Today is Canada Day – our national holiday. Canada is officially 146 years old.
It’s time for fun, food and fireworks.
I am a very proud, patriotic Canadian and am grateful to have been born in this country. Many, many others are not so lucky and are stuck in some awful place where they have little or no control over their lives, especially the girls and women.
Today I give thanks for the privilege of an accident of birth.
Happy Birthday, Canada!
Right now, Calgary is enduring a very serious flood, as are a number of smaller communities near Calgary, such as High River, Canmore and Banff. Southern Alberta is also being flooded – the South Saskatchewan river through Medicine Hat will peak some time tomorrow morning.
There has been loss of life and the damage to property has been monumental.
Calgary and the other communities are hanging in there, though. Calgary is still planning to go ahead with the Stampede which is due to start two weeks from now.
Makes me feel petty for having whined about my wet basement and also reminds me to be grateful for what I have.
I’m thinking of all of you and wishing you the best.
So, I’ve been really busy and haven’t had a chance to post for a while. I realized just how busy when I took a look at my last post and saw that I was supposed to give eleven random facts about myself but didn’t. Why eleven? I have no idea, but that didn’t even register when I was doing the post…
All right. I’m digressing again. To finish the last post properly, here are eleven random facts about me:
1. I am fourth-generation former military. My son makes five.
2. I once met George Bush Jr. before he was president and had a chance to talk to him. His wife was nice. He was an idiot.
3. I am “double-jointed,” especially in my hands, elbows and shoulders. My legs used to be the same way but aren’t any more because I’m two seconds away from officially becoming ancient.
4. Every time I have the gall to think that I’ve figured something out, God or the prophets or Murphy (you know, the Murphy’s Law guy) smites me (smotes me?) to make sure that I don’t get above my raisin’.
5. Water follows me everywhere, especially into my basement where it keeps finding new places to drip.
6. I’ve eaten prairie oysters and enjoyed them. For those of you who don’t know, prairie oysters are bulls’ balls.
7. I have a small extra rib on one side, colloquially known as “Adam’s rib.”
8. I like to eat Swiss cheese and pickled beets. Together. I know. It’s weird.
9. I’m half English and half French. This should make me the perfect little Canadian but what it really means is that I can shrug and have a stiff upper lip at the same time.
10. My favourite colour is red. I like lots of other colours, too, but red rules!
11. I am NOT a morning person. I could do a whole post on this one. I hate mornings. They’re just so, so bright, and, and, bright. And I don’t like it when people around me leap out of bed and act all perky … see, there’s a rant coming.
Dadahhh! Done!
It’s official – I have a new blog name! My particular thanks to Project Southsea for his suggestion which I then altered slightly. In his football obsessed (soccer) nation, the term “back of the net” is a reference to scoring a goal, but in Canada, a hockey obsessed nation, that term would mean that the puck is “behind” the net.
My puck is definitely in the net.
Two little words, big difference, so I made a couple of changes. I am, therefore, now officially called “In the Net! – Stories of Life and Narcissistic Survival.”
My original title, “Narcissism – One Woman’s True Story of Marriage to a Narcissist” is now a category title, and I still want to post about that topic and stick to my original intention of warning others about getting into relationships with these people. But as I indicated in my last post, there are many other things that I want to write about, too.
I will still have to closely guard my privacy by altering anything that could personally identify me or the people in my life, but there’s much that I can share.
Thanks to all of you who have supported me with your follows, your comments or just by clicking “like.” You are all very much appreciated.
So, if you’re interested, ask what you would like – and with your permission, I may turn your question into a post!
So I was noodling, mulling over how I was going to fashion part two on “being” Canadian, when Barack Obama put his size twelve tootsies into his mouth, both at the same time, and provided me with the perfect fodder.
It seems that while giving a speech on Israeli/Palestine relations, Mr. Obama compared the two warring nations (question – Is Palestine now considered to be a nation?) to Canada and the U.S. What he meant was that Canada and the U.S. sometimes disagree about things but that we eventually figure it out without resorting to violence, and that Israel and Palestine should get over themselves and do the same. What it sounded like was that we are at each other’s throats and that Toronto is Baghdad‘s sister city.
Twitter is beside itself with glee. The twittersphere is busy twitting, sorry, tweeting, about a movement called #TheCanucksAreComing. Sounds like a bowel movement to me.
Some of the comments are really funny. Some are just plain stupid. Some are using this incident as an excuse, oops, forum, to complain about Quebec.
Remember my comments from part one about how we can be smug and arrogant and have a self-esteem issue all at the same time? Well, some people might say that this goes a long way to proving it. The Canucks Are Coming?? In what way, exactly? According to the twits, sorry, twitterers? tweeters? it’s going to look something like this (with my respects to the originators of these comments, I have taken some liberties and made some twits, er, tweaks):
Washington will need a wash after it has been set awash in a sea of poutine. [Will we need a pipeline for this??]
All U.S. hockey players are part of a sleeper cell. [Especially Tampa Bay.]
We will change the alphabet from “eh” to “zed.” [And add an indiscriminate “u” tu euery wurd.]
The Americans will face maple syrup bottle projectiles as militants of the Canadian Intifada cross Lake Erie. [We will cross with the guidance of the ice road truckers except by dog sled. More authentic that way. Waiting for Lake Erie to freeze, however, might be like waiting for, well, hell to freeze over.]
Wayne Gretzky is an embedded spy. [Which is why his hockey team can’t get to the Stanley Cup.]
There were lots of other comments about Tim Horton’s coffee and burning down Washington, all of which give some insight into the Canadian psyche. While many were quite funny, they also had something of a scathing edge to them. A little hurt, maybe; maybe even a little bitter. A little bit pissed off that the U.S. doesn’t pay more attention or isn’t more respectful or doesn’t turn to us more often for advice or help. After all, we have all the answers!
And we also need to grow up about it, too.
What do you think?
So, it’s soon going to be spring and I live in Canada. I know that mentioning that fact will conjure pictures of palm trees and sandy beaches snowshoes, sled dogs and hockey players for you. Oops. Sorry. I went off on a flight of fancy there. The fact is that this country is so big that you can’t make any generalized statements like that. Actually, the same is true for small countries, which only goes to show that stereotyping is just a form of intellectual laziness and convenient labelling. But I’m digressing again.
I have never gone dog sledding in my life. Ditto snowshoeing. I watch hockey now and then but have never played it.
I hate poutine. Worst of all, since I’m half French I’m supposed to like this crap and have secret family recipes for it hidden in the attic. Soggy fries (I am NOT going to refer to them as French – they never were and never have been) buried under some sort of packaged sludge masquerading as “gravy”. Would probably work as a below zero lubricant for your snowmobile.
Then this mess is further assaulted by a load of “cheese curds.” Yuck. See attached picture. Jamie Oliver would choke if he saw this stuff. And yes, we let our kids eat it. Encourage them, even. Whoever invented this dreck should be buried in it.
I like maple syrup but I don’t collect it and turn my back yard into a frozen syrup arena.
Most of us do not live in igloos, but some of our first nations people are trying to hang on to the knowledge of how to build one, along with other knowledge that we attempted to either beat out of them or steal from them, including the game of lacrosse. We changed it, called it hockey and then wouldn’t let them play it.
Some of us get terrifying winters and some of us don’t. I live in a part that used to be fairly predictable but isn’t any more. Global warming, anyone?
Summers can be ridiculously hot in some places and beautifully temperate in others. We actually have “desert zones” and “rain forest zones.”
Not all easterners grow potatoes and wrangle lobsters. It’s true that some of them have a pretty strong accent, but so what?
Canada produces some of the best ice wine in the world. Go figure.
The Tim Horton’s coffee shops are really popular in this country. They’re named after a hockey player. Some people think that this is classic Canadiana. I do not.
Sometimes, other nationalities think that we’re a sort of watered down version of the U.S. I once heard Canadians referred to as “plastic Americans.” Ever mistaken an Austrian for a German? They hate that and can respond rather ferociously to it. We feel the same way about the assumption that we’re Americans.
Some Canadians think that in order to be a “success” you have to go to the U.S.
We can often be a rather smug and even arrogant bunch about how great things are in our chunk of the world, but we have our problems, just like everyone else. I’m sometimes viewed with suspicion because I have a French name. Is she a separatist? (No, I’m not.)
What about the tar sands and the oil pipelines? An environmental disaster? I believe so.
Some people say that we have a self-esteem issue.
Our politicians leave a lot to be desired and they exploit holes in our electoral system that you could drive an aircraft carrier through. We aren’t doing much about it.
What say you? What’s your opinion? Where do you live? What stereotypes do you face?
In the Net! - Pictures and Stories of Life 
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