Tag Archives: July 1

What’s it like to be a Canadian

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~ Ninety percent of population is massed within 100 miles of northern American border.

~ Seems not to mind that one of its provinces has turned almost entirely French.

~ Excessive politeness only makes sense as cover for something truly sinister. But what?

~ Citizens seem strangely impervious to cold.

~ Decriminalization of marijuana and acceptance of gay marriage without corresponding collapse of social institutions indicate Canada may, in fact, be indestructible.

~ Has infiltrated entertainment industry with singers, actors, and comedians practically indistinguishable from their American counterparts.

~ Consistently stays just below cultural radar yet never quite disappears.

~ Parliamentary government and common-law judiciary appear to function acceptably yet remain completely inscrutable.

~ Never had a “disco phase.”

~ Seemingly endless supply of timber, donuts, and Scotch-plaid hats with earflaps.

~ Keeps insisting it “has no designs on America” and “only wants peace.”

~ Plays a mean game of pond hockey.

According to McSweeney: REASONS TO FEAR CANADA

by SEAN CARMAN

A Toast To Canada

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Blue Jays Baseball Game on Canada Day, July 1, 2014

Blue Jays Baseball Game on Canada Day, July 1, 2014 courtesy photo by my sister

O Canada, I have not forgotten you,
and as I kneel in my canoe, beholding this vision   
of a bookcase, I pray that I remain in your vast,
polar, North American memory.
You are the paddle, the snowshoe, the cabin in the pines.   
You are Jean de Brébeuf with his martyr’s necklace of hatchet heads.
You are the moose in the clearing and the moosehead on the wall.
You are the rapids, the propeller, the kerosene lamp.   
You are the dust that coats the roadside berries.   
But not only that.
You are the two boys with pails walking along that road,   
and one of them, the taller one minus the straw hat, is me.
Billy Collins, “Canada” from The Art of Drowning. Copyright © 1995 by Billy Collins. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press, www.pitt.edu/~press/ (Source: The Art of Drowning (1995) via Poetry Foundation)

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