Family-n-Friends: January 2015

This is an article posted in the Buffalo News by Gerry Boley.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7d0_1379358382

Misconceptions in the United States about Canada are quite common. They include: there is always snow in Canada; Canadians are boring, socialists and pacifists; their border is porous and allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists through; or, as the U.S. Ottawa embassy staff suggested to Washington, the country suffers from an inferiority complex. With Canada Day and America’s Independence Day just past, this is a great time to clarify some of these misconceptions and better appreciate a neighbour that the United States at times takes for granted.

With the exception of the occasional glacier, skiing in Canada in the summer just isn’t happening. Frigid northern winters, however, have shaped the tough, fun-loving Canadian character. When it is 30-below, the Canucks get their sticks, shovel off the local pond and have a game of shinny hockey.

The harsh winters have also shaped Canadians’ sense of humour. Canada has some of the world’s greatest comedians, from early Wayne and Shuster, to Rich Little, Jim Carrey, Russell Peters, Seth Rogan, Mike Myers, Leslie Nielsen, John Candy, Martin Short, Eugene Levy and “Saturday Night Live” creator and movie producer Lorne Michaels.

The suggestion that Canadians are soft on terrorism is a myth. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau backed down the Front de Liberation du Quebec terrorists during the 1970s. And the 9/11 Commission reported that terrorists arrived in the United States from outside North America with documents issued to them by the U.S. government. Likewise, the Canadians in Gander countered despicable terrorist acts with love and caring to their U.S. neighbours when planes were diverted there.

Americans glorify war with movies, but it is the Canadians who are often the real “Rambo.” The Canadians are anything but pacifists and their history is certainly not dull. Be it on the ice or battlefield, this warrior nation has never lost a war that it fought in – War of 1812 (versus the United States), World War I, World War II, Korea and now Afghanistan. During the ’72 Summit Series, Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak said, “The Canadians have great skills and fight to the very end.”

In hunting the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. Commander and Navy SEAL Capt. Robert Harvard stated that the Canadian Joint Task Force 2 team was “his first choice for any direct-action mission.”

Contrary to Thomas Jefferson’s 1812 comment that, “The acquisition of Canada will be a mere matter of marching,” the wily Native American leader Tecumseh and Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock captured Brig. Gen. William Hull’s Fort Detroit without firing a shot. The Americans never took Quebec and when they burned the Canadian Parliament Buildings at York, the White House was torched in retaliation.
Canada consolidated its status as a warrior nation during World War I battles at Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Somme and the Second Battle of Ypres, where soldiers were gassed twice by the Germans but refused to break the line. By the end of the war, the Canadians were the Allies’ shock troops.

In the air, four of the top seven World War I aces were Canadians. Crack shots, the names William “Billy” Bishop, Raymond Collishaw, Donald MacLaren and William Barker, with 72, 60, 54 and 53 victories, respectively, were legendary. These were the original Crazy Canucks, who regularly dropped leaflets over enemy airfields advising German pilots that they were coming over at such and such a time, and to come on up. Bishop and Barker won the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry.

The pilot who is credited with shooting down the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, with a little help from the Australian down under, was not Snoopy but Roy Brown from Carleton Place, Ont.

During World War II, Winnipeg native and air ace Sir William Stephenson, the “Quiet Canadian,” ran the undercover British Security Coordination under the code name Intrepid from Rockefeller Center in New York, as a liaison between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Stephenson invented the machine that transferred photos over the wire for the Daily Mail newspaper in 1922. Americans were not aware that the BSC was there or that it was stocked with Canadians secretly working to preserve North American freedom from the Nazis.

Also little known is that Intrepid trained Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond series, at Camp X, the secret spy school near Whitby, Ont. Five future directors of the CIA also received special training there. It is suggested that Fleming’s reference to Bond’s 007 license to kill status, his gadgetry and the “shaken not stirred” martinis, rumored to be the strongest in North America, came from Stephenson.

When Wild Bill Donovan, head of the U.S. OSS, forerunner of the CIA, presented Intrepid with the Presidential Medal of Merit in 1946, he said, “William Stephenson taught us everything we knew about espionage.”

American military writer Max Boot wrote recently in Commentary magazine that Canada is a country that most Americans consider a “dull but slavishly friendly neighbour, sort of like a great St. Bernard.” Boot needs to come to Canada, have a Molson Canadian and chat about Canadian history. He owes his freedom to Canucks such as Stephenson and the courageous soldiers and fliers of the world wars who held off the Germans while America struggled with isolationism.

Canadian inventions such as the oxygen mask and anti-gravity suit, the forerunner of the astronaut suit, allowed U.S. and other Allied fighter pilots to fly higher, turn tighter and not black out with the resulting G-force. The 32 Canadians from the Avro Arrow team helped build the American space program and were, according to NASA, brilliant to a man. The most brilliant, Jim Chamberlin, chief designer of the Jetliner and Arrow, was responsible for the design and implementation of the Gemini and Apollo space programs.

Although Canadians have had a free, workable medical system for 50 years, they are not socialists and there are not long lineups, as some politicians opposed to Obama care suggest. This writer has had a ruptured appendix, hip replacement, pinned shoulder, blood clot, twist fracture of the fibula and broken foot, and in every case, there was zero cost to me. Canadians have and value a medical system for all Canadians that is free with minimal waits. That is not socialism; that is caring about fellow Canadians.

Americans may be surprised by the Canadian content in their life. Superman – “truth, justice and the American way” – was co-created by Canadian Joe Shuster, the Daily Planet is based on a Toronto newspaper, and the 1978 film’s Lois Lane, Margot Kidder, and Superman’s father, Glenn Ford, were both Canadians. The captain of the Starship Enterprise was Montreal-born William Shatner. Torontonian Raymond Massey played Abraham Lincoln in 1956. And as American as apple pie? Ah, no. The McIntosh apple was developed in Dundela, Ont., in 1811 by John McIntosh.

Many of the sports that Americans excel at are Canadian in origin. James Naismith from Almonte, Ont., invented basketball. The tackling and ball carrying in football were introduced by the Canucks in games between Harvard and McGill in the 1870s. Five-pin bowling is also a Canadian game. Lacrosse is officially Canada’s national sport, and hockey – well, Canadians are hockey. And Jackie Robinson called Montreal “the city that enabled me to go to the major leagues.”

To make everyone’s life easier, Canadians invented Pablum, the electric oven, the telephone, Marquis wheat, standard time, the rotary snowplow, the snowmobile, Plexiglas, oven cleaner, the jolly jumper, the pacemaker, the alkaline battery, the caulking gun, the gas mask, the goalie mask and many more.

Canadian inferiority complex? That is another myth. Never pick a fight with a quiet kid in the schoolyard. Never mistake quiet confidence for weakness. Many a bully has learned that the hard way. Canadians are self-effacing and do not brag. That does not mean we do not know who we are. We are caring but tough, fun-loving but polite and creative, and we share with each other and the world. Our history is exciting but we don’t toot our horn. The world does that for us. This is the third year in a row that Canada has been voted the most respected country in the world by the Reputation Institute global survey.

Perhaps once a year around our collective birthdays, Americans can raise a toast to their friendly, confident neighbour in the Great White North.
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Dave wrote:

Dear Family
Well I'm here in Montpellier and enjoying my stay.
You would be surprised to know that I am on the move again. I thought when I was back home that I should try to be immersed in French both during the day but at night as well. It just didn't happen that way. My first boarding house was fine but the landlady was a sergeant-major giving me all kinds of order... all in French as she couldn't speak English. Also, me being a klutz didn't help. It was agreed that I move on.
My second landlady is very nice but my room is her broom closet...it's where she keeps her ironing board, iron and clothes rake for drying, as well as for other things. In this broom closet she has placed a bunk bed. I sleep in the lower bed and hit my head every time I get in and out of bed. This lady is collector as she throws nothing away. As it is, I has no place to hang my clothes as the closet is full and the bed is up against it. As a consequence, I spread my things out on the top bunk.
Enough is enough, I am moving out at the end of the month. I am renting a studio apartment (kitchen, bedroom and bath) where I will be cooking my own meals and doing what I please. No more pussy-footing around. As it is, I didn't like the French breakfasts, so I went out the second day and bought cereal, muffins, orange juice and yogurt for my breakfast.
Now about my life there in the city. The course is difficult for an old dog like me. Oh by the way, I am passing myself of as 72 years of age. (Hey Jock, that makes you the oldest and Bill moves up to number two oldest.) The reason for the age change was to get into this course as an 87 year old would be denied entry. So far I have been able to pull it off.
I am enjoying my stay in spite of the boarding houses. The climate is what one would expect to find, say between San Francisco and Los Angeles which is about 5 degrees warmer than Vancouver Island. Montpellier has population of half a million and many, many young students who are very nice. One American couple that I met found the people rude. But I have not found that to be the case, on the contrary, I have found them very helpful and polite even offering me their seats on the trams.
Speaking of trams, of all the public transportation systems that I have experienced in my travels, the one here is the best.
The one knock that I have here are the prices of everything. Everything is priced in Euros which are about $1.50 to a $1. But the price of everything is triple. Where in Canada an item would be marked, say as a $1... in Montpellier the same article would marked as two Euros. So when you figure it all out, you're paying three times as much, I kid you not.
People smoke a lot here and everywhere ... in the outdoor cafes, in the doorways of he stores so you get a lot of second hand smoke. The dogs are not leashed either except for the young pups or for those folks who don't what their dogs to get into a dog fight. They don't pick up after the dogs do their do dos. It's good that they wash the streets each day and during the day. It keeps people employed. There is a lot of unemployment here... mostly gypsies who rather beg or steal than work. They even send their children into the churches to beg as I experienced last Sunday when I attended Mass.
As I said before, so far I am enjoying my stay in Montpellier. When I get home I can say that this has been one down of my bucket list with two more to go.
Oh by the way, one reason you have not heard from me too often is that I am having trouble with my computer. The curser keeps jumping and I have to rewrite each line again, even this letter. When I get back to Cobble Hill, I'm taking this laptop back.
That's all for now,
Love to all
Dave