Chapter 22: Oh Canada, my home and native land…

…true patriot love, at all thy son’s command, etc, etc, etc. Well, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. A number of Canadians on my circulation list have become quite irate with me for my critical comments about Canada. They have taken my mostly tongue-in-cheek critique personally. (And this, even though most of my critique has centered on the irrefutable fact of Canada’s terrible climate!) What is so ironic is that this defensiveness is itself so quintessentially Canadian! It’s really quite funny if you think about it. Canadians are the first – always the very first – to criticize Americans for their overdeveloped and quite repulsive brand of patriotism, but then we go and manifest it ourselves. Having said that, I would argue that Canadian patriotism has a totally different genesis. It comes not from a superpower ego, but rather from our national inferiority complex. We Canadians don’t want people to think that we are Americans, but we don’t believe our good traits stand out on their own, so we’ll tell the world over and over and over again how we are different (and better) than the United States. Well, personally, I think Canada has a lot to be proud of relative to the US (no guns, universal health care, total impossibility that someone as stupid as George Bush could ever be elected, etc, etc) but still, Canadians are so serious, so earnest, so dorkily Canadian on this topic. It’s really quite boring.

So I stick to my guns here. The thing about Canadians is that when you meet them and discussion turns to the Land of the Maple Leaf, they will inevitably tell you, in a voice just brimming with pride, as though it were a personal achievement, that Canada is the Second Biggest Country in the Whole World! And then they will begin to list famous people that have come out of Canada. Except it’s so embarassing because the list runs something like this: “ummm, the guy who invented insulin, and Margot Kidder – you know, Lois Lane from Superman who’s now in rehab? -, Bryan Adams, Pamela Anderson Lee, and about 8 other Playboy playmates, um that gold medal sprinter who broke the world 100m record, oh no we can’t count him, he took steroids and was stripped of his medal….”

So, readers from all over the world, let’s do a straw poll, and I will collate and publish the results in my next dispatch:

1. If I were to criticize your native country, making some unkind, and hopefully humourous, comments about the weather, food, political system, dress style, or any other national characteristic, would you be likely to take it personally and get upset with me? (South Africans, all of you are excluded from this poll. I remember well that you would get upset with me when I did NOT join in the general chorus of criticism of South Africa!)

2. Global readers, have you ever had the experience of meeting a Canadian (aside from me in my younger years) who bored you to tears with argument about Canada being wonderful and/or different from America? Have you ever met a Canadian who got upset with you for not knowing much about Canada, eg what the capital city is, etc.

3. Have you ever been upbraided by a Canadian for mistaking him as an American?

Send me your votes by e-mail.

And for those Canadians who are reading this, and reeling in fury and disgust from my refusal to take your feelings of hurt too seriously, let me just say this. If I don’t like Canada, so what? You’re still totally free to love it. Why must I cleave to your view, any more than you must cleave to mine? And then let me offer this: I love you for who you are, not where you live. You are all much, much, much more than just your nationality. And by the way, the weather in Vancouver, has been glorious the last two days, and when the sun shines in this city, the air practically sparkles. My Gucci sunglasses are knocking ‘em dead!

Chapter 21: Watch Out! There Are Bears Everywhere.

Well, I have discovered something very interesting indeed! In my last e-mail I commented that all Vancouverites are dressed up as though they are heading out to slay a bear. What I didn’t realize at the time is that human-bear interactions are reaching epidemic proportions here in British Columbia. The other day the daily paper….(Actually I have to stop here to offer a brief aside on false advertising in the media, and a further rant on the weather here in Vancouver. Do you know what our local rag is called? The Vancouver Sun. Ha, ha, ha, ha! It’s just sooooooo inappropriately named! It’s been bucketing rain, and each morning as I cycle to the gym I get ice burn on my hands. But I guess you can’t have a daily paper called the Vancouver
Rain-Damp-Grey-Freezing-Weather-Just-10-Frigging-Days-Before-the-Summer-Solstice.)

Anyway, back to the daily paper, the so-called Vancouver Sun, which published an article which was basically a scorecard of “Us Humans” versus “Dem Bears”. And the humans don’t come out too well: some 20 bear attacks recently, many of them fatal! Last week the paper carried gruesome photos of a man currently in hospital. It seems he was biking in the mountains somewhere near the city, and he came around a bend and saw a grizzly not far away from him. So, he dropped his bike and started to run. (Go figure! But perhaps he had rain leaking into his head, causing some brain rot.) Anyway, the grizzly charged him, caught him, and began savagely chewing on his neck. Something about the cologne perhaps? Musk for Men? And just a few days ago the Vancouver Sun (sounds of me snickering sarcastically as I write this) reported that wildlife officials had shot the black bear which mauled and killed another young man recently. This was their third attempt. The previous two attempts were cases of mistaken identity (fatal for the bears concerned) but wildlife officials said that this third corpse was indeed the bear which ate the young man. They were able to confirm this from – brace yourselves folks – dental records!

What is it about older European ladies which makes it impossible for them to throw anything out from their refrigerator? Is it a gene which remains inactive until 65 and then kicks in with all the tenacious ferocity of a new senior citizen claiming an admission discount at the movies? Or perhaps it’s the fact that they’ve all lived through WW II and deeply embedded in their psyches is a rabid fear that all which stands between them and probable starvation is that one little bag of whatever-it-is, mouldering away at the back of the refrigerator. My Mum’s fridge is chock full of small opaque plastic bags. They scare me. I pulled one out the other day, with a particularly oily condensation obscuring clear vision of its contents, and held it up for her inspection.

“What is this?”

“Food.” She replied firmly and decisively.

“Maybe once upon a time” I said, “But that’s now a debatable proposition”. And just this morning Mum pulled out of the refrigerator a plastic bag of salad, marked Use by May 2.

“Do you think it’s still good?” she asked. (Today is June 12, and it is salad!). She then proceeded to open it, to sniff if and to nibble on it, despite my horrified reaction. My brother Martin has clearly got Mum’s number though, because when he comes to eat here, he grills her thoroughly as to the ingredients, mode of preparation, length and means of storage, etc, etc. Still, it’s not as bad as an occasion years ago, when I was staying with my friend’s grandmother in Lisbon. In a tureen of soup which she served to us I found: a used matchstick, a metal cap to a bottle of Gordon’s gin, and two dead flies.

But Mum is nothing if not a good sport. As part of a photography assignment for a course I am taking she has agreed to let me take her down to the train depot, and photograph her in her bathrobe and slippers, standing in front of a series of grain trains.

And life continues to amuse. Today at the gym, I nearly fell off the treadmill when I overheard this conversation between a man and a woman on the two treadmills beside me.

“Yeah, it’s a great summer camp for the kids, and it’s cheap.”

“Is it a religious camp?”

“No, it’s not. It’s a horse camp, they get to keep their horses for a whole week.”

“That’s nice. Is there religion involved?”

“I don’t think so. Why? Are you religious?”

“No, I’m not religious. I mean, I like religion. I mean, I really like religion. Religion’s OK, you know, but I’m not religious myself. No, no, no, no, no! Did you say it was a Christian camp?”

Folks, you will understand why I had to get off my treadmill to see who this bimbo was. She looked normal, though, no sign of obvious brain damage, aside from what came out of her mouth.

I’m also going to yoga classes. It’s easy. I’m a natural, my teacher tells me. I’ve been accepted into a writers’ workshop at the University in July. Life is good, despite the rain.

Chapter 20: Home, damp home

So I flew, in a dwall, to Vancouver my childhood home. And while it’s lovely to be with my Mom and brother again, and see my little kitty cats, some things have not changed. It’s still raining here. Mum of course secretly hopes that I will move back to Vancouver one day. And so, whenever I comment on the freezing showers of rain pouring down on our heads and the low scudding clouds (and just a few weeks away from the summer equinox too), she becomes quite worried. So, when the clouds lift more than 10 inches off of the top of her head (and she’s only 5’6”) she gleefully announces that the sun is coming out. Well, I regret to say, it’s not so. But as my wise brother noted, if one didn’t have the rain in Vancouver than the sunny days wouldn’t seem so glorious and the city wouldn’t seem so clean. That always surprises me here; it’s spotless, I suppose because the rain washes everything off of the streets and into the sewers. Honestly, you could eat your dinner off the asphalt.

Some other things which haven’t changed: my cats still think the best time to come to me for some Good Ole Loving, is when I’m typing on my laptop. I wonder if the tick-tick-tick on the key board is an aphrodisiac to them, like Bolero was for Bo Derek in 10. And yet my heart is broken. My cats, who were best friends in South Africa, now hate each other, hissing and spitting and clawing. I think they were separated while in quarantine, but it breaks this father’s heart. I’m taking them to a pet psychiatrist.

Vancouver is notable for it’s total lack of style. Or maybe there is a style, but it’s as though everyone here is getting dressed up to go out and slay a bear or fell a tree. Old ladies wander around the shopping malls in shorts, hiking boots and anoraks, or training shell suits. Another popular combination is jeans, sandals and the ubiquitous fleeces, whether as a sweater or a vest. Popular colours are burgandy, gray, mauve, and black, usually together. Everyone sports a goatee, even the women. I suppose it’s for warmth.

Another thing. I’m trapped at my Mum’s on the North Shore because of a total public transit strike which has already lasted two months! And they are doing major reconstruction work on Lions Gate Bridge (which goes from the North Shore to downtown). After 15 years of consultation, the municipal authorities have decided simply to resurface and slightly widen the chock-a-block 3 lane bridge, and work has been dragging on for months – behind schedule and over budget, thank you unions and corruption. But it’s a great problem for me because one cannot any longer cycle over the bridge to downtown even when the bridge is open, and taxis from the North Shore to downtown and vice versa are prohibitively expensive when the bridge is completely shut, from 8pm to 6am every night. It reminds me of the tale which Kate in LA told me wherein the municipal authorities down there spent $220 million to build a huge school, right on a toxic waste dump. Whoops! I truly believe that municipal authorities the world over must be the stupidest vermin alive, slightly superior to nematodes, but not much. Fortunately for me my dear Mum is being incredibly generous with her car, and her boyfriend lives only a couple of blocks away.

So while I’m generally very down on Vancouver – I’m very tired of strangers telling me what a wonderful city it is, I know otherwise – yesterday I was supremely impressed when I went to the mall. There, I hit a level of chore-efficiency which cannot be equalled anywhere else. Malls in South Africa don’t have what you need, and the sales clerks are thick, and there are always lineups in the banks. Here, in a trip to the mall which took slightly less than two hours, I did the following. I visited the doctor, got a $US money order from my bank, subscribed to a local cellular phone service (just $20 per month and free talking all weekend long!), got my photos developed and scanned onto diskette, posted some letters, paid a visit to the cosmetics counter, where I bought some very expensive potion to rehabilitate my sun-ravaged skin and make me look 17 again. I also made a number of purchases from different stores, including a converter plug; a combination lock, fresh shrimps, whipping cream, and vitamins. I felt like I’d had an orgasm when I left the mall. Here, here, to Canadian consumerist efficiency.

Let’s do a scorecard for Vancouver, Canada, to help those innocent tourists who think “Vancouver is just the most special wonderful, beautiful city in the whole world!”

• Climate –15
• Consumer efficiency +12
• Style –2 (would have been –8 but since I look so good in comparison, I’m giving it 6 offsetting credit points. My Gucci glasses get their first outing tomorrow.)
• Presence of mother and brother +400
• Presence of kitty cats +8
• Irritating smug Canadianness, and militant unions who bring the whole city to a standstill –12
• Restaurant quality +8
• Cheap cellular telephone service +10 (it’s called Fido, can you believe it?)
• Photography course I’m taking +3 (only two other students, one I may have to kill to keep my sanity)
• Availability of good photographic scenes, when clouds lift, +10
• Fact that in June there is still snow on the mountains, -11
• Gym quality +15 (I joined Golds gym, huge, near Mum’s house for $120 for two months, all inclusive even yoga classes, which I’m starting, in order to find my inner poise)
• Quality of boys at gym –3
• Nightlife –6 (no scratch that, I went out with Kerry on Friday night. It’s minus 18)

The fact that the clouds lifted totally yesterday afternoon, and I could see green-furred mountains of the North Shore outlined clearly against the deep blue sky +5

It gets a score of 410 points, but for those of you who don’t have a mother or kitty cats here, I suppose that would be a credit balance of just two points.

Finally, I bought a whole bunch of literary magazines yesterday to get some idea of to whom to submit my short stories for publication. And I found this delightful “Call for Submission” in the back of Broken Pencil magazine:

“Bloodsisters, the menstrual rebel collective, would like your poems, stories, rants and musings, about menstruation and living in the female body for their next ‘Red Alert’ ‘zine. We cannot afford to pay, but we welcome your input. Please send to Bloodsisters, Elle Corazon, 176, Rue Bernard Ouest, Montreal, Quebec.”

Is your jaw hanging as low as mine, chin scraping the floor? Well, all you aspiring female writers out there, I will give this one up to you! And I was shocked and dismayed to see that this is a Canadian entity, rather than an American one. Personally, I always thought we had more taste, but it’s clear that I have been wrong. We belong in the Gay and Lesbian LA Yellow Pages too.