Happy birthday Canada!
Here is an article from my hometown paper, the Boston Globe.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/18...ool_eh_+.shtml
Cool, eh?
Showing a plucky independence with its tolerance and diversity, Canada has never been more hip
By Alex Beam, Globe Staff, 7/1/2003
Happy Canada Day! Yes, it was just 136 years ago today that Canada signed its first constitution. True, it took our north-of-the-border friends another 64 years to break free of their colonial masters in London, but we're here to celebrate, not criticize.
Remember when Canada was just plain cold? Think Farley Mowat chasing wolves across ice floes. Think goalie Gump Worsley clogging up the goalmouth for the Montreal Canadiens. Think of Canada's unflattering nickname: ''Snow Mexico.''
That was then. Now Canada has gone from cold to cool. Call it global zeitgeist warming. It may be the coolest place on earth. Canada is what Cambridge would like to be: ethnically diverse, tolerant, committed to public transportation. And it's becoming the most permissive place on earth, west of Stockholm. You can buy all the pot you need in ''Vansterdam'' -- Vancouver -- a city so hip that Seattle grungies trek northward just to savor its heady melange of multicultural fusion. Needle exchange programs? Canada's got 'em. Pretty soon they will be adding their own full-service heroin dens: Vancouver will host the first ''safe injection site'' for drug addicts anywhere in North America.
Would you like a same-sex marriage? No need to travel to the barren shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont to sample former governor Howard Dean's half-baked ''civil unions'' compromise. The Canadian government is committed to full marital parity for gays and straights.
Got universal health care? Sure do, eh? Got cheap prescription drugs? So cheap the Yankee pillpoppers are shuffling north from Buffalo.
Did you see the movie ''Chicago''? They should have called it ''Toronto.'' It was filmed there, as are an alarmingly large number of Hollywood movies.
If you don't feel like being part of the cheering section for the Coalition of the Willing, come on up! South of Sault Ste. Marie, if you oppose George Bush's Iraqi adventure, John Ashcroft is writing down your name, and he's marking it twice. In Canada, Prime Minister Jean Chretien's speaking out on Operation Iraqi Freedom prompted Bush to cancel a summit. So what does Chretien do? He jets to the Dominican Republic to play golf with Bill Clinton -- who happens to have been keeping company with a billionaire bombshell, 36-year-old Toronto auto parts magnate Belinda Stronach, according to the CanWest News Service. What kind of country has a 30-something auto parts magnate who looks like the young Meryl Streep? Our kind of country, we say.
So Happy Canada Day, esteemed northern neighbors. You're cool and you know it.
A brief history of cool Canada, the last half-century
1953
Jazz pianist Oscar Peterson forms trio with Herb Ellis and Ray Brown
1955
Glenn Gould releases recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations
1958
Seagram Building is completed in New York
1964
Marshall McLuhan publishes "Understanding Media"
1970
Donald Sutherland plays "Hawkeye" Pierce in "M*A*S*H"
1976
"SCTV" debuts
1983
Peter Jennings is named sole anchor of "World News Tonight"
1992
Graydon Carter is named editor of Vanity Fair; Toronto Blue Jays win firrst of two consecutive World Series
1993
"The X-Files," fi lmed in Vancouver, debuts
1997
Sarah McLachlan launches Lilith Fair
2003
Mike Weir wins The Masters golf tournament
MARK FEENEY
This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on 7/1/2003.