Swompdonkey

To all those progressive Americans who have decided to leave George Bush's USA and head North to live in the Dominion of Canada in the wake of your recent elections. You are most welcome! However, before you pull up stakes, there are a few things you need to know about this country and how we differ from the United States... we wouldn't want you to have any nasty surprises when you get here, so here goes:

Our taxes are higher... deal with it. Many of you are well-educated and have
the potential to secure high-paying jobs -- For this temerity you will be penalized most severely(incidentally, you better be employable, or we won't let you in as
skilled workers, wink wink). In our northern socialist paradise, we like to level the playing field, so think of this as your opportunity to allow others to experience the utopian health care system you have dreamed of for the U.S. --thanks to the
income taxes that will decimate your disposable income. Hey, at least you'll get your flu shot!

We grow the best dope in the world. BC Bud. And it is decriminalized, which means you can get fined, but you won't go to jail. Also, if you are gay, you can get married in several provinces. That's all I will say about those two little nuggets.

Except in BC (which is barely part of Canada) our winters are really bloody cold --and not Aspen ski holiday cold, or a blustery-Nantucket-in-January cold-- I'm talking bone-cracking, mind numbing, fingers-turn-black-and-fall-off cold. You will undoubtedly find this hard to take... but you may find comfort in the fact that our miserable mosquito-plagued summers are mercifully short.

We are more "British" than you, in the sense that we have a Queen, a Westminster-style
Parliament, and we are generally more subdued and less individualistic
than you... (Peace order and good government, is our credo rather than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) but we are in denial about it, in the sense that we have
constructed an identity for ourselves as a multicultural nation, so that we can
pretend that we weren't basically a colony of Britain until the 1930s. Hell, we
didn't even have our own flag until the sixties!

We consider ourselves a mosaic, not a melting pot. In the U.S. a Chinese person who immigrates becomes a Chinese-american. In Canada, a Chinese person who immigrates to Canada is considered Canadian by the Government, but identifies themselves as Chinese to everyone else. Some people say we couldn't be a melting pot because we don't have anything for people to melt into. The anglo side of this bicultural nation is notiorious for its insecurity over its identity, we identify ourselves by what we aren't not what we are.... hence our occasional juvenile outbursts of antiamericanism, masquerading as nationalism....as for the French side... I'm not even gonna go there.

None of your f*cking guns. We really really mean it. Shit, I mean, we've spent over a billion dollars on a gun registry that doesn't event work! That's how serious we are about gun control in this country... and we sure as hell don't have any second amendment type garbage in our constitution. You better not bring anything more dangerous that a BB gun up here or we will confiscate it on your ass. Guns are for cops, soldiers, and the occasional hunter out in the boondocks... That's it. Which raises the inevitable question: Are Canadians a bunch of pussies? Well, that is a complex question.

We like to think that we are a kinder, gentler, country (to borrow a phrase from Bush Sr.)... and yet in our favourite sport (that's hockey... just hockey... not ICE-hockey)bloodletting is a mundane occurence. Also, we have some pretty macho national icons like the mountie, and the voyageur, and the lumberjack... One thing for sure, we USED TO BE tough... real tough. We had the best army fighting in World War I, we had the world's fourth largest Navy in World War 2 (which started, for us, in 1939, NOT in 1941, thank you very much). We once even defended ourselves from invasion by your ancestors (War of 1812) and burnt down the goddamn White House in retaliation --it used to be painted pink. Now, we think our military is for peacekeeping, and only when the U.N. says it is OK. I suppose we have largely forgotten our fathers, but we wear a poppy every November 11, and pretend we remember. In Quebec they do remember (je me souviens), but what they remember is 1759, and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which is still being fought today. They are winning.

Finally, our beer is.... different. Our beer is to yours as Aston Martin is to Pinto, as sirloin is to ground chuck, as diamonds are to cubic zirconia.... in short, Democrat beer lovers, to their delight, will reap the unexpected reward of their political choice in the form of access to our vastly superior brews. If that isn't incentive enough to move to Canada, I don't know what is!

Once again, welcome... but you've been warned.