Canada – Little Known Facts
Posted By Randy on June 30, 2011
I have no small number of non-Canadian friends and I never tire of educating them about customs in my country. Tomorrow is Canada Day and I will be far too busy doing that most Canadian of things – canoeing with my Mate – to write anything here, so on this Canada Day Eve I am setting forth to dispense some wondrous Canuckness for your reading and listening pleasure!
Amazing Canadian Fact #1: The Maritime Sobriety Test!
This is not yet a Canada wide practice (although it is undergoing testing in British Columbia) but it does apply to people driving the roads of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. If you are stopped by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and your sobriety is called into question, you have the option to remove all doubt by singing this ditty all the way through without making a mistake. Fiddle accompaniment is not required but it never hurts.
Amazing Canadian Fact #2: The Traditional, Never Fail, Canadian Method of Conception!
Besides mud coated 4 wheel drive quarter ton trucks on tractor tires, golf carts, and dog sled, the favourite method of getting around in the Great White North is still, and always will be, the good old canoe. But that’s not the amazing fact because everybody knows it. What most people don’t know is that the tried and tested Canadian method of conceiving children is standing up in a canoe on a pitch black night when it’s raining like hell. Magickally enough, tomorrow is both Canada day AND the night of the new moon, so it’s guaranteed to be dark as six feet up a moose’s ass. Add the fact that it’s got to be pissing down rain somewhere and we’ll be looking for an explosion of little gaffers next April, just in time for my own birthday! It doesn’t look like rain in our part of the country, so Mrs. LFM and I will remain undaunted and just practice, practice, practice!
I often get mail from people, mostly Americans, asking where this unorthodox method came from. Well, it’s actually lost in the mists of time. Some say it’s an amalgam of things learned from the Native Indians and the need to stay on schedule on the busy canoe routes of the fur trading era when it was always rush hour. Whatever the real origin, what is certain is that a strapping lad who can demonstrate unflagging staying power while quick-stepping atop a tipsy watercraft has it all over the man who can’t, and the girls take notice! There is a Celtic proverb that goes, “Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.” Here in Canada, our women say it the same, only replacing “sword” with a different word.
None less than the esteemed National Film Board of Canada, foremost of Canadian icons followed by Canadian Tire, the Coleman Company, and Tim Hortons, has immortalized this fact in the following historical vignette.
Coming up in my next article of arcane Canadiana, we’ll be talking about how the Beaver pelt was the base unit of exchange in Canada until 1958, and how up until 1991 you could still pay for purchases made at the Hudson Bay Company in Beaver pelt and get your change back in squirrel. Until next time, enjoy Canada Day, wherever you are. I know we will.
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