How does it feel to be Canadian?

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Iryna

Any Canadian who is Canadian knows and loves this rant.

Hey, I'm not a lumberjack, or a fur trader....
I don't live in an igloo or eat blubber, or own a dogsled....
and I don't know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada,
although I'm certain they're really really nice.

I have a Prime Minister, not a president.
I speak English and French, not American.
And I pronounce it 'about', not 'a boot'.

I can proudly sew my country's flag on my backpack.
I believe in peace keeping, not policing,
diversity, not assimilation,
and that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.
A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch,
and it is pronounced 'zed' not 'zee', 'zed' !!!!

Canada is the second largest landmass!
The first nation of hockey!
and the best part of North America

My name is Joe!!
And I am Canadian
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Canada is the second largest country in the world, with 9,971,000 square kilometres of land.
The baseball glove was invented in Canada in 1883.
With only three people per square kilometer, Canada has the fourth lowest population density in the world.
Vancouver Canada is tied with Zurich Switzerland for the highest quality of life of any city in the world.
The world's smallest jail is believed to be in Rodney, Ontario, Canada. It is only 24.3 square meters (about 270 square feet).
Canada has the ninth biggest economy of the world
According to the United Nations Human Development Index, Canada has the highest quality of life in the world.
Contrary to popular opinion, Canada does not own the North Pole. In fact, the North Pole is not owned by any country. It is believed, however, that Santa Claus is from Canada.
Canada is the world's eighth biggest trader.
Of all of the world's producers of natural gas, copper, zinc, nickel, aluminum, and gold, Canada is in the top five.
Canada is the home of many great inventions, including: basketball, the electric light bulb, the electric range, the electron microscope, standard time, the television, the telephone, and the zipper.
Canada is the fifth largest energy producer.
Canada has the world's highest tertiary education enrolment.

I love everything about canada, I love every province, this is a great place to be and it feels incredible to be here!!!

SteveN

Relieved that we have decent health care and a low crime rate, and proud that we are generally respected by many countries around the world. Thanks for the complimentary comments by the way!

But we also still have a lot of things that could be improved. We need to work on protecting our natural resources from pollution and misuse, we could help more with fighting poverty within Canada and on the world stage, and improve our education system so it is one of the best in the world.

One area that is lacking in our education system is more knowledge of world issues, such as comparison of religions and cultures. With Canada receiving more and more immigrants, it is important that we both share common cultural traits in Canada with newcomers, as well as learn more about them to avoid bigotry and misunderstandings.

I think if everyone made an effort to learn more about each other, we may see we have more in common than we think, and perhaps there would be less conflicts in the world.

Hibee

It's also the major country least affected by the financial crisis.

Plus their armed forces, along with the British, are the most effective in Afghanistan.

Paul

Canada Rocks! We are on the cutting edge of technology, our musical artists rock and some of the biggest stars on the planet are from here. Our natural resources, diversified landscape and 4 true season changes make us the envy of the world.

The economy is a bit tight right now with our government on the right track investing in infrastructure so that when this thing turns around we're ready.

Heathcare is technically free and taxes are high because of it. We do have private clinics that you can fast track your heathcare needs, so in reality we have a two tier system. Regardless if you need help just pop into the emergency room and you will get it.

Crime is everywhere yet random crime is quite low in Canada. Generally most crime in Canada involves people who know each other which makes me feel very safe. We don't have the gun mentality of the US which makes us a more civilized culture in my eyes.

Our culture is a mix of every country on the planet and we all seem to get along for the most part. Very unique..........

We're happy for several reasons hockey, sex and peacekeeping.
Thanks for sharing the love....come for a visit sometime help stimulate our economy and experience the beauty of Canada.

Gypsy

I'd like to know who is not being affected by the economy! I sure as heck am! But, in answer to your question, I feel great being Canadian. Health care is anything but free, folks. Taxes are very high, but that's my only complaint.

Kevin C

Most Canadians take what they have for granted and they don't relize what they have that other countries have. I am Canadian and I only somewhat understand what a great country I live in.

T.M

well i don't know because im also british like you , but i say they are feeling happy becuase they are not being affected very badly from the global economic crisis

Mathew H

I dunno man, I haven't been anything else but Canadian.

I guess I'm pretty happy

PS
I loved you in the Big Lebowski

Stephanie

Hypocrisy!
1. It's big cold empty country. When there are trees, the trees go on for a thousand miles. Where there are prairies, the prairies go on for a thousand miles. It can be thirty below in Winnipeg through much of December, all of January and February, and part of March--and the wind blows from the north the whole time. But: Canada is primarily an urban country, out of contact with those vast landscapes. By far the vast majority of Canadians live together in cities, huddled together in tightly packed places dropped down in the middle of the vast empty landscapes, trying to keep warm together. Northrop Frye talks about Canadians as possessed of a "garrison mentality": we are so frightened by the oppressive vastness and threatening dangerousness of our natural landscape that we build walls against it, and hide behind the walls, in fortified garrisons of the mind. We see the natural world as something that's out to get us. Americans look at a big empty space and say, "Hey, great, let's get busy and conquer it and turn it into a city." Canadians look at a big empty space and say "I'm frightened, so let's get together and build a wall and hide ourselves from the big ugly natural world before it gets us and does us in."
2. As a variation on this, Margaret Atwood once developed a theory of Canadians as, basically and eternally, victims. The world is cold and big and bleak and out to get us, and we are little and weak. We internalize this, Atwood suggests, and believe that everyone and everything is out to get us. We see ourselves as victims, little people in the control of vast forces. We tend to be depressed about it all, and unconvinced of our general ability to control anything or anyone. We never get to the last of the victim stages Atwood outlines: to refuse to become victims, and become creative non-victims.
3. Politically and economically, we don't actually in fact control all that much of anything (I speak here as a good Canadian victim). Almost all Canadian business is owned by people outside the country, non-Canadians--most of them Americans or American-based multi-national corporations. We sit, a tiny nation of about thirty million, perched over the top of a huge nation of three hundred million, slowly being engulfed. We speak proudly of the world's longest undefended border, but we know in our hearts it's not defended because it couldn't possibly be--if the Americans wanted just to take over completely, they could do it in about an hour and a half (and we believe they wouldn't ever want to anyway--see below, re losers and the lack of desirability of Canada as a country to live in or be from). We are totally dominated and overwhelmed by the USA. We wear the same clothes as Americans, and eat the same food, purchased in the same fast food franchises, and we read the same magazines and we watch the same TV shows at the same time as Americans watch them (but with ads for specifically Canadian Burger Kings replacing the American ads, so that we know we're really at home). Canadian bookstores are filled with thousands of American books, published in the USA and imported without duties, and a very few higher-priced Canadian ones--higher prices because of the small print runs that eventuate from the fact that most Canadians would rather read American books. I suspect all this is why John Gough, viewing us from the distance of Australia, can't tell the difference between Canadians and Americans--we often have the same trouble ourselves, worry about it a lot, and insist to the point of shrillness that we are NOT American. As a result, a good definition of Canadians is exactly that: "NOT American." We know we are NOT American, for sure--we're just not exactly sure how, but we know it will turn out to be something very important if we can just figure out what it is. And that's a defining quality of the way we talk about ourselves-we try to establish ways in which we are NOT American, or we just proclaim that we are NOT American as we eat our Big Macs and watch our Disney movies. We insist on a difference we can't define--and this of course makes us very different from Americans, who don't have to worry about any of this at all, and who know absolutely that Canadians are exactly like them.
4. One of the ways we are NOT American is that we are a people who act like Americans but who are in fact outside the borders of America. We tend to be critical about or to claim distance from the American lifestyle we more or less share--we are somehow outsiders on the inside of American values--able to criticize the lifestyle because we know it so well from lived experience but also know we are distant from what we live, that it represents someone else's values we have somehow acceded to but are not willing to accept as our own. This makes us peculiarly objective about the life we live and share with Americans. Our great writers tend to be critics like Northrop Frye and satirists like Margaret Atwood.

liebekatz2

I don't know if that is correct about the low crime rate. I live near Surrey, in BC, and there have been shootings there almost on a daily basis recently :(

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