bombardier/Kawasaki C-2, CC-176 Airmaster the Airbus A400M, the CC-166 Ascension the Airbus A340-500, CC-180D Commander the Boeing 747-8, the CC-194 Galaxy the Bombardier WA325 and the CC-195 Pallas the Vickers VC-24
