"I have a strange thing for girls who say 'aboot.'"

And with ranks that include such names as Shania Twain, Pam Anderson, Elisha Cuthbert, Tricia Helfer, Natasha Henstridge, Evangeline Lilly, Margot Kidder, Kristin Kreuk, Anna Paquin, and Erica Durance who wouldn’t? (Is it odd that 30% of that list are connected to Superman in some manner and half have been in comic book movies? God I need to get out more.) Of course I bring this up because today is that most important of days, Canada Day, where or neighbors to the north celebrate all that it means to be Canadian.

What does it mean to be Canadian? Well, I have several friends who hail from the Great White North, however I didn’t want to ask them so I thought about it for about ten minutes and came up with this. Being Canadian is just like being American except:

1. You cannot pronounce certain words properly. In this they are very English and that’s kind of sad. I thought they were better than that.
2. You have a predilection for making every sentence sound like a question, eh.
3. You’re most likely (95%) to be missing teeth from a hockey related childhood injury.
4. You do not suffer the social stigma of actually being American. For those of you reading in the States who cannot wrap your mind around that little concept think of it as being from New Jersey or Oklahoma.

In honor of America-Lite, I wrote this little prayer last year which I thought I would share with you:

A Canada Day Prayer

Oh Lord, we give thanks to you (and the British Crown) for positioning our strategic tree reserve so close to our own borders. And we thank you for filling it with liberal wieners who will sell us prescription drugs at one-third the cover price. And let us not forget that you stuck them with that cursed land known as Quebec rather than saddling us with their Francophile ways (lets face it, the only thing worse than the French is the French-Canadians.) And lord, we pray for all the poor Canadian children in the hope that one day they will realize that not only is "about" spelled with OU rather than OO and that A is actually a letter, but that they really are, along with Guam, Puerto Rico, England, and Japan, the disenfranchised 51st state. Finally lord, we give our most humble thanks for hockey and, even though it is the only major sport to lose an entire season due to a labor dispute, we have faith that some day all of your children, even the dirty infidels, will see the truth and hockey will be elevated to its proper place at the head of the sport pantheon. Amen.

All joking and stereotypes aside I really have nothing against Canada or Canadians however there is one individual I would like to say bad things about for a moment. When I was in high school my family and I hosted a visiting student from Quebec for a couple of weeks. Nick, the student, and I became pretty good friends and would chat from time to time on the phone. Generally this was a pleasant experience however things turned a bit ugly when his older brother would answer the phone. His brother was a staunch Quebecois and refused to speak English. At all. Even to people where there was no reasonable expectation that they would speak French.

Okay I understand the whole “Whoah is me I am being oppressed by people who are just about the same as me,” as much as the next middle-class white kid who grew up in suburbia, but hanging up on me because I don’t know how to ask if Nick is there in French? Grow the hell up. This kind of crap-ass behavior is why people don’t like Francophone Quebecois, or the French for that matter. I do not expect everyone to kow-tow to me by learning English, however if you speak English, which he did, then don’t play like you don’t to make some obscure socio-political point which is going to be lost on me anyways because I couldn’t give two craps about the “oppressed” Quebecois.

Happy Canada Day, or Fete du Canada.