What? You don't know how to cook bacon?

Walt is "batching" it, so has started to pay attention to cooking instructions...

...but does know how to cook bacon, having learned by watching this excellent cooking show on SCTV.

What's all this nonsense about making Canada the 51st state?

News travels slowly to this corner of the forest, especially in winter. It has just come to the attention of this dual citizen that President Trump, in a meeting with Blackie McBlackface, Emperor of Canuckistan, that the latter's country would be better off joining the Excited States of America as the 51st state. Why, he said to Junior, you could even be the first governor. Or if not you, then Wayne Gretsky.

Chief Walking Goose allowed as how the frostbacks he rules might not want to join a country where everyone has a gun for self-defence, but not everyone has health insurance coverage provided by the government. But, said the Donald, if you don't join us voluntarily, we have ways of making you see reason (read: the way I see things).

Did he mean another invasion? As President James Madison said way back in 1812, "it would only be a matter of marching." Even President Trump, who ignores history that he doesn't like, knows how that turned out. So he assured M Trudeau and his minions that he wasn't talking about an armed invasion. Goodness, no! A 25% tariff on all Canadian goods and services would do just as well, or even better.

Since he said that, Canadians of all political stripes have had their knickers* in a twist over how to respond to the threatened tariffs. Some argue for a tit-for-tat tariff. [DJT sez: "OK then. Tat!"] Others say maybe joining the US of A isn't such a bad idea. It would cure their government's terminal wokeness once and for all, without an election, let alone an assassination.

What they are forgetting is that Canada and the US of A have been arguing about, threatening, negotiating and renegotiating tariffs since before Canada was even a country. In fact, it was the threat of American tariffs against Canada that forced the assorted provinces to unite as one country (more or less), beginning in 1867. What follows is adapted from Stone Country, by George Bowering, Canada's first poet laureate, Penguin Canada 2003. 

The US war with the Confederate States of America complicated Canadian politics greatly. A lot of Canadians joined the Blue Coats to fight against the slave economy. But the British, still smarting from bad experiences with their former colonies, built warships that wound up in Grey Coat hands. 

These ships made a great nuisance of themselves in the Union shipping lanes, and when the war was all but over, President Lincoln started talking about reprisals, especially the receiving-huge-acreage kind of reprisals. Luckily this sort of talk tapered off after Lincoln's assassination, and the work was left to the feckless Fenians. 

In 1871, the case was closed when Britain agreed that it should pay some monetary compensations. But the big new republic was a place in which business and the military were learning to butter each other's buttocks. If military annexation was not going to look all that good, there were always economic means.

In 1854 the US and British North America had signed a Reciprocity Treaty, which had proven quite handy for the businessmen on both sides, and during their big war, the US had been happy to get fish, food, minerals and wood without paying tariffs on them. But when the war was over, the US Senate began to listen to the complains of businessmen whose business was fish, coal and lumber. 

Listen, said these businessmen, we need protection from these foreign traders. Don't you remember that we just recently fought a couple of wars with them? Don't you realize that if we put up tariffs they will eventually beg for annexation so they can make a living? 

The US withdrew from the Reciprocity Treaty in 1866, whereupon some economic realists proposed the idea of a confederation of the several provinces. Said Sir John Eh Macdonald, who would become the first prime minister, "I'll drink to that!", and so the Dominion of Canada was born. 

This was the kind of thing that made Canadian schoolchildren decide that history was kind of boring. US schoolchildren, of course, never heard abut it. But over the years there have been a lot of apoplectic fits, suicides and desertions caused by the tariffs that keep showing up at the US border.

The lesson for DJT, should he deign to pay attention, is that Canadians will find a way to keep the World's Longest Undefended Border (TM) intact and still do business with the new imperial America. Most of them -- let's say 50% + 1 -- reject the idea of joining the Excited States of America, even if staying out costs them a bit more. As those arch-Canucks, Bob & Doug McKenzie, would put it:

* Note from Ed. to American readers: "Knickers" is what the Brits call ladies' underpants. Canadians call them "panties", like Americans do.

Mounties get their goat -- a real Canadian story

Readers occasionally ask if Walt is a Canadian making fun of Americans, or an American making fun of Canadians. Let it be remembered that no-one needs to make fun of Canadians, because they quite enjoy making fun of themselves. One has only to watch SCTV's "Great White North" segments, featuring Bob and Doug McKenzie, the quintessential hosers, or watch for the Canadian jokes included in so many episodes of The Simpsons.

One of the big differences between Americans and their northern cousins is that Canucks refuse to take themselves seriously, whereas Americans take themselves much too seriously. That's a fact... a Canadian fact... brought to you by the Canadian Ministry of Facts.

Today we have the perfect example of the Canadian sense of humour in a true story from Warman SK, a crossroads remembered none too affectionately by one of Walt's agents, who passed this along.

Early Sunday morning, two Mounties from the Warman detachment were called to a Tim Hortons in nearby Martensville for an unusual disturbance -- a goat refusing to leave the store (or "coffee and bakeshop", as Tim's is called south of the border).

The RCMP issued a press release -- really -- which confirmed that "There was a stubborn goat refusing to leave the establishment. The employees would ask him to leave and walk him outside, but he would just turn around and come back in through the automatic doors."

RCMP believe the goat was simply cold and decided to sleep in the space. Store employees said the goat ambled through the parking lot, and took a nap in the drive-through at one point. Store owner Camille Barzeele said, "One of [our employees] stayed with him to make sure he didn't get run over, and the other one called the cops."

RCMP said the goat was "arrested" and taken into their cruiser. (No, the Mounties don't ride horses any more, not even in Saskatchewan.) But, they said, "He was very unhappy with this so the members decided to take him home instead of to holding cells at the detachment."


"We are happy to report that the goat is safe and sound back with his owners after his adventurous night out on the town," the press release concluded. "Employees at the Tim Hortons in Martensville see all sorts of customers overnight. This one wasn't kidding around."

How about that, eh?! But when you think about the differences between Canadians and Americans, consider how this story might have played out had it occurred a few hundred miles due south, say in the middle of Wyoming. The errant goat would surely have been shot.

In Canada, if it remained in the store another night, it would only have been taxed. That's right... a tax on real property abutting and abounding on public lands, taxed at the rate of X dollars per front foot. [Aaaaarrrggghhh! Ed.] 

"'Fuck off!' is not a curse where I come from," Canuck tells Dubai court

The United Arab Emirates is a country [group of states, surely! Ed.] in which Islam is the dominant religion [the ONLY religion, surely! Ed.] Thus they have very strict laws against blasphemy, and even, it appears, against obscenity.

An unnamed Canadian man is on trial this week on a misdemeanor charge of having sworn at an Arab (Egyptian) local, a representative of Etisalat, a UAE-based telecoms giant. The service technician told a court in Dubai, "When I attended his complaint pertaining to one of our services and told him that there had been a delay, he got angry. Then he told me 'Fuck you' -- twice! -- and told me to shut my mouth!"

In his defence, attorney Uday al-Kazwini told the court his client admits using the phrase "fuck off" when speaking to the client services worker. However, he said, "My client is a Canadian citizen and 'fuck off' is not an insult in Canada ... but 'fuck you' is a curse and an insult. 'Fuck off' is commonly used when a person expresses themselves metaphorically and asks another person, who angered them, to walk away."

The defendant told the court he became frustrated with the worker's attitude when he visited the Etisalat counter at Mirdif City Centre to complain about not receiving his bills. The trial continues.

Walt wonders if the unnamed defendant is really a Canadian. Wouldn't a true son of the Great Not-so-white North have said, "Fuck off, eh, hoser!"?

Puck off, eh, hoser!

Still (more or less) on the subject of the glories of the English language... In anticipation of a trip north of the World's Longest Undefended Border, Ed. has been trying to increase his vocabulary of Canadian English. His text is Casselman's Canadian Words, by (not surprisingly) Bill Casselman (1995, Copp Clark Ltd., Toronto).

I dipped into it while Ed. was on his break, and, in the chapter on "Sports", learned a new word. The word is "puck-off", which Casselman says "is not a lisped obscenity. Puck-off was the original and now obsolete term for a face-off in hockey, that high-adrenalin moment when the referee drops the puck into play. The name had to be changed because of frequent alteration of the first letter."

I'll bet 99% of you hosers didn't know that! For Americans and other non-speakers of Canajan English, Casselman explains "A hoser is the all-Canadian, beer-swilling, tuque-headed yokel, as popularized by Bob & Doug Mckenzie, TV characters created by SCTV stars Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas." Now you know.

Recommended reading: Canajan, Eh! and Speaking Canadian English, both by the late Mark Orkin, a cunning linguist if ever there was one. Walt has autographed copies of both.

Great White North not so white anymore, eh

Not so great either...

StatsCan (aka Statistics Canada) today released the first batch of results its 2011 "voluntary" National Household Survey, which replaced the mandatory long-form census cancelled by order of Prime Minister Steve "Stephen" Harper because [Ed., please call them -- 1-800-263-1136 -- and see if you can find out the reason.]

The findings should delight the apostles of multiculturalism, secular humanism, diversity and unrestricted immigration. Why? Because what the Survey reveals, in a nutshell, is that your average Canadian no longer looks like this.

Not-so-typical Canadians

Here, in no particular order, are some highlights, although if you're a native-born Canuck you may prefer the term "lowlights".

• Canada was home to an estimated 6,775,800 immigrants in 2011, comprising 20.6% of the population — more than ever before and the highest proportion of all G8 countries.
• About 1,162,900 foreign-born people immigrated to Canada between 2006 and 2011 -- that would be on Harper's watch -- making up 17.2% of the foreign-born population and 3.5% of Canada's total population. [Ed., don't call Statscan. I've figured it out now.]
• 1,400,685 people identified themselves as aboriginal (First Nations, Innu, Indians, Eskimos or all of the above) in 2011, representing 4.3% of the Canadian population.
• Aboriginal peoples accounted for 3.8% of the population in 2006, 3.3% in 2001 and 2.8% in 1996.
• The aboriginal population grew by 20.1% -- 232,385 people -- between 2006 and 2011, compared with 5.2% for non-aboriginal people.
• Aboriginal children aged 14 and under made up 28% of Canada's total aboriginal population, while their non-aboriginal counterparts represented 16.5% of all non-aboriginals.
• Almost half (48.1%) of all children aged 14 and under in foster care in Canada in 2011 were aboriginal children.
• More than 200 different ethnic origins were reported in the 2011 survey, with 13 of them representing more than a million people each.
• Nearly 6,264,800 people identified themselves as "visible minorities" (aka "vizmins"), representing 19.1% of the population. 65% of them were born outside Canada.
• South Asians (= Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans), Chinese and blacks accounted for 61.3% of the visible minority population, followed by Filipinos, Latin Americans, Arabs, Southeast Asians, West Asians, Koreans and Japanese.
• 7.8 million people, 23.9% of the population, reported having no religious affiliation.

Don't call, write or e-mail me to tell me I'm being racist. Those are the Canadian government's figures, and we all know the Dear Leader's regime is nothing if not politically correct.

The Canadian media are making a meal of these statistics, with major dailies running two or three or even four stories each, with opinion pieces yet to come. Here are some of the headlines Walt has seen.

Immigration dramatically changing makeup of Toronto and Canada (Hardly news to Torontonians, and certainly not to CBC Radio which for years now has been giving airtime to people with unintelligble accents in order to be "sounding the way Toronto looks".)

Canada's non-Christian population growing (It's not the immigrants who are identifying themselves as having no religion.)

Aboriginal population young and growing fast (Consider the implications next time you're driving through Caledonia ON.)

Young, suburban and mostly Asian: Canada's immigrant population surges past 20% (Higher in some localities. Hello Mississauga!)

Muslim population is fastest growing religion in Canada, census shows (Ignore the dreadful grammar. But do the math. How long before Canada has an Islamist government?)

Nearly half of Canada's children in foster care are Aboriginal, new census-replacement shows (Some problem with the People?)

One in five Canadians born elsewhere (Somewhere less to their liking, presumably)

Immigrant underclass in GTA fuels simmering frustrations (Begs the question: who's simmering and who's really hot? Amazing, though, that the Toronto Red Star would actually use the word "underclass")

Canadians losing their religion, survey shows (Should read "Native-born Canadians...")

Why the census may not be entirely accurate (Eh? You mean it could be worse?)

Canucks have few answers for this year's meltdown [I think that's actually a sports headline. Ed.]

Walt has no further comment except to say to the uninitiated that the typical Canadian hosers pictured above are Bob and Doug McKenzie, hosts of the "Great White North" segment on the cult classic SCTV sketch comedy series. The "brothers" developed that bit at the urging of the CBC, which felt the show should have more Canadian content. Of course that was 30 years ago.