Dear Visitors/Chers Touristes, On behalf of the Government/ Gouvernement of Canada, I would like to say welcome/bienvenue to the Great White North/Grand Pink Bit Sur le Map.
As you might have noticed while surrendering your handguns to the Canada Border Services Agency/Bureau du Cherche de la Cavité, ours is a country that enjoys its own laws and customs, some of which may differ from yours.
First, you will notice that we are more modest than you. Waaay more modest. Just ask us. Actually, you don’t have to ask, we’ll chase you into your hotel lobby to boast about how famously self-effacing we Canadians are. Sorry.
That’s something else you’ll notice: we like to say “sorry.” In their book How To Be A Canadian, Will and Ian Ferguson devoted an entire chapter to what we really mean when we do so. (For example, “Sorry, I didn’t see you” translates to “I’m in a hurry and you’re in my way.”) The Fergusons offer 12 such examples, concluding, “Canadians say ‘sorry’ an awful lot, but they rarely apologize.”
Given our humility, for which we apologize, you might think it strange that we are given to ostentatious demonstrations of flag-waving pride (to clarify, that’s non-rainbow pride, though we’re also rainbow proud, if only to show how morally superior we are, or at least were until you caught up last week).
Upon your arrival today, you might have been taken aback by the number of maple leafs you saw flying from cars, decorating storefronts, covering grow-op windows and tattooed on the cheeks (facial and otherwise) of ordinary Canadians.
That’s because you have landed here on the eve of our national celebration, Canada Day/Fête du Face Painting, when citizens from coast to coast to coast are united by a single goal: stretching a mid-week stat into a super-long weekend.
In the evening, Victoria’s Canada Day/Fête du Face Painting gives way to Canada Day/Fête du Régurgitation, a local phenomenon in which young people show their love of country by getting drunk, throwing up on the cops and attempting to punch out the Captain Cook statue on the Upper Causeway.
Think of it as Maple Leaf Mardi Gras.
They say the Inner Harbour mob scene is tamer than it used to be. It has been four years since the Victoria transit system’s all-time worst day, July 1, 2011, when it was forced to take a record 25 barfed-in buses — vomit comets, in local parlance — off the road.
It has also been a few years since the Canada Day crowds were treated to public displays of alcohol-assisted sex. In 2008, passers-by were stunned to see a young couple madly boinking in a Douglas Street bus shelter just before 10 p.m., an exhibition that filled onlookers with outrage, if not jealousy.
That was a couple of years after a now-legendary incident in which a couple in a highly visible Empress hotel window put on a show that rivalled the fireworks over the harbour. This is all part of the aforementioned modesty for which we Canadians are famous.
In the midst of this festival of heritage/hormones, you might pause to ask just what it is that Canadians are so proud about. Here are some of the things we think are worth celebrating: We rank third — behind only Norway and Sweden — on the global Prosperity Index, based on such measures as health, personal freedom, education, safety and security. Our average life expectancy is almost 82 years, near the top. We live free of the corruption that cripples other countries. We’re sixth among the 156 countries on the UN’s World Happiness Index. The World Health Organization says we have the third-cleanest air on the planet. Statistically, we report the fewest assaults on Earth, and have the most living space, an average of 2.6 rooms per person. We invented poutine, sonar and the egg carton.
Canadians like to think of themselves as civil, decent, honest, tolerant, polite, kind, generous, fair and law-abiding. Of course, it’s one thing to think it, and another to live it.
To really be Canadian, you have to do more than wave a flag. Sorry.
