In any case, my Dad was living right across the border in Quebec. Or on the border. I don't know. I always thought Hull was in Quebec, and I remember lots of license plates on cars that read Je me souviens so I know we were in Quebec, anyway.
It was all over the news at the time that Quebec was talking about separating from Canada. I didn't completely understand what this meant. To my small, confused mind I took it to mean quite literally what I'd heard; that Quebec would literally be removed from Canada.
This concept terrified me. You might wonder why. Well, I've made a diagram to illustrate why this is a problem, and I think if you look at it yourself you'll understand:
For those of you who are not from Canada, I drew a frowny face where Quebec is supposed to be.
Now, let's examine the issue here. I'm sure it's clear now why Quebec being shoved into the middle of the ocean or wherever the grown-ups wanted to put it seems completely unreasonable to everyone else too. What would happen to PEI, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia? They would probably float away, or sink or something. And what if Quebec was relocated to some other place? What if they put it up near England or something? My Dad would need to fly a plane to work every day just to go to work in Ottawa. That is ridiculous.
And most importantly, I wouldn't be able to take the train to see him anymore, which would suck massively since the train is awesome.
Anyway, this misconceived understanding of my country's politics is what led me to my actual topic for this thing. (Hopefully nobody's just closed the window at this point because they've finally realized how vapid I am and how much time you're wasting. Thanks for staying here. There are cookies and pie at the end of this post, I promise.) It led me to thinking of other peoples' misunderstandings of our country, or even just stereotypes that people find funny. I wish most of them were true, because I think my life would be so much better.
For one thing, I would love to be a lumberjack and 'just not care'. That would be awesome. Think of how lax that job would be? We could just hang out with the beavers in the woods and cut trees sometimes. Not too much, though. Because we are relaxed.
For another, I wish I lived in an igloo. I also wish I had a polar bear. I would name him Frosting and he would be my best pal. We would frolic through the wilderness (which would constantly be covered in snow because Canada is freezing all the time and never stops being freezing) and I would keep him fed on a steady diet of timbits and ketchup chips.
He'd look something like this:
I also wish that we all sounded like Americans seem to think we do. I've only heard the word 'aboot' from a few people in my life, and it's always someone insisting that I sound like that or from someone who isn't Canadian pretending to be one. I wish we were all overly polite like the media says we were. That'd be so cool. But we are not.
I actually think the American stereotype for how Canadians sound sounds a lot like Sarah Palin.
On second thought, I don't want to sound like that. :( Let's just move on.
I wish maple syrup came on everything. I freakin love maple syrup. That would be so sweet. We could have maple syrup candies, and everything, but instead of selling them just to tourists who think all we eat is maple we could actually have them ourselves! It would be so awesome. As it stands I usually just use 'Aunt Jemimah's' when we have pancakes because maple syrup is like twenty dollars a bottle or something. I think it should be free. Just because we're Canadians. All Canadians should have free maple syrup.
It would also be awesome if we just spent all day skating around playing hockey (when we weren't frolicking with polar bears, of course). After a two hour shift of lumberjacking (kinda) we would all go down to the rink and drink the best beer ever and just play hockey. Whenever someone got angry, the disputes could always be solved by just saying sorry, because Canadians are unable to refuse an apology.
This is the Canada the rest of the world thinks we live in. Why don't we?
EDIT: There totally are no pie or cookies. I tricked you. I know, life is full of disappointments.
...I'm sorry.
