o meganada.
Canola!
If you're actually Canadian, or you get Canadian TV on your
satellite feed, you'll probably remember the extremely popular 'I Am
Canadian' ads that were done for Molson Canadian beer. The text of the
ad became a bit of a rallying cry against global misperceptions of my
fellow countrymen and women:
Hey,
I am not a lumber jack or a fur trader,
and I don't live in an igloo or eat blubber or own a dog sled,
and I don't know Jimmy, Sally or Suzie from Canada although I am certain they're really, really nice.
I have a Prime Minster, not a president.
I speak English and French, not American, and I pronounce it about, not a boot.
I can proudly sew my country's flag on my back pack.
I believe in peacekeeping not policing, diversity not assimilation,
and that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.
A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch.
And it is pronounced zed, not zee -- zed.
Canada is the second largest landmass,
the first nation of hockey,
and the best part of North America.
My name is Joe, and I am Canadian.
Thank You.
For me, the best part of the ad is the fact that he says 'Thank You' at the end. Now THAT'S Canadian.
My sweet American readers:
While the humour of the ad
certainly rings true, and the sentiments behind it are widely felt
across my nation, that's not all there is to my country. And we're not
perfect -- as much as that ad says we celebrate diversity, racism is as
alive and well here as it is in the US. There's just less of us, and
we're more evenly distributed along racial lines, so it might seem like
tensions don't get as hot here. Not true -- they just don't make the
media coverage anywhere else.
Caucasian
Canada has treated a number of races rather appalingly, for sure.
Nowadays, it's not just white-on-not-white violence in the media,
though, but clashes that cut across cultural lines with a wide and
vicious swath. We are a multicultural nation, certainly, but not one
that doesn't bleed on occasion when the colours mix.
We are a nation with
socialized medicine, too, but I also pay almost 34% of every paycheque
I make to ensure that, plus a $56 monthly fee. When I was dying a slow
freelance death earlier this spring, I didn't qualify for unemployment
insurance (I was looking for full time writing work) somehow, even
though I'd been paying into the system for 15 years.
I learned a lot about my own capacity for survival in that time, but I also couldn't understand why some people scammed the system regularly, and I
couldn't catch an honest break. Canadian bureaucratic processes are a
tangled web to say the least, and I don't even try to understand them
most of the time. When I do make an effort to fathom the twists and
turns, I usually end up irked, and I'm just not happy living my life
from one rant to the next.
We have our share of
criminals, abusers, pedophiles, holocaust deniers (tons of those),
environmental villains, viciously icky politicians, and angry
capitalists. We have Wal-Marts and mega-churches and speed dating and
eBay and strip malls, just like you.
We watch a lot of your TV,
but we have our own as well. We even have Canadian Idol, though we
don't have anyone as annoying as Paula Abdul giving drug-addled advice
to the wannabe Madonnas and Backstreet Boys.
Some of us like your HBO
and ESPN, while others call in to donate to the PBS station in the
nearest American city (usually just to stop the pledge drives, and get
the Brit-coms and cooking shows back on the air).
We also watch your movies
(as well as our own), but have a habit of shipping off oddly funny
people to work in your productions when they begin to get famous (Jim
Carrey, Mike Myers, Eugene Levy, John Candy, Tom Green, Celine
Dion...oh, wait....)
We're also the original home of William Shatner and James Doohan (RIP).
Not all of us hate
Americans, and if anything, we just get annoyed near your national
holidays, when we hear you talking about long weekends that we don't
get to enjoy.
Our weather and landscape
is as diverse as your own, and no -- we're not always colder than you.
In fact, most of my province doesn't get as cold on it's coldest day of
the year as some of your major cities do every year in the chilly
season.
We are a bit more clean, but we have our litter.
We are a bit more polite, but we do have a province that keeps rudely trying to leave, too.
We don't go to war as often, but a lot of us do play hockey -- hard.
Then again, we also have
our share of hockey haters, who boo loudly at the constructs of our
international reputation (sick, I tell you -- sick!).
We have people of every
social, emotional, mental, physical and cultural stripe. We have
Mafioso. We have rednecks. We have beauty contestants. We have hippies.
We have religious nuts. We have New Age gurus. We have Subaru dealers.
Some of us wear 'Vote for Pedro' shirts, too.
We even have our share of
cosmopolitan individuals who don't drink beer, and wouldn't wear a
toque if it was all that stood between them and an avalanche.
the mighty toque, in red.
We have immigrants and
expats from every nation you can think of, and not all of them are
happier here than they were in their homelands.
When it comes down to it,
we're just a bunch of people in the same space, with some sweet music,
lots of pretty scenery, some decent beer, fabulous arts and science and
technology possibilities, and just as many loopy problems as any
relatively peaceful, prosperous nation.
I am very blessed to be
able to sleep safely at night (when I do sleep), to be able to have a job, and
to drink clean water. I am blessed that I eat every day, and that I was
able to acquire an education (though I'm still paying for it). I am
excited by much of the activity that goes on in my nation, and I would
certainly sew a flag on my backpack.
I was born in Nipawin, SK,
moved to Whitehorse, YK, moved to Edmonton, AB, and then Chilliwack,
BC. I moved from Chilliwack to Calgary, AB and back. I moved from there
to Edmonton again, from Edmonton to White Rock, BC, and from there to
where I am now, in the second most expensive place to live in Canada,
Vancouver, BC. Woohoo!
I have been many places in
this nation, and used many rest stops throughout. The best rest stop I
ever used was in Bonneville, AB. The best donut I ever had was at
Sunshine Donut in Edmonton. My favourite forest is on Keats Island, in
BC. My favourite sunset was in Swift Current, SK. The coldest I've ever
been was in Cold Lake, AB (-60something C...and you can't say they
didn't warn me). The hottest I've ever been was in Lilooet, BC (46 C).
It's been fun.
I am definitely Canadian. And man, do I love grain elevators, too.
When someone asks me what it means to be Canadian, I can tell them without a doubt exactly what it means to me.
It means that I live in Canada.
12:10:35 AM 
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