Red-zone blues? North, Americans!

Just before the Nov. 2 election, it was common in some liberal circles to hear people joke -- or threaten -- to move to Canada if the president won. Not since the days of the Vietnam War and the draft, when an estimated 50,000 Americans fled north, had so many citizens considered getting the heck out of Dodge and moving up to Moose Jaw.

Then the president won. As anger turned to resignation, thoughts of Canada faded like a patch of snow in a spring thaw.

Indeed, while the media churned out stories in early November about a great northern exodus and Canadian websites reported huge increases in traffic, once the emotional dust settled, Americans went about their lives. Or at least most did.

Now it appears that a small (and as yet unquantifiable) group really is pulling up stakes.

Consider Ralph Appoldt, an Oregon-based sales manager for a company that makes power wheelchairs. His fury has yet to subside. Slowly and deliberately, he is planning his move to Canada.

"This is a hard thing to do," said Appoldt, 51. "It's not like we have miserable lives. In a nutshell, I think our administration is just very ugly. Everything they have done is regressive and against my basic beliefs. If this is what America wants, then I don't want to be an American anymore."

In the last week, more than 300 people in L.A., Seattle and San Francisco paid $25 each to attend how-to seminars put on by a Canadian immigration law firm. And traffic on a variety of Canadian websites is higher than normal.

In the capital of Canada (50 points if you can name it), immigration officials dubbed the huge increase in visits to their official website "the November spike." Traffic grew from an average number of around 50,000 hits a day to 180,000 on Nov. 3. A majority of the hits -- 64% -- came from south of the border. Traffic on the site did not return to normal for 10 days, then shot up again and is still running above average.

Whether this will translate into a real immigration boomlet will not be known for at least four months, said Canadian immigration spokeswomen Maria Iadinardi by phone from the capital (which would be Ottawa.)

But one thing is certain: Canada, which has a population roughly the size of California's in a land mass slightly larger than the entire United States, needs immigrants. "We're such a small country," said Iadinardi. "We're very underpopulated. We are one of the largest countries in the world, and we only have 32 million people."