…mostly based on a week of happily reading The Globe and Mail, Macleans, and watching the ads on CBC.
1. Criticizing a truly stupid and unconstitutional attempt by Quebec to ban government workers from wearing religious symbols (tiny crucifixes? oui! hijab? non).
2. Serving raw pork in fancy restaurants.
3. The Orenda, an incredible new historical novel about First Nations contact in the 17th century. Joseph Boyden, the author, is profiled here. Want to read it faster? Order it from Canada. Or buy his first novel, Three Day Road. Boyden is one of the most talented young First Nations writers in Canada, AND he loves Louise Erdich and Robertson Davies, so he’s basically perfect.
4. Men buying sex toys. Which, by the way, there is nothing wrong with. Better living through sex-robot gadgetry for all!
5. Classy vegetarian-friendly eggplant tortes.
6. After 33 years of the Terry Fox Run, remembering the young man, who, for Canadians of a certain age, is still a legend and a cipher.
8. And, in Things That Remain Timelessly Popular in Canada: hockey, Tim Hortons coffee, Trailer Park Boys, pot, the Barenaked Ladies, and using “buddy” in the third person. “So, I said to buddy, ‘you were supposed to bring a two four!’ and he just looked at me.”
Tags: benedict cumberbatch, canada, joseph boyden, news, raw pork, terry fox, the globe and mail
Re #1: I wonder how long they had to search to find that one expert (of nine) who thought the charter is constitutional? It is telling that it is referred to as a charter of values and not rights: it’s a tacit admission that restricting rights of other is a central value in the separatist movement. Ethnic nationalism is a terrible, terrible thing.
Re #6: As an ex-pat living in the States, Terry Fox remains one of the big cultural touchstones of home for me. People who haven’t seen the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary “Into the Wind” co-directed by Steve Nash should really check it out.
Regardless of whether it’s actually constitutional (it’s so not), Quebec will break out the notwithstanding clause, because that’s what they do. Our constitution is kind of just a guideline, unfortunately. Human rights challenges ahead!
We went to Tim Horton’s when we went to Maine last year! Their doughnuts are good.
Also, isn’t it super dangerous to eat raw pork because parasites?
I prefer my pork smoked in an oil drum as god intended.
I’ve heard hat because of the antibiotics and other garbage in factory pork, it’s actually safe? Seems wrong, though.
What a depressing thought.
Yeah, not buying it. Whenever I even think about raw or undercooked pork, I hear my 9th-grade biology teacher whispering “trichinosis…trichinosis…”
ALSO, do Canadians say Mom, or Mum?
Mom.
It depends, but Mum, _pronounced_ Mom.
Yes, agreed. We spell it “mom” but it sounds like “mum,” and when Canadians are making fun of American accents we say it like it has nine a’s in the middle.
It’s said the Canadian people have 400 different words for mom.
Trichinosis! TINY WORM BIG IN TORONTO.
WHAT
(I live in Toronto).
Long time no see! We’re doing raw pork now, don’t tell the tourists, maybe stick to sushi yourself.
There is not nearly enough TIFF stuff.
Also, Joseph Boyden doesn’t even LIVE in Canada anymore. (He lives in New Orleans).
Canadians living abroad are still Canadians, she says self-doubtingly.
Oh yeah, for sure, I just found this out yesterday while reading Elle Canada on the toilet, and was sad. Cuz like, he’ll win all the awards, while working writers who still actually live here won’t. I dunno, I still think he’s an awesome writer! I just had complicated feels about it.
Joseph Boyden divides his time between New Orleans, where he and his wife teach, and Northern Ontario.
I just read that Joseph Boyden teaches at the University of New Orleans. As a descendent of the Huron* and a Louisianian**, I think it is my duty to purchase this book now. Even if I was trying to be more frugal until the end of the month.
*My tribe is federally recognized but so little-known in the US, and we started out in Canada! I was very excited to find us represented on a map in the Art Gallery of Ontario last summer.
** I live in the part of the state that is not New Orleans, but I lived in New Orleans for 5 years and am secretly always trying to think of ways that I could get back to New Orleans, which re-affirms the confirmation bias of everyone who is not from Louisiana, but is true to my life.
Money spent on books is like money spent on food, so we should all shell out for this book which looks amazing. My only qualification is that I really like Robertson Davies (what? the entire second book in the Deptford Trilogy is a Jungian analysis of a dream, you say? THAT’S RIGHT, BUSTER) and I’m going in anyway.
This Yank is very pleased to know that the Barenaked Ladies are still hot.
No one in Canada cares about the Barenaked Ladies anymore but we variously embrace the Biebs, Carly Rae Jepsen, Tegan and Sara, and Arcade Fire when the situation calls for it.
We will always care about BNL.
I grew up 15 miles south of the Canadian border, and thus listened exclusively to Canadian radio. I saw them live a couple of years ago and I didn’t understand why all of my friends weren’t as excited as I was. They were like, “…Who? The Chickety China guys?”
Yes but SO MUCH MORE.
Someone on the Hairpin had slept with “the least famous member of BNL,” and I was all “that is like saying you only slept with Ringo Starr.”
THIS IS A STORY THAT MUST BE TOLD
AND Broken Social Scene.
I care in the sense that CanCon dictates that the “classic rock” radio station my office manager plays (loudly) fills their quotas with mainly the Barenaked Ladies and I am SO sick of them.
CanCon results in the weirdest possible timewarps. Did you know Chantal Kreviazuk is still big? Well, she is on your local radio station.
I know the words to every single Red Rider hit (song?). CanCon!
Did you also know that Doug & The Slugs, Honeymoon Suite and April Wine are still big? Small-town Canadian radio has likewise not forgotten about Loverboy and Trooper.
I think Loverboy is having a resurgence; saw them in Vancouver a year or two ago and the majority of the crowd was wasted hipsters in home made Mike Reno tees. Also, one of the most perfect pieces of internet http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-memo-distrib…
Omg. That really is perfection.
CanCon! The Top 40 station I’m forced to listen to at work still plays If I Had A Million Dollars. And enough Tegan and Sara to ruin one of the few songs I liked on Heartthrob.
solidarity.
This reminds me of the classic David Rakoff segment on This American Life about how Canadians always know which famous American stars are secretly Canadian, like there’s a chip in their heads.
“I just think it comes in off the breeze or in a cold front. And I know. I just know in my heart who’s Canadian.”
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/ep…
This is a game my parents (otherwise kind, culturally sensitive people) have been playing for years. Whenever in a conversation with a Canadian person, they cannot resist name-dropping Canadian actors, musicians, and authors, just to see if they can elicit a quick “She’s/he’s Canadian, you know.”
The Dutch will also be happy to inform me when someone famous/on any kind of American media is Dutch.
Thre Day Road was SO GOOD. And I cannot wait to read the new book. Yessss.
As a “mutt” (as he puts it) white person / American Indian myself I am really excited for the prospect of books featuring people with complicated cultural identities. In other news I almost got in a fight at last week’s two dollar drafts with a European (maybe not relevant but at the very least strange) Alum of the University of Illinois about why their former Mascot Chief Illiniwek is racist and offensive. He tried to tell me the Indians of Illinois are proud of the way they are represented. To which I responded “I actually can’t have this conversation with you in a bar”
As a concerned and relatively (I hope) PC Quebecer, I’m alarmed that this Charter business isn’t attracting more attention than it is. I mean, when our language police cracked down on a restaurant for using the word “pasta” in its menu, it got coverage on CNN. Now we have a blatant attempt to legitimize–and legislate FOR–discrimination based on religion, and…nothing. Go figure. At least we’ll still have a giant crucifix in our legislature. The head, it essplodes.
One other thing: it’s true that we don’t care about BNL anymore. Not since they became popular amongst Yankee-types.
& the annual (rightful!) frosh rape-culture backlash https://www.google.com/search?q=globe+and+mail&am…
Pretty much sums it up! Especially and emphatically the part about referring to “buddy.”
Buddy in the third person! I didn’t even realize, but it is, of course, true.
thing that is happening to me: starting to get into canadian law as a career, and I did not know sex working is proper-legal here. I am kind of all right with you now, canadian government. I SAID KIND OF DON’T GET SNAPPY
Trailer Park Boys!!! My brother named one of his cats Julian we are such big fans. I have an urge to go out to the Circle K across the street and snap my fingers at someone and demand their smokes but a#1 do not smoke and b#2 do not want a beatdown.
As an ACTUAL CANADIAN, I can attest that most of us do not read The Globe & Mail, MacLeans, or watch CBC. A person might do one of those things. But it is really only middle-aged men like my dad who are doing all three.
Tim Hortons, most Canadians have actually been to, largely because there is literally one on every block. They have spent much dollars and years of branding and marketing to make themselves “iconically Canadian.”
Also there are Canadians who do not give a shit about hockey.
Actually, I read the Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, watch hockey and listen to CBC. I’m not a middle aged male but I am an actual Canadian, whatever that means.
I too am a real Canadian, but I live like a middle-aged man, so.
Don’t get me started on number 1…