Canadians…What A Lucky Bunch Of SOBs We Are

This is a bit of a rant in which I try to be a little more positive than usual. It’s part of my therapy. Hope you enjoy it and realize that while you may hear the odd harsh thing. it’s all just me trying to tell the truth as I see it.

I live in a country called Canada. To me, it's the best country going. In fact, the world agrees with me. Because Canada was just voted the #1 country for quality of life.

We have our ups and downs, but mostly it’s because every so often we will elect a dipshit or two and they fuck things up for a while, because what else can you expect from dipshits.

We don't brag about being a great country, although I guess you could call this bragging a bit.We mostly just carry on being Canadians.

We drink a lot of beer here and we own a lot of guns but we don't kill all that many people with either of those things.

Our economy is pretty solid despite the fact that our dollar is only worth about 75% of a Yankee greenback.

A lot of us are overweight, but what do you expect with a Tim Horton's on every corner?

We understand that we are a nation of people from all over the place. But more importantly, most of us respect that. But you are always gonna have a few assholes (relatively speaking) who don’t. These people are sad because they are only imprinting prejudices from the US (and other much less tolerant places), which is a country that influences us in a lot of different ways. Some good. Some, not so much.

In America these days, bigotry of all kinds is running rampant. And some of it is bound to spill over into my country, and when that happens we do things like re-classifying hate groups as terrorist organizations, which in many ways duct tapes their tiny dicks to their legs.

Our country is still a functioning democracy, because while there might be ideological differences between the left and the right, we’re still sort of civilized about how we deal with each other. Although we could always do better, I suppose.

We only have one pro basketball team in Canada but they just won the NBA Championship, which no doubt pissed off a lot of Americans, who believe that they own sports like basketball, baseball and football.

During this year’s playoff run pretty much the whole country got behind them. It was awesome to behold.That’s what happens here because we’re relatively small and everybody takes ‘fan ownership’ of the the teams that make it big time.

There’s a lot of hockey played and watched here in Canada. It borders on obsession. So I you don’t like hockey you might not like it here a whole lot in the winter. Too bad that for all this obsession, we have’t been able to win a Stanley Cup in like forever. But that doesn’t dampen the enthusiasm of hockey fans. They are forever hopeful.

There are a lot of talented people who grew up here, went to the States and became famous. But they never forget where they were from. That’s because where they’re from is a pretty damn fine place.

And none of them are shy about reminding everyone of that fact.

I grew up in a border town at a time when America was considered to be genuinely great. That’s not so much the case these days. Things are not so great down there right now. When big countries fuck up, they do it big time.

But we know that they will work through it. They always seem too. And we’ll always be friends. Because basically, except for the dipshits, of which there are more and more these days, Americans are generally OK with Canadians.

Canada has two languages. Not many English speaking people can speak French. But nobody seems to give a shit any more.

That’s the thing about Canada. We don’t make a big deal out of stuff that’s not really important to a lot of people.

That’s not to say we’re not paying attention. We are. We just don’t give a shit about what we don’t give a shit about. I mean, why bother?

Ahh …I was just pulling your leg there. We do give a shit. We just don’t want anybody else’s crap interfering with things here. Because life in Canada is good.

We have no reason to want to be like or part of any other country, especially the US. That would just fuck things up and piss people off. You can see that right now in Ontario, where this bozo named Doug Ford got elected and immediately started giving tax breaks to the rich, emulating the way the US currently works. And because of that, he’s getting to be very unpopular.

Sooner or later, though, he will fuck up big time and be gone. The nasty ones always do get fucked in the end in my country. Because Canadians realize two things. One: That balance is important, meaning you have to take care of everyone and Two: Our natural state of being as a country is Liberal Democracy. Any other form of government only causes chaos from either greed or incompetence.

This is something a lot of us hope the US will learn. And learn it before it’s too late for them. Because things down there are pretty messy, despite government propaganda to the contrary.

This Canada Day weekend, we’re gonna go a little gardening, a lot of swimming, hopefully with some family, and generally just take as much advantage as we can of the beautiful warm weather.

But what we’re not gonna do is worry about very much at all. Because this is Canada. And while we have our share of things we need to be concerned about, we don’t let them rattle us to the core of our being.

Because there’s no issue so large that it can’t be worked out in a Tim Horton’s summit meeting.

This would be some good advice for our American friends, although I guess it would be at a Dunkin’ Donuts or IHOP. Instead of getting all wrapped up in your partisan political bullshit, maybe you should learn more about how countries like Canada, and Denmark and Norway and Sweden work.

You might see that this so called ‘socialism’ that your current president is trying to make you believe is communism, is really nothing more than government using your tax dollars to benefit you and your families.

This was how the system is supposed to work but never really has because of all the greedy rich people and corrupt politicians in America.

Ooops sorry for getting political. That’s kinda unCanadian.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for this year. So to all my Canuck comrades, have a great Canada Day Weekend. SkiDoo safe. And don’t overfill that Molson’s muscle, eh.

Jim Murray is an experienced advertising and marketing professional and former professional photographer. He has run his own business (Onwords & Upwords), since 1989 after a 20 year career in Toronto as a senior creative person in major Canadian & international advertising agencies. He is specialized in creating communications for businesses working to make a positive difference in the world.

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