For those unfamiliar with this holiday, it's often called "Canada's birthday" but being Canadian, its a little more flexible. It acutally commemorates the creation of a federation on 1 July 1867 by the British North American colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada forming four provinces (the Province of Canada was divided into Ontario and Quebec to the relief of both).
And yes, I can sing the Canadian National anthem (at least until they change the words again) thanks to frequent attendance of North American hockey games. During the Juan de Fuca Festival this past Memorial Weekend, we had Canada Day with most of the performers being Canadian. (alas, one classical celloist made the mistake of coming the day before, returning home to Victoria that night to pick up a replacement bow and being denied re-entry by Homeland Security because they thought it was suspicious that she traveled across the strait two days in a row with the highly specious excuse of a performance contract... of course, we all know about that highly dangerous terrorist cell of Canadian celloists... *heavy sigh*) One of the performers was a radical celloist (hey, that's how he was listed, so maybe the Homeland Security people read the program and got her mixed up with the "radical celloist") and when he played "Oh, Canada" as the intro to his hysterically funny Canadian song (I'll track down his website URL and post it later so everyone can hear this; it's so funny it makes the Molson commercial sound down right anti-patriotic), he forewarned the Yanks not to embarass themselves by standing because the Canadians probably wouldn't -- and they didn't! It was like attending my first Canadian hockey game (at the old Maple Leafs arena) and asking the Californian with me what we were suppose to do during the Canadian national anthem. She looks around as it and says, "Apparently, look embarrassed and pretend we don't know what's going on." The national anthem was finished with a deafening "Go Leafs!" Which was far more reassuring than being at a game in Dallas with 40,000 hyper Texans, standing at attention, screaming "STARS!" every time the word appeared while we sang the U.S. national anthem.
So for all our Canadian friends, let's hoist a Molson, watch a Heartland episode and practice courtesy, tolerance and keeping our stick on the ice.
Canada, I'm proud to call you neighbor!
