Welcome to Canada: The Great White Waste of Time.

The Weekly Standard ^ | March 21, 2005 | Matt Labash

[quidnunc]

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia. – Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer

Vancouver, British Columbia – Whenever I think of Canada … strike that. I'm an American, therefore I tend not to think of Canada. On the rare occasion when I have considered the country that Fleet Streeters call "The Great White Waste of Time," I've regarded it, as most Americans do, as North America's attic, a mildewy recess that adds little value to the house, but serves as an excellent dead space for stashing Nazi war criminals, drawing-room socialists, and hockey goons.

Henry David Thoreau nicely summed up Americans' indifference toward our country's little buddy when he wrote, "I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada. … What I got by going to Canada was a cold." For the most part, Canadians occupy little disk space on our collective hard drive. Not for nothing did MTV have a game show that made contestants identify washed-up celebrities under the category "Dead or Canadian?"

If we have bothered forming opinions at all about Canadians, they've tended toward easy-pickings: that they are a docile, Zamboni-driving people who subsist on seal casserole and Molson. Their hobbies include wearing flannel, obsessing over American hegemony, exporting deadly Mad Cow disease and even deadlier Gordon Lightfoot and Nickelback albums. You can tell a lot about a nation's mediocrity index by learning that they invented synchronized swimming. Even more, by the fact that they're proud of it.

-snip-

[CaptainAwesome2]

More diverse? I live in NYC and me and my fiance were commenting today that if terrorists attacked Manhattan they would be lucky if 10% if their victims are Americans. I think Hannity needs to stop calling New York the the greatest city.

[John Lenin]

I lost it when I went to Canada in the early 80's, everything cost an arm and a leg, gas was almost $4 a gallon back than and the prices in the food stores were outrageous. I guess if you don't know any better, you think it is normal.

[beaver fever]

"Talk about a waste of time, that long, boring article certainly was."

Not to mention that he wasted 5400 perfectly good English words protesting about how Canadians are obsessed about the US and merely succeeded in revealing his own infantile obsession with Canada.

I come live in Vancouver and I don't believe for a second that he was here for more than a day trip, if he even bothered to cross the border at all.

He didn't have to come to Vancouver to write this piece. He could have written it on his laptop in his hotel in Bellingham which I strongly suspect he did.

I change my opinion of him, he isn't an idiot. He's willfully and proudly ignorant. He not only smells his own armpits he thinks his farts should be bottled and sold as perfume. What a gas bag!

On one point alone and there are many he talks about Canada's racist expropriation of Native Land. What he doesn't bother to mention is that we are giving it back.

Both the North West Territories and Nunavut are self governing provinces. The NWT has full control and ownership of their land base and Nunavut is in the process of finalizing their land rights.

This is the equivalent of the US government giving North and South Dakota back to the Lakota/Souix with a few million acres left over.

Will the US do the same for the Lakota as the Canadian govt has done for the Dene and the Inuit.

There will be igloos in Hell before that ever happens.

I could go on and on ad nausiam but I'm afraid he might sue me for copyright violation for cribbing his style.

[beaver fever]

I come live = I live

[dljordan]

"Best thing about Canada? ALL THE HOT WOMEN IN MONTREAL!"

Been there. You're right. I was with my wife but my eyeballs were tracking.

[Snowyman]

the early 80's, everything cost an arm and a leg, gas was almost $4 a gallon back than

Where the hell were you ? Iqaluit?

[-YYZ-]

I was wondering the same thing. I got my license in 1983 and gas was less than CDN$.50/liter at that time, and the Cdn dollar was worth about USD$.85, IIRC. By my calculation that would have made gas about USD$1.60/US gallon, at the worst.

[Snowyman]

There are 3.785 L in a US gallon. Even today regular at $.80/L that's about $2.50us a us gallon . And I bought gas Friday for .729/L.

[wlyonmackenzie]

Ya it was fun to grow up here (Canada) in rural Alberta, BC or Ontario in the 60s...the socialist soviet state had not arrived and we were as ignored by our socialist polis as we were by the US...it was bliss being a "nobody" you were left alone...ignored by power politics....the only interest was from wealthy people wanting to visit or buy a piece of our rustic idyllic state...it was true freedom...a wonderful time to be alive. Rural values were Canadian values...before the onslaught of the soviet Kanikistani state.

Now, the tentacles of the statist trudeaupian soviet cabal are into what you own, behave, say, think, write and of course your pockets to the tune of 60%.....all we get for it is a bleak economic future and the coldest/longest winters on record.

This is one wild colonial lad that hates all the attention he is getting from the socialist cabal in Ottawa and the snub from wealth creators south of the 49th. I want to be "ignored" again...what the hell do I have to do to be left alone again???

Well I took the first step last week...I reapplied for my US passport ( My Mom was American) and I'm shopping for real estate in Texas...Corpus Christi, Galveston, Austin.

My first act as a US citizen and Texican (after I buy my house) will be to buy a Kimber custom 1911 and get a carry permit....A few weeks on a decent IPSC range...then off to the BLM boonies to dust some snakes, Javalina, sod dogs or any other 4 or 2 legged vermin that crosses the sights. When that gets boring of on the boats for Marlin or Jack fish...then I can ride my hog all year round....seems an even trade for trading in the snowmobile and an irreparably commie government.

Gawd I love being ignored by socialist bureaucrats...I think that's the best part of being American.....socialist bureaucrats are an endangered species in Texas.

[ken5050]

One man's opinion..twelve years ago, we had perhaps the best vacation ever in Western Canada...I had a weeklong conference at the Banff Springs Hotel...absolutely gorgeous place..took the wife and daughters along..it was our oldest daughter's HS graduation present..Lake Louise, and the glaciers just blew me away..then we took the sleeper train on the CP tracks to Vancouver..two day trip...one magnificent vista after another, though Kamloops is/was? kind of a dump?...spend a few days in Vancouver, then took a cruise up to Alaska..every Canadian I met was nice, liked America and Americans..

[what's up]

Wish you all the best in Texas. I hope you find some of what you had growing up...freedom.

[Unlike God]

Yes, But Americans had 3x the amount of soldiers there making them easy targets in the water on omaha beach, and plus after our assault we pushed farther than any other allied division in france