Posted on 06/29/2002 6:14:19 AM PDT by Clive
I have often said that if you were to spin me around a few times, like we did when we were kids, and drop me into the middle of Toronto, without telling me where, I don't think I'd know what country I was in.
I am told by Paul Kwasi Kafele, who thrives under the title of Director, Corporate Diversity at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (the old Queen Street Mental Health Centre) that more than 170 languages are spoken in this city.
Believe it or not, good old Toronto has been recognized by the United Nations as the most diverse city in the world.
That is not at all like the Toronto I remember from the first time I visited in the 1950s, or when I moved here in the early '60s.
The Toronto I remember from those days was very WASP. They rolled up the streets like a carpet each evening and you couldn't go to a sports event or get a drink on a Sunday.
If you did, sinfully, go to the LCBO in those days, you filled out a form with your name, address and liquid request, all of which was dutifully entered into your "liquor book" which you presented. I don't recall ever using my right name. I tended to sign myself either as Leon Uris of Exodus Street or as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Nobody seemed to care. Richard Needham, a columnist for The Globe and Mail back then, speculated that the LCBO would file all those forms alphabetically and then burn them.
My recollection is that there were maybe a half-dozen good restaurants in the entire city. La Chaumiere, Carman's, Old Angelo's, the Town and Country and the Westbury Hotel come to mind. What a provincial backwater we were.
Blessed be the saints, all that has changed.
A CELEBRATION
In last month's Harper's magazine, novelist Pico Iyer wrote what amounts to a celebration of Canada. Born to Indian parents in England and raised in the United States, the well- travelled Iyer now divides his time between California and Asia and lauds Canada for "thinking about globalism and pluralism, the possibilities of multiculturalism, long before the rest of us knew the terms existed."
Using Canadian writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Anne Michaels and Rohinton Mistry as examples, he sees our country as having "literature without borders," touching on themes of displacement, immigration and changing identity.
Anyway, with all that in mind, I've been thinking about all the folks taking the Canadian citizenship exam. I'm not sure exactly how it's done, but I understand there are questions about Canadian history, politics, capitals and the like. How ridiculous. None of that stuff has anything to do with Canadians.
Here are a few questions that are much more pertinent to being a Canadian. (The answers are at the bottom.)
1) What comes after "Hey, Mabel"?
2) What are the denominations of Canadian Tire money?
3) How do you pronounce "about"?
4) Who was Tim Horton?
5) Can you speak any of the three official languages? (English, French and Hockey)
6) If you speak Hockey, tell me, what is a "deke"? What do you call the area between the blue lines?
7) Which official language does Jean Chretien speak?
8) If the world were to end at midnight, what time would it be in Newfoundland?
9) Have you ever made love in a canoe? Describe. Do you have pictures?
10) Robert Service wrote, "There are strange things done in the midnight sun/ By the men who moil for gold." Name a strange thing you've done. How do you moil?
11) If someone shouts, "Yes! Harder, harder!" what are they doing?
ANSWERS: 1) Black Label; 2) 5, 10, 25, 50 cents and $1; 3) "aboot"; 4) You're kidding; 5) Soccer doesn't count; 6a) Deke means faking the other guy out of his socks; 6b) The neutral zone; 7) Neither; 8) 12:30 a.m.; 9) Send me the pictures; 10) For example, have you ever eaten a Nanaimo bar in a bar in Nanaimo? Moil = drudge in the mud; 11) Curling;
There! That's what you need to know to be a Canadian.
When I flew from Boston to Philly last week, I saw a Muslim woman in a head cover working security at Logan. I can't tell you how chilling I found that.
Most indicative, however, are the Torontonian skills of whineing and whingeing. "Whingeing" is a word that means "constant complaining about being under-paid and over-worked." This extends to complaing about the strength of the American dollar and the unfair weakness of the Canadian dollar. Now, Alberta is OK. But, the folks from Ontario are leftist weasels, snotty and, generally, disdainful of Americans and American culture. This has its roots in the Royalist traitors who, after the American Revolution, fled the US, one step ahead of the Continental Army, to escape. Many left property and wealth in the US (stolen or "whinged" from American yeomen) and have always resented it.
Wherever they went about in the town we all were billeted in, the Brits always asked them if they were AMERICANS!!
Oh, lordy...they hated that!!
One night at very , very crowded pub, one frequented by locals and visitors....a Canadian gal, WITH THE SUPPORT OF A LARGE CONTINGENT OF HER FELLOW CANADIANS got up on a table and read a "message" to the locals and all who were there...Americans included....It went something like this:
WHY DO THE PEOPLE OF THIS TOWN only ask if we are Americans....we are your family....WE STAYED WITH YOU AFTER THE AMERICANS REBELLED AND DESERTED YOU!"
At this point, the Brits started yelling and booing her and her group ....they fled in haste and SHOCK!!
I was laughing so hard, that I spilled my lager and a most kind Brit with a spiked hair-do and dog collar/w chains, bought me and MY husband another round!!
Those were the days....the British even cheered at our mock battle on Saturday when we "won"...on Sunday the Americans and Canadians portraying the British Army were the winners...the British citizens clapped as the Americans marched of the field.
Nooo, thats the Logan airport in Boston. :-}
Good to hear that. And most Albertans think eastern Canadians are pinkos, too!
Eric, I'm suspecting you're a Canuck in exile!
You are dead right, of course. F**kin' 'A', eh?....you hoser! ;^)
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