embrace my inner Canadian

Forever I’ve been told that Canadians cannot pronounce the sound of “out” in any way other than something resembling “oot”. I balked and laughed it off. Then a short while ago I paid extra attention listening to an announcer on a Toronto radio station. Oot, he said, oot! As in: the new Depeche Mode album is coming oot next week. It was hilarious! I told Sweet Mollie K about it.
Well… she said. It is true, dear Rat. Dear Canadian Rat.

That means I do it too. I can’t even hear it, and I am powerless to stop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp-diIp9CJ4

you just can’t explain these things.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/07/04/canadian_tire_loses_fight/

This Land Is Your Land

This land is your land, this land is my land,
From Bonavista to Vancouver Island;
From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters,
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps,
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
While all around me a voice was sounding,
Saying this land was made for you and me.

The sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling;
As the fog was lifting, a voice was chanting,
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land,
From Bonavista to Vancouver Island;
From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters,
This land was made for you and me.

Canadian variant of Woody Guthrie’s original song written in 1940 and recorded in 1944

This Canadian variant was written in 1955 and popularized by the Canadian folk music group The Travellers.

which is like Spring Break in the U.S., only colder. I will not be travelling anywhere exotic, it’s going to be mostly delinquence in the city, and just a day trip to Niagara Falls and the Albright-Knox. Maybe Tar-jay for t-shirts and Vitamin Water. I digress.

One of the great things I plan to do during March Break is eat poutine. Poutine has been resolutely horrible throughout Canadian history. Tasting it once or twice has been enough for me. (It’s basically fries scattered with squeaky cheese curds and doused with gravy.) All that abomination has changed recently, and there are diverse poutine palaces springing up throughout the city. Everywhere. I need to learn my stuff. I am told of pulled pork poutine, chili poutine, Indian butter chicken poutine. There’s even a lobster poutine. If I can get in touch with a duck confit poutine, I will be a happy Breaker.

http://www.thestar.com/article/554905

“Your addiction to double-doubles is threatening our relationship,” said Tom timorously.

http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/article/577791

I have a personal fondness for Lune Moons and Billot Logs.

A disgrace to some, a cultural identifier to others is the phenomenon of uptalk, also known as High Rise Terminal in speech patterns. It’s what turns a declarative statement into an unintentional question by the rise of intonation at the end of a sentence. Supposedly it has its roots in the San Fernando Valley mallspeak, but curiously has found a comfortable home in Canada. The cities of Vancouver and Toronto are particularly thick with it. Uptalk supposedly knocks assertion out of common speech.

I want to sound assertive? But with uptalk so ingrained in my speech pattern, it’s harder to give an impression of intelligence?

If I think about it, I can wrestle my uptalk to the ground. If I am feeling anxious or concentrating on making a grand philosophical gesture rather than speaking, out pops the uptalk, and it’s relentless.

In Toronto, it’s so prevalent that it’s hard to notice it unless you make the effort – that is, if you’re a native?

I have noticed another shift in speech patterns that is like a devolution of uptalk. It is the drawing out of the end of a sentence, almost a drawl, almost with a cadence (think Andy Warhol). The intonation both rises and falls at the close of the statement. I have yet to figure out if it’s an urban Canadian thing, though.

Stay tuned?

but it is also about hockey, and hockey is so ingrained in Canadian culture that for today I’m going to be self-indulgent and go with it.
Toronto is a city that loves its sad-sack hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Leafs inspire as much humour as they do affection.
They have not won the Stanley Cup since 1967.
They customarily do not make the playoffs.

I used to know the names and numbers of the Leaf players, back, back in the days of their just-past glory. I don’t know why. Trading cards?
My razor-sharp memory of this is getting a bit fuzzy, so I would like to test it out, (no googling) and see what I can dredge up, kind of spur of the moment. (I am also waiting for paint to dry on a paying-work assignment, so all’s not lost here.)
Here goes:
1. Johnny Bower
2. Rick Ley and/or Terry Clancy
3. ?
4. Mike Pelyk
6. Ron Ellis
7. Pat Quinn (that’s got to be from a trading card y’know)
8. Jim Dorey and/or Pierre Jarry
9. Norm Ullman
10. George Armstrong?
11. Borje Salming
12. Hm… can’t remember
13. no-one
14. Dave Keon!
15. no-one I can remember
16. hmmm…mind drawing a blank again
17. Rick Kehoe?
18. Jim McKenny!
19. Paul Henderson (now who could forget that?)
20. hmmm…. Bobby Baun?
21. oops, is this Borje Salming? Then what number was Inge Hammarstrom? Maybe he was number 11. I always got the Swedes mixed up.
22. hmm
24. having a little trouble with the double-digits, are we?
27. Ah! Darryl Sittler
30. Mike Palmateer (I think)

I’ll have to mull a bit and then see my score.

Oh, and
It must be spring – the Leafs are out.

I was at the astonishing Pizzeria Libretto. The game was on a flat screen over the bar. It was 2-2 for the Leafs. The trendy were trying not to watch. It was a cold night. They came in wearing so not trendy toques and down coats in spite of their inner Canadian cool.
I saw lots of Tim Horton’s and Molson’s adverts. I laughed into my prosecco when I saw a commercial about a Canadian car chase that involved a police officer pushing a snowbound cruiser after a snowbound getaway car that was also being pushed.
I too had on a toque and down coat.
On the way home, I heard the Tragically Hip and Neil Young on CFNY.

I should have had a dose of maple syrup before bed, but enough’s enough.

Canadian Thanksgiving falls on an early Monday in October. I’d go on a limb saying it’s the second Monday in October, but don’t know it that’s true.
It’s usually still warm unless one happens to live in the Yukon, where it’s pretty close to winter already. Canadians like to eat stuffed turkeys, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pies – the usual Thanksgiving traditions – except not on a grand scale like Christmas or U.S. Thanksgiving. You usually don’t see Canadians jetting their families over the continents to be “home for the holidays” – that’s for Christmas. I think a lot of beer goes down too.
We don’t have anything like a “Black Friday”. We have to wait until the day after Christmas, or “Boxing Day”, for that.