printI once wrote on my website that having lived in both countries, I’d take the U.S. anytime over Canada and its Nordic, morose people. After doing time there (seven lean years), I can with comfort compile a composite of the Canadian Character. My inspiration would be the somnambulant, morbid, long-suffering zombies of Ingmar Bergman’s films.
Then I felt guilty and removed the comment. Perhaps it was a little severe. And, after all, hadn’t Canada opposed the invasion of Iraq? That alone warranted a reevaluation of this already-broad generalization.
Yesterday I was reminded of the mind-numbing pettiness that made Canada such a disgusting place to live in the first place (tax rates aside).
I am planning on purchasing a new mattress this week. The old one is a perfectly good, high-quality mattress, bought originally in Canada. I suggested to my daughter (who still resides in that place) that she take it. She’s sleeping on something from which the springs protrude.
She and a friend hired a van and arrived to collect the thing. I was glad knowing that she’d be sleeping on a decent mattress. After a pleasant evening of Ali G. viewing (which is where the apt appellation “crap country” originates), the “kids” headed back to “Soviet Canuckistan” with the neatly wrapped mattress and base and a few other odds and ends (more furniture, but also the stuff mothers give kids who’ve left the nest: anti-cold meds, vitamins, pullovers, socks, and ready, wild rice from Trader Joe’s, which is kind of like Capers, only dirt cheap).
Sometime later we received a frantic call from the border: customs would not allow a used mattress through—one that had originated in Canada—without proof that it had been fumigated (my daughter is asthmatic and would not have been able to sleep on a mattress that had been fouled in this fashion). What’s more, the cretins tried to shake the kids down for money to dump the thing for them. Thieves.
The Used Mattress Materials Regulations are very vague, but the bastards at the border embellished and said that if they did return to the US and came back the following day, they’d better have certified proof from a fumigator.
The only bed bugs (and other vermin) that ever came close to that mattress set were those customs creeps.
P.S. Please spare me the somber (Canadian) “don’t-generalize” comments. I know a few wonderful Canadians (okay two, maybe three). But had we known it was such a socialist dump —an honorary member of the Third World is how the Wall Street Journal described it—and that we’d be clipping coupons for our first three years there and living in a complex infested with Iranian gangs—we’d have come on straight to the States. Oh, and my husband was in the top 10% of earners in Canada. Yep, that’s as good as it gets for highly-skilled newcomers. Gotta keep the gap between taxpayers and tax consumers as narrow as possible.
Update: I’m rather proud to report that despite the stress endured by the border bullies—and the fury of not being able to keep her property—my daughter and her friend still found the composure to look up a charity in the nearest US town, drive there, and donate the mattress. That’s far better than letting the bureaucratic bandits steal it.
Priceless description of the Customs Bureaucracy of Canuckistan, Ilana.
I’ll can tell you my own story of some inmates from that gruesome gulag – even though it’s hearsay from my own brother.
He does quite a bit of work with a telecomm company in Hull, Ontario, along with some telecomm folks in Texas. One of the Texans he works with is a true firearms aficionado – to such a degree that he even has the famous class 3 (takes about 18 months if you’re in the right state) approval from our own wonderful BATFE. This grants one official blessing to purchase full-auto firearms, silencers and the like provided the appropriate tax is paid and the item in question is pre-1986.
(A rather expensive hobby, as the cheapest old WWII era full auto is typically over $3500 .)
The Canuckisanis (all males in their 20s and 30s) literally attempted to jump from a moving vehicle in fear and terror upon learning that the Texan in question was traveling with a fair number of weapons (carefully locked away in the truck), when my brother and the Texan started discussing the virtures of various firearms. Quite a testimony to the level of PC indoctrination there. Canada – the Cream Puff Country.
Thank you so very much for this post..
My parents just got back from Canada, talking to our always socialistically friendly aunt (you know, the one a capitalist thinks of disowning) and things are just as bad over there as they were when I grew up. My mother got into a bit of a spat with her when my aunt began crowning about the acheivements of Canada, and how great socialism is. When my mother commented that America’s ‘special’ achievement was being rich, all hell broke loose.
Canadians are very apathetic. They take any failure of their socialistic system and explain it away, as serenely and patiently as any lunatic who calmly exlains to a psychiatrist why he stole money from poor people.
The biggest problem with Canada is that they have people making money – and they hate money itself. This hatred of the material world seems irrational to me. It’s as unreasonable as hating the floor.
But then again, we are talking about Canadians. I resent them – and this is from someone who was one.
Thanks again for your post.
When I was a kid, my family lived in the Detroit area, and I remember that my father drove us over that huge bridge to Ontario several times.
My fraternal twin sister went to Canada right after high school graduation in 1971. It was kind of fashionable back then. She had also lost one of her first boyfriends to the Vietnam War, and so was bitter toward the U.S. about it.
She eventually became a landed immigrant and then a Canadian citizen… more Canadian than the native-born Canadians… and as PC as they come. And of course, her one-and-only daughter was properly indoctrinated into loving their socialistic nanny state.
I don’t think she’s worked in the private sector for decades. She believes that the mere existence of guns and other weapons down here in the States accounts for our perhaps grossly exaggerated level of violence (I wonder what she thinks of the Brits’ disarmament and their high crime rate).
Sometimes I’m tempted to send her the specs on my one-and-only self-defense revolver, just to needle her.
I have met a few Canadians down here in So. Cal., and I will say that I like most of them (better than my sister). I had no idea that the whole country could be rightfully characterized as such a morbid (and morbidly apathetic) bunch. [I admit to generalizing from my sorry experience; not completely fair of me.]
I got a kick out of your comments, Ilana, as well as the other comments.
I have heard some libertarians make the remark that they wouldn’t mind living in Canada, were it not for the nanny state. In particular, a lot of people seem to think Vancouver, B.C. is a nice city. [It’s beautiful]
Lots of scenery. Change of seasons (well, too cold for a lot of people). Lots of natural resources (if they would only use them).
I heard, some years back, that one could still homestead up in Canada! Well, that is, if you don’t mind living next door to a glacier!
Well, I’m not gonna pretend that the U.S. has no problems of its own; but Canadians’ attitudes towards the U.S. remind me of when I lived in a certain small college town in Colorado for a couple of years.
The people in this small town were always patting themselves on the back (in fact, some of them probably sprained their hands doing so) that they were NOT Denver, that they were NOT the big city, that they were NOT the inner city, etc.–when the truth was that they had every problem in their town which they usually ascribed to Denver/the big city/the inner city, including druggies, welfare moochers, and lots of very young teen mommies.
People would let their preteenagers hang out with the teenagers until pretty late at night, and I always wondered why.
I actually grew up in Vancouver. It is a gorgeous place.
While most Canadians are in fact quite nice, they do become upset when someone questions their form of government, more often than not. The younger generation hasn’t proved to be any better than the older one, so change is unlikely. A few friends I had over there are kind and polite, but when their system of nannyism is questioned, they become very defensive and supportive of the tick on their back. It’s nearly always like this, with one great exception – it was actually a Canadian that helped turn me into a classical liberal. He now writes reviews on Amazon.com (one of the highest reviewers) and has an incredibly dry and witty sense of humor.
If all Canucks were like that, I would move there in an instant.
So maybe the sweeping generalizations of Canadians are incorrect, but only by a bit, which is both frustrating and sad at the same time. :=\
Every Canadian I’ve ever met was a smart-alecky know-it-all.
Humourless and dour, they are quick to tell us, as guests in our country, how stupid and blood-thirsty we Americans are.
I dislike them, intensly.
Wow… after enduring all that, your daughter still had the presence of mind to locate a U.S. charity and donate the mattress, rather than let it fall into the hands of the customs nazis. Bravo for her!
Canadians are getting a few valuable lessons these days. A South African friend of mine moved to Toronto about a decade or so ago. Of course, the Torontoians are soooo full of their own virtue. You may recall that Michael Moore traveled to Toronto in Bowling for Columbine. In the movie, he was walking around the City and opening up peoples front doors (which WERE usually unlocked). Of course, all this proved that people in Canada were less violent. He had a problem saying it was because of guns. At the time, Canada had plenty of citizens owning guns. His premise was that America is bad and violent because we were founded on “Racial Oppression and Fear” and other nonsense (of course Canadians NEVER killed an Injun?!?! SURE).
My South African friend is now a Canadian Citizen and he is getting a chuckle. Most of the Non-Western immigrants in Canada end up in Toronto. Some of these Non-White tribes are particularly violent (you know they are oppressed from horrible places like Somalia and Haiti). So these ‘poor souls’ from the third world are committing some gawd awful percentage of the violent crime with ILLEGAL automatic weapons. Now, all the doors are locked in Toronto and Michael Moore ain’t knocking on them. The South Africans are giving the lemmings a big I TOLD YOU SO.
Of course, the Torontoians turn and tell the street-wise South African, “it is racism like yours– coupled with American gun laws that cause ‘brown people’ here to be so violent”. Yeah, that is what those fools up north tell him. The South African with his wonderful sense of humor always responds:”unfortunately they have never been oppressed by American gun owners”.