O, Canada - all your canuck news worth sharing!

Anything with “Nepean” in the authors’ byline is mercifully not Toronto enough at all.

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Even Nepeanians (Nepeanites? Nepeons?) can aspire to Torontohood if they truly believe.

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Reminds me of my mum coaching my grandfather in the car on the way to the States when I was a kid:

“Just say you’re from ‘near Toronto’. Nobody knows where the hell Ballinafad is.”

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I do.

Now.

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Very not Canadian, but as long as we’re sharing old cookbooks, this is my oldest. My mom’s sister gave it to me, presumably she picked it up at a Minneapolis garage sale.


Doesn’t that orange-ish turkey just look scrumptious?

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I’m crossing the streams!!

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Not Canadian at all, I’m afraid, but all the photos of slightly battered looking cookbooks reminded me of this, which may be the single saddest book ever published:

SX311_BO1,204,203,200

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For one… army?

Single != sad. Single often means one has escaped from something way sadder. Happily coupled people think that because first they were single and then they were coupled and happier. But people can be coupled and in absolute hell too. Single can be brilliant in comparison.

Stephen King has a good line about it, something like “but she had a job and a house and her dog, and that was enough.”

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I’ve spent a great deal of time happily single and I didn’t mean to imply that single = sad. There’s just something about the juxtaposition of the author’s slightly desperate, pleading face, the fact that they are microwave meals and the huge quantity of food on display that makes the cover almost tragic to me.

“I made all this food in the microwave for myself but maybe you could share it with me! …Please?”

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“Not if you’re nuking your steaks, I can’t.”

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Okay, I agree one can be quite happy alone.

That said, this video never fails to crack me up:

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Something to show the next time someone gets too wrapped up in the “Canadians are nice” stereotype:

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On Greer Garson Day on TCM last month, which meant it was also sort of Walter Pidgeon Day, they aired “Scandal at Scourie”. I’m wondering - how’s the Catholic/Protestant situation these days in Canada? Is it purely religious, or is it partly Frog vs. Limey? (I’m descended from both, and enjoy using racial slurs against my own, LOL - I dunno why, but it just tickles me! Does that mean I’m part Kermit?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandal_at_Scourie

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It probably depends on the region, but I’d say Frog vs Limey died around the same time Duplessis did (1959), earlier in other regions. The postwar immigration boom meant there were a lot of non-Frog Catholics around.

The other thing is thanks to declining church attendance, it’s just not a big deal anymore. Only 21% of Canadians go to church regularly as of 2005 (Statscan). I found varying numbers for how many Americans go to church, but most of the numbers are over double that, in the 47-51% range.

Put it this way: announcing which church a Canadian PM was going to attend as part of news coverage on the opening of Parliament would be weird.

I’m sure you could still find some diehards, especially in smaller towns, but mostly nobody cares.

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My gods, what even is that? Are you sure that’s not photoshopped? I just can’t even begin to parse what message the ad agency thought they were putting across…

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The '70s were a very different time. (Didn’t know Lumpy’s Dad had it in him…)

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I have a unique perspective because MrPants is from NFLD.
So the whole Protestant vs. Catholic thing is still very much alive.
But it has nothing to do with religion. LOL - its all cultural.
Also education on the rock was the jurisdiction of the catholic church, they wrote it into their constitution, so you either went to catholic school, or if you were not catholic, you went to the “protestant” school, even if you were Jewish or Hindu or Muslim. That was your only choice. So their culture got split into two from an early age.

Basically NFLD is weird.

I’m a “mainlander” so by default, I’m Protestant, despite never being raised in any church at all. Doesn’t matter, I’m not catholic therefore I’m protestant.

There is still some Frog vs. Limey thing, but mostly I only hear it from ex-pat Brits, I think they brought that here with them, not that it grew here. (Ok legit only talking about my step-father here)

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Totally agree. When it does come up, it’s shorthand for culture/racism, as opposed to people actually caring about transubstantiation or whatever.

Re: Frog vs Limey, I have heard the opposite as well – some Quebeckers (francophones from elsewhere in Canada know better) referring to anglophones as “English”, which generally leads to loud reminders that anglophones are hardly all “English”.

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Dick Van Dyke Show theme hijack evolving

Now we know why he tripped over the ottoman: Buddy shared lunch at the office.

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