Encyclopedia Canadiana

All things Canadian, organized according to the best principles of rational science, and explained fully and fairly.

Alice Munro: a maudlin old dear who penned her way into the hearts of Canaidan high school English teachers by cranking out innumerable, interminable stories about winter on the Canadian frontier. Inevitably the firewood runs low, the calf dies and someone spends a lot of time tatting (whatever the fuck tatting is). She is Canada’s Dostoevsky.

Beavertails: batter fried in butter and sprinkled with cheap syrup sold during the winter from little wooden boxes on the canal. Says it all about Canadian “culture” that this is about all the sustenance you can expect when you’re out skating. Little Hans Brinker had to start going home for his gluh wine after emigrating to this benighted country. It’s tempting to blame the protestants, but look at the Dutch and the Germans! Rolling around their parks at 11am, pissed as newts. By noon, the cans of beer are about the only thing upright in all of Amsterdam (or Munich for that matter, or Stuttgart). So we can’t blame the god people for once.

Dear Leader: our current Prime MInister is a lying sleazy shit even by the standards of Canadian politicians. A small town wanker [actually, he’s not: he was born in a respectable suburb of Toronto, Ed.] who went to a small town wanker university [actually, he started at the University of Toronto. He didn’t last long, though, and ended up circling the drain for two months before being washed down into the U of Alta and then University of Calgary, Ed.] where he picked up his ethics from a man who claims the Cree came to North America on an Aeroflot flight sometime in the mid ’50s [clarify: Tom Flanagan, Ed.] , the easier to foreclose on their swampland cottages and sell them off to his deserving friends from BP, and his economics from a man who sold off the forests of New Zealand to the Chinese. Not only is he a small town wanker with small town wanker predilections (apparently he likes to recite hockey stats from the 1970s curled up around the fireplace with his spawn), he’s a snake handling fundy who expects to be raptured up just as soon as that frickin’ olive tree puts out a branch that we’ve all been waiting for.

Pogey: what you live on when you’ve got enough stamps. The Feds might think of it as UI (see Unemployment Insurance) but those of us from Down East know it as a way of life. Get your stamps while the weather’s warm and then hole up in the old log cabin with your toes up on hearth and watch the snow fly for a few months. Fuck the arseholes in Ottawa eh? Fucking lazy cunts never cut an honest cord of wood in their fucking lives. And as for those motherfucking Albertans. Fucking white-towelhead oil shakes is all they are. See also Canada Arts Council, Senate and Tim Horton’s.

Poutine: the only thing that Canada can really be said to have contributed to global culinary culture (beavertails not withstanding). French fries glued together with cheese curds and drowned in gravy. Best eaten from a cardboard plate while wearing a toque and stamping feet against cold on sidewalk next to the van where it was cooked by a big fat lady who looks like Ronnie van Zant (or Johnnie, or Donnie). Poutine is the koshary of Canada. On a more unfortunate plane, it is also-tant pis-what passes for French food in Canada.

Preston ManningDad (Ernest “Doc” Manning) was a snake handling Bible thumping follower of Bible Bill Aberhart who ran Alberta for two and a half decades starting in about 1940something. He was a creature of Social Credit, one of the few truly amusing Canadian political moments. Less amusing was the eugenics program that he ran. Preston grew up amongst the hay seeds at his Daddy’s side, learning how to meld rural religion and state politics into an unholy golem of petty power, narrow minded country-bound bigotry and holy-than-all-you-sinners condescension. He put the lessons to good use in founding the Reform Party, into which he inducted Dear Leader at a tender age. Despite his sincere conviction that the fires of hell await most of us, Preston is a sweet and somewhat bumpkinesque little man who reminded me of the country aunt I never had. He was eaten alive by Dear Leader in 2001-ish, and excreted back to the wilds of Alberta, where he lives today. Sometimes he issues plaintive noises, but nobody really pays any attention.

Summer: a nasty joke, but at least its short.

Tim Horton’s (Timmy’s): Now this is the real shit eh, a truly national institution. Who says Canadians don’t have an identity? We are the people who eat at Timmy’s (arga tun-gala Timmays in the tongue of our forefathers). Started off as a way for a famous hockey player to turn a buck in his toothless post-game days, became a national fast food chain serving bad donuts and bland coffee. Great place to eke out the pogey check. Timmy cracked up the Camaro back in ’74—flipped ‘er at around 100 mph outside TO there, boozed up and pilled up. Probably shoulda had the seatbelt on, then at least he wouldn’t have been thrown out the window and ended up in quite so many pieces eh? But then, well, Tim Horton’s would have been short a trademark product (see Timbits).

Timbits: (1) little doughballs sold cheaper than full-sized donuts at Tim Horton’s: a great way to eke out the pogey check. (2) how Tim Horton ended up.

Toque: every real Canadian has several of these. They are our traditional headdress. We get them for free from gas stations and Canadian Tire (entry coming). An ugly little wool hat that can be topped with a bobble, it is generally kept under the driver’s seat of the car during the winter months, or jammed into the toolbox of the snowmobile. Sometime around the first snowfall the toque is retrieved from its summer storage and pulled down over the ears so that we can’t hear the snow plow coming as we shovel out the driveway.

Unemployment Insurance: one of those aspects of Canadian life that prompted our current Prime Minister (see Dear Leader) to refer to his home country as “something like one of those shitty little northern European welfare states.” Idea is that if you can stick out full time, gainful employment for 10 weeks out of the year, the federal government will cover your beer bills for the next 42. Or something like that anyway. I’m not too clear on the details. See pogey, see also pogey bum, stamps, Tim Hortons.