enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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My phone rang early this morning and yet no message was left!

So not much has happened of late except that I have a holiday today.

Thank you to Quebec for praising St. Jean B@ptiste. Since I work on the Quebec side of the river I'm free today!

Next weekend, too, I have a three-day weekend because Canada Day falls on a Sunday.

I have to tell you that I am a complete Canada Day party-pooper. It's a stupid day. Or at least in my mind it reveals the stupidity of the average Canadian.

The average Canadian on Canada Day gets dressed up in red clothing, paints his or her face, drinks lots of beer, hangs around a BBQ (I know, I know I harp on this a lot) or a bonfire or something...He or she spends the entire day screaming "I am CANADIAN," an oh-so-clever catch phrase coined by, you guessed it, a beer brand by the same name.

So, so clever.

I live in Ottawa. So on Canada Day we will be invaded by many thousands of red-swathed tourists who will stumble about on Wellington Street and Parliament Hill all day. Very few of them will be watching the acts that the government has paid a fortune to bring in to perform on the various stages on the Hill.

Most of them will be looking for a port-o-potty in which to relieve him or herself. If he or she doesn't find one, he or she might choose to relieve him or herself on the National War Memorial, as happened last year.

That was foul but since it was done by a few teenaged boys who subsequently apologized I felt that most people grossly overreacted re. that one. It was in the national headlines for two weeks after the day. At least.

Because there's never really much else--other than the death toll in Afghanistan--that is worth reporting in this country.

We all know that the PM's environmental policies and track record are not good.

We all know that his child care policy stinks.

And we all know that he looks like a Muffin Head.

There's just not much else to report.

Plus Parliament is out for the summer.

Thank goodness.

So we all know that B3linda Stronach--most famous for being an attractive but ineffectual politician (I rather like her, actually, so this is not my view)--has just had a mastectomy and breast reconstruction on account of the presence of cancer.

Get well, B3linda.

But otherwise the thing that makes me nuts about Canada Day is that it highlights the complacency and ignorance of the average Canadian.

We like to consider ignorance and over-stuffed complacency the exclusive domain of Americans.

Not so. So not so. Most Canadians couldn't name the first prime minister, even though he's present on our money.

Most Canadians, if asked, would have NO IDEA what Canada Day celebrates, in any specific terms. I mean, they would have no idea about what actually happened on July 1, 1867.

They would have no idea when we 1) seized our effective--if not legal-- independence from Britain (much later); 2) when we got a flag; 3) when we repatriated the constitution and actually got the all-important Charter...

And if your life depended on most Canadians being able to name more than say five prime ministers you'd be screwed.

Not only in light of all of this but in light of the low standards that we tolerate in Canada and elsewhere with respect to SO many things, I tend to see Canada Day celebrations as a huge embarrassment.

I mean, people who can enumerate few of the the things that actually REALLY ARE good about Canada AND who have no CLUE about its historical weaknesses run around screaming about how "f_ing GREAT is Canada...eh!"

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRGH.

I'm just not patient with unsupported praise.

So I guess the long and the short of it is that I should either gear up to go to Montreal for next week's three-day weekend--or anywhere in Quebec other than the Eastern Townships as most Quebecois don't give a crap about Canada Day (one of my favourite pleasant discoveries whilst living in Montreal)--or gear up for a weekend spent in my apartment in an attempt to avoid the red and white weekend plague.

Either way, I'm glad to have a three-day weekend. :)

Thank you, Fathers of Confederation.

And thank you, Canada, for giving me a country in which the levels of apathy and ignorance are so extreme that someone as middling in talents as I am can appear to be worthy of a role in shaping policy. :)

My favourite things about Canada:

-the trees
-the trees
-the trees
-the rocks
-the lakes
-oh heck, the trees

Institutionally, we have Britain to thank. We're not really great innovators, although some political theorists would say that Canada is a model of management of a federal system with grossly different component parts. It's a model in managing an uneasy detente.

From my perspective Canada's federalism largely works because the management is so poor. Pretty much no one has any control over the provinces, and pretty much no one has control over how any fed-prov agreements are executed.

It's like when you were a teenager and your parents handed over the car keys and you nodded your head when they talked about driving within the limit and not stuffing too many people in the car when really you were not particularly concerned about either component of road safety.

You did what you liked.

Essentially, this is what the provinces do.

I have a friend who is working on an international welfare/social assistance receipt project who agrees with me on this point.

The embarrassing part for him of the project is that in spite of the fact that we spend A LOT of money on transfer payments to individuals, the Canadian contribution to the project will be weak. This is simply because the provincial ministries involved exercise so much discretion in administering welfare that no one has any clue as to what EFFECTIVE transfer payments are to those in low income.

Analysis generates wildly different numbers. I mean, all we really know is the upper bound...

I won't go on. That's rather dull stuff.

And it's just what I believe...

I should go out. I should also have a shower. I've been kind of inert lately, as we know.

I went out for lunch with Claus and S. yesterday, however, so I did do SOMETHING. Claus is working today.

I stayed up late watching videos last night. I watched Shirley Valentine and a movie about a Moroccan prostitute and I must confess that I drank some wine whilst doing so (ha--I almost wrote "whine"). I was exhausted so it started to go to my head.

I seemed, anyhow, to be inspired by the movies and as a result wrote the following jumble of words on an envelope lying on my coffee table:

Plan:
Italian
Writing
French
Amelie

Study, draw, dance

Music
Art
Film
Volunteer
Africa
Librarianship (I'm a trained librarian among other things, you'll recall)

NOW
create
Beauty
Paris & Rome

Athletics
Purple
NY & Paris
London
Return to Tokyo
Berlin

Live live live
Water
Read
Love

And this last bit I have no understanding of:
The Guardian
Patience & Fashion.

Those must have come at the bottom of the wine bottle. :)

Not sure. Oh yes, and finally:
Billie Holiday.

Odd. Very odd. I'm very odd. I felt a sense of urgency last night. I never feel a sense of urgency in the morning. I need to work on that.

11:31 a.m. - 2007-06-25

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