To the editor:

My son and I have just returned from a trip to Toronto, Canada.

We were sitting in a hotel lobby in Canada visiting with some others and one of them asked, “Where are you from?”

“Kansas, United States,” I replied.

“So,” he replied, “You’re from the land of fear.”

I was shocked and replied, “I never thought of the United States that way.”

“That’s all your president talks about is fear,” he said.

We drove through Michigan with its lovely lakes, Illinois and Iowa with their cornfields, green rolling hills and the trees with their fall foliage and I thought I had never seen a lovelier sight and feel badly that we have lost the respect of other countries.

Ilah E. Derrick,

Lawrence