The Ottawa River

The Trag­i­cally Hip: Ever heard of the Trag­i­cally Hip? Chances are if you did, you hold a Cana­dian pass­port. If no, don’t worry — you’re just a for­eigner. The band from Kingston Ontario has been around for around twenty years but it just doesn’t work out­side Canada. Could that be because their songs mostly revolve around hockey, small Cana­dian towns and Cana­dian his­tory? As a result, when tour­ing in Canada, the Hip typ­i­cally play to sold-out are­nas whereas when tour­ing in the USA, they play in clubs. And per­for­mances are usu­ally attended by Cana­dian expats. The only time they were famous in the USA is when the song New Orleans Is Sink­ing (to non-Canadians: “My mem­ory is muddy what’s this river I’m in; New Orleans is sink­ing and I don’t want to swim”) was banned from the US radios after hur­ri­cane Kat­rina hit New Orleans.

Weird Sports: Ever played Lacrosse, Cana­dian foot­ball or curl­ing? Once again, if you’re not Cana­dian, the typ­i­cal answer would be no. Lacrosse is orig­i­nally a Native Amer­i­can game while Cana­dian Foot­ball is a type of rugby foot­ball, like Amer­i­can foot­ball. Both are very pop­u­lar, but curl­ing beats them both. Imag­ine play­ing chess on ice. Or darts on ice. There you go, this is curl­ing. Two teams take turn slid­ing heavy gran­ite stones down the ice towards the tar­get. Two sweep­ers with brooms accom­pany the rocks and try to direct them as close as they can to the tar­get. It’s actu­ally more com­plex than it seems, given all the yelling involved… A movie was even ded­i­cated to curl­ing: Men With Brooms (2002). And yes, the Trag­i­cally Hip make a cameo appear­ance — why did you even ask!

Don Cherry: The for­mer NHL player and coach who now co-hosts Hockey Night In Canada’s “Coach’s Cor­ner” is worth watch­ing once. Voted the 7^th great­est Cana­dian on the CBC, con­tro­ver­sial Don Cherry is mostly known for his bright and loud suits (polka-dots ties, huge French col­lars and cuffs, and orig­i­nal pat­terns led me to believe he was color-blind, or even blind alto­gether), his staunch patri­o­tism and his polit­i­cally incor­rect views on both pol­i­tics and hockey. His embrace of hockey vio­lence, his dis­like of French Cana­di­ans and Euro­peans, and his bor­der­line xeno­pho­bic rants are some­times way too much — yet, he is some­what enter­tain­ing. Go fig­ure.

Say­ing “eh”: In Cana­dian Eng­lish, “eh” is a key­word. Famous joke goes: “How do you spell ‘Canada’?” “C, eh, N, eh, D, eh.” First, “eh” can be used to con­firm the atten­tion of the lis­tener: “I’m writ­ing this post, eh, so peo­ple will know more about Canada”. It can also be used to turn a declar­a­tive sen­tence into a ques­tion: “fuck­ing cold, eh?” (mean­ing “today’s –40ºC feels rather chilly, don’t you agree?”). It can also means the speaker agrees with you: “I know it’s cold, eh!”. Note that “eh” alone could mean any of the above — this is why there’s a manda­tory 3 years wait period before immi­grants like me can apply for cit­i­zen­ship. More time to study Eng­lish Cana­dian, eh.

The Cana­dian Flag: The first thing you learn when you come to Canada is to draw the Cana­dian flag. Not because it’s manda­tory. Because the flag is just about every­where. Gov­ern­ments of Canada’s build­ings, air­ports, mil­i­tary bases, diplo­matic offices — of course. But also houses, parks, bridges etc. Cana­di­ans just love their flag. An exam­ple? Flags that are flown on Par­lia­ment Hill (from the Peace Tower and the East and West blocks) are pack­aged and can be obtained free of charge. How­ever, there is an 11−−20 years wait­ing list for the flags! Oh, and don’t let me for­get about the government’s pro­gram to pro­mote the flag (which was only adopted in 1965): since 1996, Feb­ru­ary 15^th has been com­mem­o­rated as National Flag of Canada Day. Not a statu­tory hol­i­days though…

Any­one to do a list of “things Amer­i­cans like”, or “things that ____ like”? I’d be curious!

Related arti­cles:

1. Stuffs Cana­di­ans Don’t Like (Part 1)
2. Stuffs Cana­di­ans Don’t Like (Part II)
3. Stuff Cana­di­ans Like (Part 1)
4. Cana­di­ans Behind The Camera
5. Four Years, Already…