Happy Canada Day!I'm a pretty happy Canadian, proud to be from this country. I love our symbols, I love our people, I love our music and arts, I love our land. I don't love our history of abusing the Native peoples, and I don't love our (collective) slowness in shifting off oil and continuing to rape the land in so many, many places. But I do love the vastness of this country, and the feeling I have that I could travel only within Canada and NEVER BE BORED.
14.2 more reasons to love Canada (because 142 is too long a list to compose and still go out and do stuff today):
1. Snow and ice are beautiful.
2. Pierre Trudeau is quite the cat. (See photo below.)
3. CBC Radio spans our country and despite cutbacks, does an amazing job.
4. Maple syrup!
5. Chatelaine, Macleans, the Globe and Mail, and Canadian House & Home are among our awesome publications.
6. National health care.
7. Margaret Atwood.
8. Q with Jian Ghomeshi.
9. The Trans-Canada Highway that has taken so many of us somewhere.
10. The complex relationship between Quebec and the rest of the country that could only exist here.
11. "Eh?"
12. The Hudson's Bay company colors.
13. VIA Rail!
14.2. Yes, Tim Hortons. I know, I know - but despite my reservations, I know that several times I have re-entered the country from away, and the first thing I wanted to do was get a Tim Hortons coffee and doughnut. This means they have great advertising and marketing, but it also means we all share it. For the extra two pounds I must have gained over the years from eating Tim Hortons doughnuts, I make this entry 14.2 on the list.
And from the book, "I never promised you a rose garden," by Michelle Le Grand and Allison Fay, 1972, Greywood Publishing Limited, a little exchange between former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and former President Richard Nixon:
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