Add to list of Things Canadian: Air, Water

There are days that I wake up and I think to myself 'I've got to ask a doctor why I sweat so much when I sleep' and there other days when I wake up and think to myself 'I am modestly glad I am a Canadian'. I had the second thought more often when I lived in Japan, which is actually not such a bad place to live, but being away from your homeland, even if it does have winter six months of year, conjures such thoughts. Saying 'I'm glad to be a Canadian' is a lot like saying 'I'm glad I can breathe oxygen' or 'I'm glad that they still make bran muffins with raisins in them', all pleasantly bland phrases that have no impact.

Every once and a while I have a stirring in my heart that I identify as patriotism (or the start of a palpitation) such as this morning when I read that Jerry Falwell and died and reflected on how someone like him couldn't make in in Canadian politics (see previous post). The fact that we have room for people who want to destroy the country and a cyborg sent from the future is another matter. We don't accept hatemongers and con men masquerading as men of the lord for their own personl gain, and that's something to be proud of, if not too long to put on a coin. Occasionally I have the feeling that despite evidence to the contrary, things are good here in The Great White North.

And then I stumble on this and my heart deflates like a punctured basketball. The CBC is trying to create a list of the Seven Wonders of Canada (for reasons not really explained) and have culled a list of 50 nominees. Under half of the nominee are man-made (err, sorry, people-made) and that includes The Vimy Memorial in France and The Montreal Bagel. The rest are natural phenomena, such as The Northern Lights and a herd of caribou. (This entry is possibly the best of the bunch, if not for the line 'Arguably Canada’s best known caribou herd' which cruelly disses all the lesser known caribou herds in Canada, such as the one called Liberal backbenchers).

I've never really understood our fascination and determination to derive some kind of national pride from our geography, as if early settlers had a hand in making the prairie skies or Niagara Falls. If they had it would certainly make Canadian history class more exciting. ('The early settlers, deeming the sky not to be inspiring enough, created new ones out their patented Ukrainian sky machine, the patent of which has since been lost'). Most of these seven wonders where here before our ancestors got here and if we don't much them up too much, will be here long after we're gone. Citing them as a source of natural pride is laughable, and we wonder why we don't have any street cred with the international community.

And the Montreal bagel? That could be on the list? Why not the double double? I'm just glad 'peacekeeping' didn't make the list, though I have a feeling it was nominated.