Wow. I am sure glad that my folks got to this place. And not just cause Europe (and Grannie, too!) turned out to be socialists! But because Canada is really great as our celebrations on July 1st…celebrate. Here is my list about what I really like about Canada – you add yours:
- Paddle to the Sea. I hadn’t thought about this NFB movie from the 60s for decades and, voom, there is it as the absolute paradigm of the nation’s soul.
- Wacky idealistic politicians who turn out to stand for exactly the opposite of what they pledged to the benefit of us all. Trudeau claimed logic and was nutty enough to put us on the world stage through doing all sorts of things largely since undone. Mulroney pretended he was fiscally prudent but never finishing the job, acting like he was under Washington’s wing but helped leverage the end of apartheid. Chretien being a nutjob yet getting finally getting 30 or 40 years of deficit financing in line while making us love him for choaking a citizen.
- Comedians who leave for the US market. They are the good ones and you can tell because the CBC rejects them. SCTV is a perfect example. And did you know Saturday Night Live was turned down as a project by the dullards?
- Maple products. We eat the blood of trees. What is neater than that?
- Federalism and how it divides us. Think about it. You have a mobile population, largely made up of immigrants over the last couple of generations, drop them into ten jurisdictions and – whammo – they learn to dislike each other and hold on to what they have and try to keep it from others. Overlapping redundant bureaucracies foster these jealousies.
- The neediness. From the whole flag on the backpack in Europe and how much that makes tourism operators their love us so much to the hand wringing about how we should be doing this or that on the world stage. The best is the argument over what Canada stands for. What does Belgium stand for? No one cares. We are a nation of whining twelve year olds and we don’t see it.
- Trees. Both Kingston and Halifax, my two favorite home cities, still sit in the woods and are full of the damn things. That is why downtown Toronto feels so weird. You can’t see the trees. We love them so much we have provincial and Federal parks that we hardly every use but are great when you do. Ontario‘s park system is particularly amazing.
- The flags. We have the weirdest flags. The national one has a bit of a tree on it. And look at New Brunswick’s – who the hell ever picked that yellow? British Columbia looks like it was designed for a space traveller worship cult. Alberta’s politicians lobbied hard to further reduce the size of the crest and add even more blue.
- Events like today’s England v Portugal create some small but telling discomfort between immigrant groups of different generations based on their understanding of what this country stands for even though they are compatible visions.
Me and mine? We are off for a ballgame in the US and some pie. Hey – there’s a double header today.