the luminous blog: 2010-06-27

Thursday, July 01, 2010

C'est Ça, La Canada!

LA (not 'le') CANADA!

This year, I will tell you what LA CANADA really is, folks!

An historical mistake, a geographical anomaly, brought forth by France's stubbornness at trying to be as good as the British were abroad and in general...!
But, of course, they were not - as plainly evident on those Plains of Abraham, where the sheepish Montcalm fell prey to Wolfe and company...!
Louis-Joseph, malgré tout son calme, fut le premier a s'essoufler avec un "James!" - bien avant quelconque Bond Girl...!
Waterloo allait bientot confirmer tout ça... right, Nap?

The Act of Quebec, upon the arrival and taking over by the victorious British, was an unnatural act if there ever was one in all of HISTORY...!
The Brits were just too civilized, that is what the problem was (initially, anyhow - because the problem soon grew, and grew, so disproportionally that, from mere annoying tiny wee-bit French presence on the continent where they never belonged in the first place, to a major pain you know where...! But I am digressing right here and now...)
The Brits should have simply kicked back all those ruffians and Filles du Roy back where they came from - that's right, they should have simply deported the whole lot of them and started anew with fresh new rabble; the bowery-dwelling unwanted from London instead of the miserable French rejects from Paris!
Alas, that is not what they did - the British Commonwealth soon was born with, in its midst, a bastard mish-mash of French, Métis and assorted rebels as its very obvious -painfully obvious- balck sheep of the family...

Some of these rebels were deemed LOYALISTS rather than anything else - because they fled the recently freedom-intoxicated (and newly-created) "United States" and were simply relocated themselves - to the newly-acquired colony nearby... la Canada!
They just came, en masse, to add to the burgeoning problem there; in Nova Scotia but, most of all, in Quebec!

In fact, the Canadian Mistake is in so many ways an offshoot of the insurrection and creation of the USA, that it isn't even funny!
LA CANADA - IS A SIDE-EFFECT!!!

As mentioned before, on this and other blogs from my network, the very name "CANADA" has at least five different possible origins - all intertwined too! What most likely happened is that they all chain-produced the other: the Portuguese said "nem cana dà aqui" and then the Spaniards inspired themselves of it to coin their cute little designation for a channel and then the Natives borrowed, liking the sound of it, and christened their primitive village like that! The other likely origins of the word come from a five month-old brat circa 1536 and a dead drunk aborigène named Poked-Eye Skunk...

Due to the monumental mess in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, on one hand, and the similarly humongous madness going on the American side (with natives like Tecumseh involved) LA CANADA was left to... flourish, actually! As much as any wasteland ready to give away up to a thousand acres to any so-called "loyalist" (be he German, British, Native or even French!) willing to take up residence there and start populating it WILL...!
And they say the USA is a melting pot - LA CANADA was at it CENTURIES before them, dudes...! But I am digressing again - eh.

And this new country that wasn't one had ONE crucial foundation for its financial stability - no, it wasn't gold, as had hoped the foolish king of France and his emissary Jacques Cartier, and no it wasn't the riches of 1001 spices, as other foolish ones, still dreaming of the famed passage to the Indies, were dreaming of... No, it was FUR - to be more specific, BEAVER FUR. Gross, EH. How long could that last! Not long at all, of course, and, as the "NorWesters" and Hudson Bay company started noticing that decline, some new arrivals began to, timidly, try and make this infertile land produce more than CANA - and more than a measly four months per year or so too!!! 1835 was a horrible year - but they would get a hang of handling four seasons... eventually! All they had to do was hang in long enough for their more enterprising and far more resourceful neighbours, the Americans, to find a way to export to them all of their produce and know-how: and there wouldn't be a famine for all twenty-five of the settlers and their cows, just yet! (Okay, I jest - there were more than 25 by then...! And if anyone thinks of slamming my anti-canada tone here, I shall direct you to feu TCH, wittiest soul of Nova Scotia and father to one Sam Slick...! Irrefutable evidence, once again, that even among abysmal masses, a sharp intellect can arise - once in a blue moon!)

Then it was insurrection time for la Canada as well: of course, it was rather pitiful if you compare it with the Terrible Thirteen that fought back the British Empire and became the United States of America! La Canada's insurrection was, first, in 1837 - some folks voiced their preferences towards a more British-style of life, others were impressed of the newly-created American way and still others just wanted to go back to the woods and commune with the raccoons and the beavers - that still lived, that is!
In fact, ever since the pathetic Constitutional Act of 1791, that was meant to prevent another USA happening in La Canada, all the battles had petty bickering between religious factions and budding political clans...! No wonder that all it begat, some 150 years later, was an idiotic oxymoronic QUIET REVOLUTION...!

Montréal began its lamentable tradition of rioting that leads nowhere fast right there and then, in 1837 - the PATRIOTES were the cause that time, not the paradoxically-named (for a town that heads a province that wants to SECEDE from la CANADA) Montreal CANADIENS...!!!

Places where nothing happens like EVER (like St-Eustache) were the primary battlegrounds between the doomed-to-lose-from-the-very-beginning Patriotes and the regime in place... And to think that all this was NOT kick-started at all by a French dude (as it should have been - right?) but by an "IMPETUOUS IRISHMAN" instead, one Edmund Bailey O'CALLAGHAN!!! Makes complete sense... Next, South American guerillas will come and train the FLQ how to get things done...!

Pathetic - La Canada!

I could go on with the history lesson - like, forget the Colbert Report, read the Durham Report - and weep! (Maybe due to laughter - but still!)

Think Dubya sucked eggs - watch the likes of W. Laurier and Mackenzie King administer a messy nation!

La Canada's inflated ego, and the way it is de facto perceived by all the other nations worldwide, betrays the truth of its origins as, indeed, but an off-shot of the US of A...

Amidst the G8 or the G20, La Canada is but a lackey to either its former colonial power or its super-power neighbor...

Any so-called nation that treats its people the way La Canada treated Louis Riel and André Mathieu doesn't deserve much respect, anyway...!

That is exactly what the artistic community does for it - as their funding diminishes and dwindles to next-to-nothingness with each year that goes by, the nation without an identity becomes one without arts too. It finally becomes one without class with this crude new "dance" called... La Canada! Local by-product André-Philippe Gagnon created his masterpiece with this one, while he mainly impersonates Julio Iglesias, quite paradoxically... (I mean, Iglesias has absolutely NOTHING... NADA... to do with NEM CANA DÀ!)
Still, the video linked here, still found on YouTube after all these years, remains the truest tune about this country that there ever was - and the gem in Gagnon's entire career (sort of like his Amish Paradise - rejoice, A-P, I compared thee with an American - albeit Weird Al!)

Enjoy, most especially, Gagnon's impersonation of http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Chrétien (playing the tambourine!) and those of Montreal local celebrities such as the former Montreal Canadien, then New Jersey Devil player Stéphane Richer, then-Prime Minister Pathetic Brian Mulroney and some gay gossiper who used to be on French television a lot... All that and the presence of two actual Montreal Canadiens players who do not seem to understand what this song is really saying, otherwise, one would think, they wouldn't have been a part of it, right? Right!

LA CANADA -
THE COUNTRY THAT TAKES THREE STEPS FORWARD
AND TWENTY-FOUR STEPS BACK!
(Anytime of the year -
twice more often when they're being the USA's patsy!)

It is EXACTLY as the song says...!

With all that,
Happy Canada Day... EH

:p