OH, CANADA!

This is a short tribute to this beautiful country in which I was fortunate enough to be born. The only thing these pictures have in common is the fact that the new Canada flag, "The Maple leaf" appears in them all. I remember an older Canadian flag, one that has disappeared from Canadian memory.

The world is in chaos and as we settle in to holiday the long weekend away, it is important that we remember how fortunate we really are. And to step out of our complacency and become more aware of our position in the world.




I'm not an American! I am a Canadian. I come from a "nice", thoroughly unrealistic country.~ Matthew Fisher




We Canadians live in a blind spot about our identity. We have very strong feelings about who we aren't but only weak ones about who we are. We're passionate about what we don't want to be but oddly passive about what we should be.
~ John Cruickshank (in McLean's Magazine)





The US is our trading partner, our neighbour, our ally and our friend ~ and sometimes we'd like to give them such a smack! ~ Rick Mercer





The crisis of Canada today is the combination of economic problems facing us and the increasing impotency of governments that lack either the will or the resources to do much about it. The tragedy of Canada today is that just when we need a country that's pulling together in common cause, we have one that keeps finding new ways to pull itself apart. ~ Angus Reid




Your majesty, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and Madame Houde thanks you from her bottom too. ~ Montreal Mayor Camillien Houde (in 1939 to King George VI)





It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she's something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power
that you are a part of. ~ Emily Carr





I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in our my way, free to stand for what I think is right, free to oppose that which I believe wrong, and free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold
for myself and mankind. ~ Anonymous




Canadians are the people who learned to live without the bold accents of the natural ego-trippers of other lands. ~ Marshall McLuhan





The beaver, which has come to represent Canada as the eagle does the United States and the lion Britain, is a flat-tailed, slow-witted, toothy rodent known to bite off it's own testicles or to stand under its own falling trees. ~ June Callwood





Canada has never been a melting-pot; more like a tossed salad. ~ Arnold Edinborough





We are tremendously proud of our cultures, heritage and achievements and we will continue to break new ground. I am proud to be a Canadian and I hope you are too. ~ Philip K. Lee





If you don't believe your country should come before yourself, you can better serve your country by livin' someplace else. ~ Stompin' Tom Connors





Many Canadian nationalists harbour the bizarre fear that should we ever reject royalty, we would instantly mutate into Americans, as though the Canadian sense of self is so frail and delicate a bud, that the only thing stopping it from being swallowed whole by the US is an English lady in a funny hat. ~ Will Ferguson





It's going to be a great country when they finish unpacking it. ~ Andrew H. Malcom





With or without the Royals, we are not Americans. Nor are we British. Or French. Or Void. We are something else. And the sooner we define this, the better. ~
Will Ferguson





Canada is probably the most free country in the world where a man still has room to breathe, to spread out, to move forward, to move out, an open country with an open frontier Canada has created harmony and cooperation among ethnic groups, and it must take this experience to the world because there is yet to be such an example of harmony and cooperation among ethnic groups. ~ Valentyn Moroz





As far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't want to go to any other country.
It's good enough here. ~ Orviel Kruse





Canada is one of the planet’s most comfortable, and caring, societies. ~ Time Magazine





God Bless America, but God help Canada to put up with them! ~ Anonymous





Canadians don't have a very big political lever, we're nice guys. ~ Paul Henderson

Canadians, like their historians, have spent too much time remembering conflicts, crises, and failures. They forgot the great, quiet continuity of life in a vast and generous land. A cautious people learns from its past; a sensible people can face its future. Canadians, on the whole, are both. ~ Desmond Morton

I don't even know what street Canada is on. ~ Al Capone





A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe. ~ Pierre Berton





The huge advantage of Canada is its backwardness. ~ Marshall McLuhan





What is a Canadian? A Canadian is a fellow wearing English tweeds, a Hong Kong shirt and Spanish shoes, who sips Brazilian coffee sweetened with Philippine sugar from a Bavarian cup while nibbling Swiss cheese, sitting at a Danish desk over a Persian rug, after coming home in a German car from an Italian movie ~ and then writes his Member of Parliament with a Japanese ballpoint pen on French paper, demanding that he do something about foreigners taking away our Canadian jobs. ~ Anonymous





A Canadian is merely an unarmed American with health care. ~ John Wing





When I’m in Canada, I feel this is what the world should be like. ~ Jane Fonda





Gentlemen, we all must realize that neither side has any monopoly on sons of bitches.
~ C.D. Howe (in Washington to resolve a shipping dispute)






The great themes of Canadian history are as follows: Keeping the Americans out, keeping the French in, and trying to get the Natives to somehow disappear. ~ Will Ferguson





Canadians have been so busy explaining to the Americans that we aren't British, and to the British that we aren't Americans that we haven't had time to become Canadians.
~ Helen Gordon McPherson





Canada is an interesting place, the rest of the world thinks so,
even if Canadians don't. ~ Terence M. Green





We'll explain the appeal of curling to you if you explain the appeal of the National Rifle Association to us. ~ Andy Barrie





There are no limits to the majestic future which lies before the mighty expanse of Canada with its verile, aspiring, cultured, and generous-hearted people.
~ Sir Winston Churchill





In a world darkened by ethnic conflicts that tear nations apart, Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect. ~ U.S. President Bill Clinton





Canada is a place of infinite promise. We like the people, and if one ever had to emigrate, this would be the destination, not the U.S.A. The hills, lakes and forests make it a place of peace and repose of the mind, such as one never finds in the U.S.A.
~ John Maynard Keynes