One long post of all things Canadian today...
The 48th Highlanders. You can't be Canadian if you don't like pipe bands. It's a rule.
A grand Canadian tradition: the Tattoo
Halifax has one of the best in the world, and I went twice. I know someone, who lives now in Toronto but grew up in Cape Breton, (which is the source of all Canadianness) who flies back every year to sing in the Tattoo choir.
Stan,
Oh, how I wish you hadn't left us. Things would have worked out better...
The Canadians arrive: Devil's Brigade.
I've got this movie. It's about how the clean-cut Canadians went to Italy and kicked the tar out of the bad guys. (Yes, that's Cliff Robertson marching in correct Canadian form at the front. I was taught this in army cadets, you make a fist with your thumb straight up on top, and bring your arm up so it is level with the top of your breast pocket.)
It is one of my all time favourite war movies.
Canadians war-like?
Best neighbours.
Big!
But of course, no one likes Toronto.
I went to PEI once. There were LOTS of potato fields...
"...anOTHER big load o' buddados..."
And if you're in Halifax, always get your chips at lunchtime from Bud the Spud, parked in his own officially reserved spot, outside the library.
Big Things! (It's kind of a Canadian thing)
Big Things in Canada I've seen:
The Big Nickel
The Big Hockey Stick
The Big Easter Egg
The Big Blueberry (admittedly, one of the smaller Big Things in Canada, but blueberries are big, both literally and economically in the maritimes...)
Curling! Paul Gross! Leslie Neilsen:
Three other Great Canadian Things no one outside of Canada has ever heard of.
(plus a funny scene with beavers)
Mounties!
(Real Mounties aren't really like Paul Gross in Due South. I thought I'd just say that in case anyone gets confused. For one thing, he never had the regulation mustache. And he wasn't a living embodiment of political correctness...)
(Speaking of PC, Dorothy seems a little down in the dumps this Dominion Day. I've told her that it's because she's an ex-liberal from Toronto, the Source of All Badness in Canada. Being a Toronto ex-liberal can leave deep scars. Toronto liberals are always raised on high-irony diets, which in later life can lead to Bitter Conservatism in which you can't like things any more. One way or the other, Toronto knocks all the cheerful out of you. Go on over there and cheer her up about Canada, OK? Go on. Quote her some funny Canadian poetry or something.)
~
We're celebrating Dominion Day today with the first (Hamilton-)diocesan-clergy-celebrated solemn High Mass in about two generations. The Heart of the Lord will keep us alive during this (spiritual) famine.
ReplyDeleteAM
Ahem.
ReplyDeleteAs probably the only American member of Hilary Fandom with a certifiable Canadian Studies Minor - which included a 1982 trip to Parliament Hill in which I got to sit at the Cabinet table (try that in the White House) - who actually knows who Joe Clark is, who the guy on the 5 dollar bill is (that would be Sir Wilfrid), and who knows all the words to "O Canada" given the fact I grew up 40 miles from Niagara Falls and used to hear it just before the Star-Spangled Banner every night before the tv stations signed-off when they used to do such things, I think I have all the necessary qualifications to wish you a genuinely heartfelt and maple-syrup soaked
HAPPY DOMINION DAY
Joe who?
ReplyDelete"You can't be Canadian if you don't like pipe bands. It's a rule."
ReplyDeleteCan one even be human and not like pipe bands?
Happy Dominion Day!
Katherine
Katherine,
ReplyDeleteThe answer is a most definite NO!
Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer
We had our picture with the Blueberry that was in NB on our way to Cape Breton last summer.
ReplyDeleteWe spent our evening at the Solemn High Mass in Toronto with Bishp Boissoneau preaching!!! They had 500 hosts and had to start breaking a lot of them up because they didn't have enough. Over 500 people! Then we stayed for the reception followed by a frantic drive down Dufferin St and we made it to see the Ontario Place fireworks!
"You can't be Canadian if you don't like pipe bands. It's a rule."
ReplyDeleteCan one even be human and not like pipe bands?
No argument from me. . . which I'm sure comes as no surprise.
Thanks for this, Hilary. I hope my countrymen will remember, ere too long, what fine and fierce frinds we have to the North.
ReplyDeleteHail! The Ture North!
God keep your land glorious and free!
C.
*true
ReplyDelete