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BabeStace must have read a couple of other "immi-info" posts on this site, by the sounds of it. Like taxes? U.K. was/is the king, no pun intended! Now that we are part of fucking France, we still have the traditional "tax-the-hell-out-of-the-bastards" attitude from England, with the socialist policies of France rearing their ugly head! Welcome, bring "Euros"!

   

The worst thing that ever happened to any part of the EU was the introduction of the Euro, Europe is no longer a cheap place to go on holiday.. At all..

And the 'immi-info' posts I've read, not just on this site, but others too, aren't really all that encouraging.. I haven't read one post by anyone whose had a successful move to Canada, or is finding it okay with the proceedings of moving there..

And taxes? We get taxed for everything in the UK! God do I hate this country!! It sucks BIG TIME!!!!! I'd do almost anything to get out this place.

   

I was there a couple of summers ago and thought they got taxed to the hilt too. They even get taxed on their TV sets. There are these little Nazi radio trucks that go around and pick up the signals from unregistered TV sets using their rabbit ears. I guess TV give off a signal too. ??

   

Hate is a powerfull word, BabeStace, but man I hear ya! I would never complain, & I would willingly give 10% of ever cent I made for the rest of my life to the juristiction I live in for social programs, and to pay for cutting-the-weeds on "nonrev's" part of the trans-Canada highway (inside joke). But what do they do with it? Piss it away! And then tell the idiots (us) how well-off we all are! HA! Funny, you're very first armed robbery will get you an average of nine years in Michigan, 18 months in Canada (true), and sweet f*ck-all if you are a politician stealing from the public purse. England is the worst, but we're close!

   

[color=yellow] CANADA is the shiznit, all america does is sit on there asses and make fun of us, thats something to be proud of [/color]

   

Hmmm,
skater might hafta die!

   

I was not born in Canada but came here as a child from England (have never been back to the UK) and consider myself a Canadian thru and thru. Canada Kicks Ass because we are not always in other nations faces about our patriotism....we are quietly patriotic...the Canadian Way. We are self effacing and are able to laugh at ourselves and all our country's foibles of which most of us admit there are quite a few. We are not insular and the average Canadian not only acknowledges that there is a world that exists outside our borders but, in fact, embrace and learn from other cultures.
We wear shorts outdoors when the sun is shining but it is 5C degrees and BBQ during snowstorms. We are a hardy bunch with broad shoulders...broad enough to take all the flack from those that would attempt to make us feel small for being Proud To Be Canadian!!!!

   

That was really well-said, flamingknickers! Bravo!


Uh, I have one question though: what the Heck is the story behind your nickname?

   

I agree nonrev it was very well written. I read a article awhile back that Canadians are a people of the world. Whereas the Americans are basically isolationists and want to be left alone. Well if they want to be left alone don't didtatate to the rest of the world.

   

Well, "nonrev" it is a nick that evolved from a nickname I had as a child in England. I had a habit of forgetting to put on my knickers and was sent home from school several times as a result On one of those occasions (my 5th birthday, in fact) the teacher stood me up on a table as my classmates sang Happy B'day to me and guess what?....NO KNICKERS! My father started calling me "knickerless", a take on the name Nicholas. He had a bizarre sense of humour. The "flaming" part I added my self as I tend to be somewhat outspoken (a take on having a fire lit under your butt). It's a personal thing and probabley only makes sense to me.

   

They Really Like Us, Eh?

How can we truly be 'cool' when we're so obsessed with how others see us?

STEVE BURGESS

LANGUAGE BARRIERS can make questions difficult. Travellers learn to keep the concept simple: "Which way to the Pantheon?" "Do you have kaopectate?" "May I use your washroom right now?" Subtle or nuanced questions are usually to be avoided. Thus seasoned Canadian tourists would know better than to ask a German or a Spaniard: "Is Canada cool?"


Provided your audience understood a little English, the answer would be mimed immediately: vigorous nodding, arms clutching sides, pantomimed shivering. "Yes! Very cool! White bears!" Nonetheless it has recently been possible to answer that question implicitly in other ways. Newspapers, for example, taking notice of developments in a nation usually ignored -- stories on peace movements, marijuana laws, same-sex marriage and rage from the Vatican. Two weeks ago, Britain's Economist magazine, surveying Canada's social liberalism and economic successes, dared to state: "Indeed, a cautious case can be made that Canada is now rather cool." Not quite the ringing endorsement that appeared this summer in the Washington Post. "Just when you had all but forgotten that carbon-based life exists above the 49th parallel," wrote David Montgomery, "those sly Canadians have redefined their entire nation as Berkeley North."

Montgomery's article on recent Canadian political and cultural developments quickly became the centrepiece of evidence of Canada's transformation from ice-cold to cool-as-ice. "Isn't America supposed to be the cradle of the coolest, most cutting-edge culture?" he wondered. "Now Canada is leading the way. And America is looking fussy, Victorian and imperial."

The contrast does seem telling. While Canada moved toward blessing same-sex unions, it took a U.S. Supreme Court ruling to force the state of Texas to decriminalize private homosexual sex acts. Canada's refusal to participate in the invasion of Iraq, while hotly debated here, at least grouped us with the hip schoolyard rebels like France. Our marijuana decriminalization plans caused many Americans to cast wistful glances northward. Attention is being paid to Canada for daring social policy, rather than as the astonishing answer to the trivia question, "Which state is Michael J. Fox from?"

So is all this enough to make Canada cool?

Depends. If cool happens in the forest and there's no one around to see it . . . As I travelled in Europe this summer, signs of Canada were hard to come by. Avril, Shania, Celine and sometimes Alanis -- that was pretty much Canada abroad. Then in Barcelona, the first real indication of something approximating genuine Canadian hip. I stumble upon a little bar called Què Bec? I go in to ask if there's a Canadian connection. A felicitous one, as it turns out.

Broken in two with a question mark added, the name of la belle province becomes a Catalonian phrase meaning, "What do I drink?" The bar was opened this spring by a trio of friends, one of whom, Bruno Langevin, is a former resident of little Fabre, Que. "Does the name make us cool?" ponders co-owner Carlos Tena. "Well, I think it makes us more international." Sitting in the bar that night, more evidence of the potential coolness of Canada. Riko, a Japanese friend of Tena, tells me she wants to live in Whitehorse someday. "I am very big Neil Young fan," she adds. I leave Què Bec? with a renewed appreciation of my country's contributions to the global pool of cool.

But Neil Young, or Avril Lavigne or Nelly Furtado, international Canadian flag bearers though they are, are problematic figures in a discussion of Canadian culture. How is their music intrinsically Canadian? Are Shania Twain's songs any more Canadian than a General Motors car made in Oshawa? And does the Hollywood success of Jim Carrey or Michael J. Fox say anything about Canada other than the ease of departure through our convenient airports?

The gradual elevation of Rick Mercer to the status of national icon may have come about because he's one of the few Canadian entertainment figures who seem indisputably Canuck. Arguably it is the brilliant (and brilliantly simple) achievement of the Talking to Americans TV specials that earned Mercer his national ranking somewhere well above governor-general. The specials, in which Mercer guilelessly asked ludicrous questions that revealed his American interview subjects (Harvard professors among them) to be stupendously ignorant of Canadian affairs, were fabulous pieces of Canadian television that, unlike other quality Canadian programming such as Da Vinci's Inquest, could exist only in Canada.

While we could certainly use a few more Mercers in this country, we are also hobbled by the incessant search for that which is truly Canuck. Much of the entertainment produced by Canadians for Canadians shares a depressing characteristic -- it frequently struggles harder to be Canadian than to be entertaining. Canadian shows seek Canadian themes, Canadian magazines seek Canadian angles. That is something self-confident Americans are usually spared.

If the 49th parallel does sometimes appear to be the boundary between self-confident and self-conscious, it's not surprising -- you would have to be particularly thick to grow up thinking Canada was all that mattered in the world. Arrogance is not a luxury Canadians are allowed, which suits most of us just fine. But when it comes to cool, our constant navel-gazing becomes a fatal flaw. Not to get all post-modern, but the very existence of this essay in Canada's national newsmagazine, pondering whether Canada is cool, pretty much answers its own question. Would Fonzie ever ask it of himself? Or, for that matter, Pierre Trudeau?

Canada may indeed be singling itself out as a progressive North American island of social policy, breaking away from an increasingly different political culture south of the border. That's great, in my non-Catholic opinion. If it continues, it may solidify the Canadian sense of separation previously exemplified by health care and gun control. And despite the fact that the marijuana "decriminalization" bill is actually pretty small beer and two-tier health care an increasingly Canadian concept, I think it bodes well for Canada that we are breaking new trails in the snow while American talk-radio hosts gnash their teeth and threaten invasion.

But does any of this make Canada cool?

Nah. We fuss about it too much.

Canadians delight in certain comparisons to our big, bruising neighbour -- them boorish, us polite; them braying at resentful Italian waiters, us showing off our Maple Leaf lapel pins. (In that sense we are perhaps lucky not to be next door to France, which would be really depressing -- the French are arrogant too, but so much better dressed.) But frankly, we lack the population base to compete in the coolness sweepstakes. When you consider that Canada has roughly the population of California -- and that this week they could have Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- you see the uphill battle we face. No, we're not cool. But consider: the current cool list includes the likes of Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Hilary Duff and Sean (P. Diddy) Combs. Maybe we should leave well enough alone.

I couldn't have said it better myself

   

Canada rocks, if you Americans don't like here go drink a beer. If you wanna kill take a pill if ya hate my name, play a videogame. Im playin a ROM on my VisualBoy Advance and it's cool. And snowboarding is really kewl.

   

minisam, that was one hell of a post, Did you pull that out of the Globe and mail , or what. In my mind that should be entered into every paper this country has including "the Sickamoose Weekly" Well done.

Booyake, Not in the same game, and should not have posted after that work of art, in fact any comment would be Hard to match it. Including mine.

   

But what if I like here and want to drink a beer anyway?

   

Oh Hell, Rev - you'd drink a beer in a confessional, fer cryin' out loud.





(Hmmm. Maybe I shouldnt put ideas in his head. )

   

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