I love Canada. I don’t think that this is a secret, but if it is let me clear up any misconceptions: I LOVE CANADA! “But Craig,” I can hear some of you thinking, “you have to love Canada because you are married to a Canadian”. And to that I say, “true”. I had a ‘like’ of Canada when I visited Vancouver and Victoria while living in Washington State between 1994 and 1998. Then it moved into a ‘like like’ when I moved to Winnipeg for three years to finish up my BA degree at William and Catherine Booth College. There I met my lovely wife (well she wasn’t my wife when we met, the marriage came 3 years after we met) and fell in love firstly with my wife and then Canada.
What do I love about Canada? Well I am a realist so I cannot say ‘everything’ because there are things in any country that I wouldn’t like. For instance: socialized medicine, Blackfly, driving through the prairies, etc. If I had to make a top ten list of my favorite things in Canada it would go something like this (in a somewhat thought out order):
1. Family
2. Corner Gas
3. Friends that I met in college
4. Bob and Doug McKenzie
5. Restaurants (Harvey’s Hamburgers, Swiss Chalet, Tim Horton’s)
6. Coloured money
7. Superfluous use of the letter ‘u’ (flavour, colour, honour, etc.)
8. Eh?
9. Snow
10. Stuart McLean
As I was walking Jasper (the wonder dog) tonight I was listening to The Vinyl Café podcast. Now for most of you this segue sucks, but for the Canadians reading this (Anney and maybe Jackie) this was a brilliant segue, or at least A segue. For those of you who don’t know ‘The Vinyl Cafe’ is a podcast by Stuart McLean (#10 on the above list). Stuart McLean is like Garrison Keillor if Garrison Keillor were funny. Stuart McLean travels Canada giving concerts in which he has musical guests and then tells stories. The stories are generally about one family: Dave, Morley, Stephanie and Sam. Dave is the always comically and lovingly screwing up husband. Morley is the longsuffering, loving wife. Stephanie is the teenage/college age daughter and Sam is the typical preteen boy (and in my opinion the best character) whose friends are hilarious and remind me of some of my ‘friends’ at that age. They also have a dog named Arthur who likes to sit on potatoes. The story that I was listening to tonight was entitled ‘Morte d’Arthur’. I know that this means something like ‘death of Arthur’ and I put off listening to it for quite awhile because I don’t want to think of the words ‘death’ and ‘dog’ in the same sentence. In the story Dave, the dad, is telling the kids about the dog he had had when he was a kid. Long story short: good dog that was hit by a car. Dave is telling the story because Arthur is old and sick and might not live much longer. He dies in the story (spoiler alert) and this brought up emotions in me that all previous dying dog stories/movies have failed to bring up. (‘Marley and me’ tried way too hard to be sentimental. ‘Old Yeller’? Okay, Old Yeller may have gotten me when I was a kid.) Maybe it didn’t help that I was actually walking Jasper as I listened to this, but I got to thinking that he was already two years old and he won’t live forever (20 years at the most). Sofie will grow up with him and as she gets older Jasper will be getting old and one day I will have to explain to her why Jasper had to go live on a farm and why Daddy is a crying mess. Just kidding! I will not take the easy way out and lie, I will be straightforward with the truth. And I have no doubt that I will cry.
Wow, this is getting morbid. How did that happen? Jasper is alive and well and whining at the door right now. I think that it would be easier to think about the future death of a dog if said dog was stupid ( I mean who is going to miss a dog that walks into walls or drinks out of the toilet) but Jasper is a genius…he is way smarter than your dog. Can your dog sneeze on command? Jasper can! This is the one that people don’t believe…as if I could even contemplate teaching a dog to sneeze. But we did. He can also sit, shake either paw, high five, play dead, go right and left, leave it (put a treat in front of him and tell him to wait), go to bed (in his own dog bed) and kangaroo (hop in circles on his hind legs). AND he can do them all (except go to bed) by either vocal commands or gestures.
Do you ever get lost when you are writing? I can’t for the life of someone else remember what my point was. Something that Anney and I always talk about is whether or not Jasper is a part of ‘the family’. I say no, because he is a dog. I ‘love’ him in a master/pet way. But he is a dog. I am proud (as you can tell from the above paragraph) when he learns a new trick. But he is a dog. He isn’t my child. I am not his dad and Anney isn’t his mom (pet peeve # 2,576-when people refer to their pets as their children). When Jasper is sick or limping or throwing up I am concerned, but I wouldn’t get him a kidney transplant or an artificial leg. But I WOULD get him one of those wheelchair things where the dog drags its back legs in a chariot looking thing. Those are awesome.
So in conclusion I ‘philio’ love Canada and my dog and I ‘eros /agape’ love my wife, but that is a story she won’t let me blog about…but we will be parents soon…
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Craig
Very nice segue Craig!!! A+
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