Weird things for which Canadians can be grateful
Let’s appreciate all the things that make this country the best place in the world
When fireworks light the Sunday skies over five time zones and nearly 10 million square kilometres, signalling the official end of Canada 150, there will be almost three million Canadians who will be celebrating (or not) from elsewhere around the globe — those expats who make up nearly nine per cent of our population.
Unlike the rest of us, these people don’t typically wake up each morning to Montreal bagels slathered with poutine. They seldom experience the elation of discovering a handful of loonies, a few broken Hawkins Cheezies and a butter tart under the couch cushions. They rarely find themselves in the thick of workplace water cooler discussions about whether or not to renovate the prime minister’s crumbling house (the lowercase one), or whatever inanity burst forth from Don Cherry’s mouth the night before. It is these displaced Canucks who perhaps best understand Joni Mitchell’s plaintive cry: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?”
So it’s with our exiled confreres in mind that we present this, the Great Canadian Gratitude Journal, listing some of the things that make Canada unique, some that make it the best place in the world to live, and some that, well, give us cause to practice our world famous apologies. But they all conspire to make us Canadian.
We love nature. Sure, other countries love nature. But did any of them hire a security guard to watch over a single killdeer, as did Ottawa’s Bluesfest when a chattering plover decided to build her nest and start a family right where Bryan Adams was scheduled to play a few nights later? No, my fellow Canadians, they did not.
We buck trends. While the world’s citizens increasingly congregate in coastal areas, Canadians, who have three oceans at our doorsteps, still largely prefer to line up along the U.S. border instead of by the salty air and sandy beaches.
But there may be method in our collective thalassophobia: If and when the oceans rise by, say 10 metres, and residents in places such as New York, Miami, Singapore and Tokyo are paddling for the hills, most of us will be OK (with apologies to Richmond, B.C., anyone landing at Vancouver International Airport, and many Canadians living on Water Street, be they in Saint John, St. John’s, Halifax or Charlottetown). We can go toe to toe with
Mexico. We all know about the worm found in bottles of Mezcal, but for a flavourful drink addition that more forcefully tests imbibers’ mettle, you want to go to the Downtown Hotel in Dawson, Yukon, any night between 9-11 p.m. and order a Sourtoe Cocktail.
The drink you will be presented will contain a mummified human toe, and once you’ve finished it — “You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but the lips have got to touch the toe” — you will be a member of the Sourtoe Cocktail Club.
The ritual began in the early 1970s when an amputated toe that 50 years earlier was attached to gold miner and bootlegger Louie Linken was found in a jar of rum in an abandoned cabin. It was brought to the hotel by tour boat operator Captain Dick Stephenson, and the fun began. Since then they’ve gone through a couple of footfuls of toes — four or them were accidentally swallowed, while a fifth was consumed on purpose. Others were lost or stolen, while replacements have been bequeathed to the hotel. We are an enigma shrouded in a conundrum, wrapped in a riddle and served with two
creams and two sugars. Yes, perhaps the most iconic piece of Canadiana is the Tim’s doubledouble. But talk about neurosis: In what other country does the largest retail chain’s chief product, consumed like Smarties at a fat kid’s birthday party (two billion cups a year, or roughly 55 cups for every man, woman and child in Canada), spark a national debate over whether it’s any good?
And while we love, love, love our Timmy’s — so much so that we overlook that fact that it’s no longer Canadian-owned, but rather just another piece in a
Brazilian investment firm’s portfolio — our fealty is not boundless: When the restaurant chain pushed back against Ontario’s higher minimum wage by cutting employee benefits, its reputation suffered drastically, dropping it from No. 4 in a 2017 Leger poll to No. 50 a year later. Only Sears Canada, which declared bankruptcy, fared worse.
Still, even to Tim’s detractors, there’s something oddly comforting about this chain of nearly 4,000 doughnut shops spread across the nation like the nowdefunct Distant Early Warning Line that once kept us safe from outsiders.
We got game. Particularly hockey. But it speaks volumes about Canadians that we lay claim to being the best in the world at the sport, despite not having a Canadian team’s name engraved on the Stanley Cup since before Ottawa Senators player Cody Ceci was born. Moreover, how amazing is it that, after playing millions of hockey matches in arenas and on lakes, rivers and in backyards for well over a century, we’re still arguing about how to end a tie game?
We do lay claim, though, to the world’s longest hockey stick, a 62-metre one — slightly longer than an actual NHL rink — attached to a community centre in Duncan, B.C., which forced the good people of Eveleth, Minn., to call their piddling 33-metre stick “The World’s Largest Free-Standing Hockey Stick.” (A word to the wise, though: If the oceans rise 10 metres, Eveleth may win out.)
We award A’s for effort. “Only in Canada,” said Leonard Cohen in his Juno Award-acceptance speech in 1993, “could somebody with a voice like mine win vocalist of the year.” Two years later, the same honour was bestowed upon Neil Young.
Raw out, refined in. Muchof the economic engine that powered our young nation was driven by export of raw materials — lumber, say — that other countries turned into something useful — ships, say. That winning formula exists to this day.
Try this easy test. First, read this list of actors and pick out the Canadians: Neve Campbell. Seth Rogen. Ryan Gosling. Rachel McAdams. Matthew Perry. Martin Short. Ellen Page. Michael Cera. Michael J. Fox. Anna Paquin. William Shatner. Sandra Oh. Rick Moranis. John Candy. Will Arnett. Evangeline Lilly. Dan Aykroyd. Jim Carrey. Donald Sutherland. Ryan Reynolds. Mike Myers.
Done? Now list five really great Canadian movies. (And no, Porky’s was not great.) Location, location, location.
Canadian cities have tried to get in on the Hollywood exodus.
Manitoba’s legislature building in Winnipeg served as a Kansas courthouse in the movie Capote.
Parts of Ottawa stood in for Kansas City, Mo., in the 1990s Mr. & Mrs. Bridge.
The University of Toronto subbed in for MIT and Harvard in the Ben Affleck and Matt Damon launching pad Good Will Hunting, while other parts of that city have served as New York, Chicago, Baltimore and countless other American cities.
Montreal has filled in for South Carolina, Russia and Gotham City, among others.
Parts of the Canadian Rockies feigned a Wyoming accent in Brokeback Mountain. We’re like the Sally Field of locations: “You like us, as long as we dress like someone else.” We love nature, Part II.
Those wishing to learn about Canada’s history and culture need look no further than the tiny Gopher Hole Museum in Torrington, Alta., where diorama after diorama display westward wagons, grain elevators, hockey and curling, music jamborees, farming, weddings, the RCMP, Canada 150 celebrations, church life, First Nations and first love, all using stuffed gophers (to tell our story.
Look out, Canadian Museum of History!