CALL GARY! STAMPEDE!
Have you ever had one of those mornings when you wake up thinking: why is it that I know so little about Canada? Today was one of those days. Having gone in search of answers on the web, I can safely say that Canadians have plenty to boast about, but they don’t. Like a confident loner who has nothing left to prove, Canada seems to sit back and observe, extending a helping hand here and there, tending to its own affairs, keeping its house in order so that it can offer shelter to strangers. (It is said that around 20% of Canada’s inhabitants were born outside the country.)
Perhaps Canada just seems calm and sensible and, yes, perhaps a little boring compared to its boisterous southern neighbour, which always seems to be leaping into the limelight, demanding our attention for new products and pastimes, compelling us to make gross generalisations, which we must immediately retract because we know a lot of Americans who aren’t like that at all. But I digress, distracted once again by that boisterous neighbour, clamouring for attention while Canada sprawls unfazed into the distance.
To give you some idea of the downright vagueness of my bond with Canada, I need to take you back to my youth in South Africa and my friend Pieter, who had the good fortune of travelling to all corners of the globe on holiday, while I sat at home, bored out of my skull, trying not to set fire to the furniture. (It wasn’t me, mom, I promise.) Pieter returned from one of his trips with a sticker that he pasted on the inside of his wardrobe door to add to the rest of his eye-pokingly enviable collection that stretched from floor to ceiling. The sticker showed a cowboy riding a bucking bronco, Stetson in hand, giving it the old yee-ha. Above the cowboy were the words: CALL GARY STAMPEDE! Or so I thought. In my defence, the cowboy’s hat was positioned exactly between CALL and GARY.
Horse 1, Gary 0 ……………………….(Photo by MiGa)
Being of an inquisitive nature, I asked: “Who’s Gary?”
“What?” asked Pieter.
“Is he the guy who stops the stampede?” I asked.
“No, you fool, it says ‘Calgary’!” howled Pieter. “It’s a place in Canada!”
“I knew that. I just looks funny.” I mumbled in a vain attempt to save face.
In short, Canada and I got off to an embarrassing start, which probably explains why we only ran into each other at irregular intervals over the next 30 years, usually in the form of a surprised reaction – “I had no idea he/she was Canadian!” – to certain celebrities. And more recently in the form of Canadians in tight, red suits flashing across the TV screen, beating Dutch speed skaters into second place, much to the chagrin of local commentators.
Other than that, it was silent on the Canuck front. Meanwhile, the Boisterous Southern Neighbour was all over the news and every other medium, constantly bombarding my senses with its will to please and entertain and convince. The contrast between the two countries couldn’t be greater, even though their histories and geographies seem much the same, as do their demographics.
My distant Canuck cousin Dave summed it up as follows: “Canada is a large and diverse country that agrees from coast to coast that ice hockey is the best game in the world and the best way to watch it is with a cold beer. Quebec is our spoiled little brother always pestering and wanting to run away, but we allow them to stay because they gave us poutine, a dish of French fries covered in cheese curd and smothered in piping hot gravy.”
My cousin Bart, who emigrated to Canada in his youth to play basketball, confirms: “The country always had a certain mystique about it. It was where my uncle Luke (Dave’s father) lived, and I decided to check things out for myself. It was true. The country is amazing, the people are generally great and the opportunities are endless, as is the horizon. When my wife and I backpacked around the world in our younger days, we met a lot of people who had Canadian flags on their packs even though they weren’t Canadian, because it opened a lot of doors for them.”
While it’s wonderful to hear that my cousins are so proud of their home country, the question remains: Why is Canada so modest about its glories and achievements? Is it because the country has unleashed the power of Bieber Fever upon an unsuspecting world?
Perhaps Canadian readers can enlighten us.
Richard de Nooy
(Click here to see more of MiGa’s superb series of the Calgary Stampede on Flickr.)
