It's Canada Day!

[Meririn]

To most of you out there, July the First means very little to you, but to those residing in the biggest country on Earth, this is the country's national holiday! For those of you who don't know much about Canada, here are some of the finer points in its history:

-From sea to shining sea - the vision of the first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, was to see all of British North America united. He spent millions of dollars realizing this dream and even resorted to some bank scandals to make his hopes come true.

-The creation of Nunavut - Canada has a long and bloody history of being surprisingly cruel to the First Nations. In 1999, the government amended this a little bit by setting aside a good chunk of the former Northwest Territories to give the Inuit their own territory.

-The Suez crisis - When Egypt declared the Suez canalpart of Egypt since it was in Egypt, England and France, who still wanted control of Africa, declared war against Egypt. Russia took Egypt's side. The Canadian minister of foreign affairs then went in and made them all 'talk it out'. He was later awarded the Nobel Prize and became Prime Minister as well as earning Canada its peacekeeper title.

-Gay rights - Gay marriage is legal nearly everywhere in Canada.

Anyone else who wants to add to this list can. I just thought it might be cool to post something like this. >D

 

[Flora]

On my Summer Enrichment (like Summer Schol, but for social-ness. And MUCH cooler) field trip, somebody randomly pointed this out.

And before we left, the English teacher was singing the Backyardigans theme song...yes, my school is weird.

 

[Dragon_night]

WOOO! Canada day!

(wait, I thought Canada was the second biggest country in the world, next to Russia)

*Coughtcough*

PS: We don't live in igloo's XD

 

[XS-Nitrogen]

Yay for Canada!

I think I deserve the title of Most Stereotypical Canadian On TCOD. I lived in Churchill Manitoba. What does that have to do with anything? It's basically the stereotypical "great white north" everybody thinks of when they think of Canada. What does this mean? Well...

• The family car was a big two-ton four-wheel-drive Ford truck. The other family car was a one-ton Chevy with a spotlight on the roof.
• The four-wheel drive on the family car was an absolute neccecity.
• The family car got stuck in the snow once, and we tried to use an old semi truck to pull it out. We ended up with probably about eight stuck trucks before we finally got them out.
• I've had enough snow that I could climb onto my roof.
• Shoveling the driveway involved using something like this. It wasn't ours, and we didn't drive it, but it was the only way for us to get out of the house and into town.
• Here, schools close at -30c. In Churchill, -30 was considered warm enough for the kids to play outside. I had to wear big-ass boots, a full parka, and seal-skin gloves for going outside, by the way.
• The local tour busses were these bad boys. Yes, I've been on them.
• I've slept in an igloo on many occasions.
• I've ridden a dogsled, several times.
• I've had polar bears attack a house I've lived in.
• My parents kept an assault rifle at one point due to the threat of said bears. We didn't have this rifle when they attacked us.
• I've been on an icebreaker. A Norwegian oil tanker, to be specific. I had a Coke with the captain.
• I got to ride on the tugboats that would guide said icebreakers into port.
• I've touched a beluga whale. As in, with my hands, while it was swimming in it's natural habitat.
• I've played on icebergs. They'd washed ashore, but still.
• My back yard had a lawn. Outside of my back yard, beyond the eight-foot-tall, barbed-wire-adorned chain-link fence (It was meant to keep the bears out. Didn't do all that great of a job if you ask me), we had tundra and huge moss-covered rocks.
• I had both a crashed airplane and a shipwreck within driving distance of my house. I'd played in said plane on a few occasions.
• I've gone icefishing.
• My first dog was more or less a wolf.
• Anybody remember the picture from the old forums, with the polar bear playing with the sled dogs? Yeah. I got to see that in person.

I'm being entirely serious with this list. I'm not even exaggerating. Like I said, I'm probably the most stereotypical Canadian here. And I'm damn proud of it. I also like maple syrup and watch hockey once in awhile. Heck, at a different point in my life, I lived in a cabin in the woods. It was in a provincial park, and my grandma lived in said cabin year-round with heat, water and electricity, but it was a cabin in the woods nonetheless.

Yeah... That was my life up until I was about eight years old. Then we moved to somewhere a bit more normal, and my life became really boring and uneventful in comparison.

 

[Light Mightyena]

Well, I'm a little late, but I guess I'll put in a belated Happy Canada Day.

...So yeah...I don't have any history trivia or interesting stories. I really don't fit any of the usual stereotypes, since I live in a more southern part of Canada, except for that whole 'freakishly polite' thing that some people say about Canadians. Though I still don't get why it should be out of the ordinary to say thank you to a waitress when I get my food...

Oh, and XS-Nitrogen? I'm really jealous that you've ridden a dogsled. That's one of those things I'd love to do someday.