I thought Canadians would be fatter. Not sure why. Maybe it’s because the entire nation of Canada is just a suburb of the Arctic and there’s nothing to do there except booze indoors.

I thought they’d all have longer hair. I figured that every radio dial in every corner of the tundra would be tuned to the Rush Channel, I mean all they really got is hockey and Rush, but I was there four days and I never heard a single fuckin’ Rush song … If I’d known that I would have probably stayed home.

Canadians have no sense of urgency. They walk into a bar but don’t care if they ever get served. I observed patron after patron walk in sit at the bar and never drink. He sits there playing with his phone and twenty-five minutes go by without a word, he doesn’t speak, no one speaks to him and no one gets drunk. Come to find out that there’s an unwritten rule in Canada, you have to ask for stuff, no one will offer you anything proactively.

“I’ve been sitting here for forty minutes, could I get a drink?!”
“Well, you never said anything.”
“I didn’t think I needed to, what do you think people come in here for?”
“Dunno, maybe to get out of the cold …”
“Really!? It’s fuckin’ Canada, people go into bars to drink, listen to Rush and watch hockey!”
“Ya, well, all people have to do is ask … Canadians aren’t offerers.”
“Whatever, can I watch the hockey game?”
“Is there a hockey game tonight?”

Canada and Canadians are so disappointing. You want them to be fat cheese eaters but they’re not. You want everyone to be walking around in a hockey sweater and swilling mass-produced Canadian lager, but they drink IPAs like all the other hipsters and a lot of them seem to have jobs.

The only thing remotely fun about going there is to keep a running tally of the bald men you see. Yep, I didn’t know it but Canadians invented male-pattern baldness. It’s true. And the fitter you are, the balder you get. If you see a guy jogging or cycling or in some other way engaging in a healthy activity, he’s always bald as a billiard ball. This is classic baldness – like an old Franciscan monk with a buzz cut – and they seem proud of it. Shit, I guess you gotta stand for something.

Canada should be so cool, but when everybody over thirty is bald, well, it’s a disadvantage. Still, they have no natural enemies, they’re like the Switzerland of the North. No one has any expectations of Canada, if they do anything notable it’s a bonus … they should be so happy-go-lucky and spur-of-the-moment and let’s-take-a-chance. They aren’t.

Alas, they have no identity, American wanna-bes still sponging off the British monarchy. I think it all started going sideways when they picked a marijuana leaf for their national flag, but instead of just owning that they started telling everybody it was a Canadian maple leaf.

Photo on Visual hunt