Jesse Brown - The Canadaland Guide to Canada

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Front cover illustration by Dan Buller

ISBN 978-1-5011-5063-0

ISBN 978-1-5011-5065-4 (ebook)

For Jesse Brown

THE

CANADALAND

GUIDE TO CANADA

(PUBLISHED IN AMERICA)

by Jesse Brown

with Vicky Mochama and Nick Zarzycki

Editors: Nita Pronovost and Brendan May

Designer: Paul Bucci

Cover Painting: Dan Buller

Cover Design: Paul Barker

Illustrators: Andrew Barr, Deshi Deng

Contributors: Kathryn Borel, Rachel Bulatovich, Winnie Code, Melissa Deleary, Jacob Duarte Spiel, Aaron Hagey-MacKay, Jill Krajewski, Dave McGimpsey, Alex Nursall, Emma Overton, Simren Sandhu, Alexander Saxton, John Semley, Samuel Smith, Jimmy Thomson, Jamie Whitecrow, Bryce Warnes

CONTENTS

W hat youre reading right now is the main body text of The Canadaland Guide to Canada . Despite the swears and made-up words like bonerish, the stuff over here is real, so far as we can tell. We looked it up. I mean, we didnt call up the people involved or dig up old diaries from tombs or anything. But we didnt just copy and paste it from Wikipedia, either. We got it mostly from books and old newspaper articles. Look, maybe theres a mistake in here, who knows? But the idea is that this stuff is real.

The blue stuff over here in italics is silly nonsense.

QUOTE SQUARE

Yes, the person quoted in these boxes actually said or wrote this stuff. In this case, it was me, Nick. Nick Zarzycki

Quickpicture Canada.

Not the forest. The tiny strip along the bottom where people live. The cities. Think about what they look like.

Now, consider Canadians. Think about their clothes. Try to remember what their accents sound like.

Coming up empty? Is everything Canada blurring together into a shapeless, beige haze?

Thats exactly what were going for. Normalcy is the gold standard in Canada. Our aspirations are generic. We aim to pass. If you cant distinguish Vancouver from Seattle or Toronto from Frankfurt, were thrilled.

The only thing that would give us more pleasure would be if you considered us to be just like you, but a little better.

Not in a flashy way. Were not talking about better looking, or smarter, or richer, or more skilled. Just... a little cleaner. A little nicer. Feel free to cite us as an example of how your progressive politics arent so crazy after all. Diversity! Gun control! Free health care! Abortions! No big deal up in Canada, right?

We share a border with America. When your next-door neighbor is a billionaire crackhead porn star with a machine gun, you can get away with all kinds of shit and nobody will ever notice.

You can dig up the worlds dirtiest oil and be known as environmentalists! You can sell billions of dollars of weapons to murderous tyrants and be known as peacekeepers! You can deprive Indigenous people of clean drinking water and be known as multiculturalists!

In reality, Canadians dont say eh or call each other hoser or eat more donuts than Americans (we do eat a shit-ton of donuts, though). We are more polite, but we are far less kind. Well choose peace and order over freedom any day of the week.

We enjoy our benign stereotype as much as anyone. Probably more so, since were the ones who created it. But its time we grew up and told the truth.

Sorry!

Macdonald was still 30 percent less drunk and racist than everyone else in the country at the time.

N o man is more credited with the birth of our nation than our first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. He united four British colonies into a single dominion and built an epic railway to connect them. He did all this while drunkenly extolling the virtues of the Aryan race, binge drinking his way through federal elections, puking during speeches, intentionally starving Indians, and setting himself on fire.

Macdonald loved Canada, but like most people, he loved alcohol more.