Today, July 1st, is Canada Day. The day in which Canadians in Canada, and all over the world (as if they’re not spread thin enough already up there) celebrate.
Celebrate...
Celebrate something...
Perhaps celebrate the fact their Independence Day celebration comes three days before our Independence Day celebration. Does this seem a little suspicious to anybody but me? Year after year after year we’d been celebrating our Independence on July 4. Since 1776, in fact. More than ninety years later the Canadians come along and decide to have a big whoop-de-do just three days prior to ours. They must have known our party was right around the corner – it was certainly on the Snap-On Tools calendar by then.
Imagine that year after year after year you host a Super Bowl party and then one year your friend and neighbor decides to host a Stanley Cup party the same night. You both know a lot of the same guys… everybody wants to see football… nobody gives a crap about hockey*… but the neighbor is serving Poutine -- in what can only be an obvious attempt to upstage you – and you know the guys won’t be able to resist.
That’s what this is like -- there’ll be parades, parties, cake and ice cream, and The Snowbirds will be performing somewhere, I’m sure (I can almost hear the song they always sing) – in an obvious attempt to upstage us.
If it weren’t for those pesky folks in Mexico, the Canucks would have the first North American Independence celebration of the year.
And this reminds me of one of Kathleen Madigan’s jokes. When she asked a Mexican person what the Cinco de Mayo celebration was for, the Mexican person replied, “for winning the war for our independence.” Kathleen then asked, “Who’d you beat in the war?” The Mexican person said, “France.” “Big deal,” said Madigan, “Who hasn’t?”
Canada’s Independence came more as a peaceful political process than a war of any sort. (My thought it the French Canadians had July 1st of 1867 off. They do, after all, enjoy a good scrap.) At that time, the part of North America that is now Canada was sectioned off into four provinces. Just four; can you imagine how much easier Geography class would have been if we’d just needed to remember four state capitals?
As you know, I’ve recently married a Canadian person. (A woman Canadian person to be precise.) Surprisingly, and I know because I’ve checked with our HR department, I don’t get today off. Ah well, marrying a Canadian comes with plenty of other benefits – for example, since the wedding and regardless of where I am, I instinctively know where magnetic north is; it’s almost as if I gained some type of Dolphin super power the moment I said “I do.”
Anyway, all across Canada (and the world) today Canadians will be celebrating the peaceful process by which they became independent.
Happy Canada Day.
I’m sure there will be Poutine.
*They don’t give a crap so much they don’t realize the Stanley Cup playoffs are a good ways off.
Ah...Poutine! Yummy, but fattening stuff!
ReplyDeleteBTW --Was the wedding recent? congrats in any case!
The wedding was June 26 ... just over a week ago.
ReplyDelete