Happy Canada Day to all those Canadians who live in Canada and other places around the world except here in the home of the tariff and land of the greedy.

Happy Canada Day you Canucks! We here, your below the belt neighbor to the south, want to wish you a happy Constitution day.

Canada Day, as I was told by a Senate Republican, is a day to celebrate being incredibly nice to all people except other Canadians, relatives, ex-husbands, ex-wives, ex-girlfriends and/or boyfriends, expatriated hockey players, etc. for a full year.

We here in the US have no clue how anyone could be that nice for that long is possible much less it being an annual event capped with a national holiday. Of course Canada's 37 million people is only about 12% of  the total middle American population. (*Did you realize that Canadians and Mexicans are also Americans? Look at your geography. We three countries comprise the nations of the American Continent. Put that in your pipe and smoke it Cheeto!) Do you believe we could get just the folks in the state of California (39 million) to be nice to the folks in the other 49 states for even a week? We would even exclude the metro Washington DC area. "Nice" is a four letter word there anyway. The answer is obvious. No way yo!

Enough joking around. Canada Day is to celebrate the day in 1867 (while we were still cleaning up the mess after hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in a civil war) when the provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick became a single Dominion within the British Empire by the Constitution Act. And a finer group of folks couldn't be found in one Dominion.

My wife and I traveled to Toronto a couple of years ago and stayed in a fine hotel downtown and were amazed at the graciousness of those who waited on us and attended to our needs. One thing.... how in the hell can you live in that freezing cold weather? It was February and I knew it was going to be cold but for the love of God!

Now I have been colder. I once stood at the bank of the Vistula River in Krakow Poland on a January morning with a brisk, cold wind blowing off the Russian steppes and I can tell you that wind had serrated edges. It sawed through long johns, shirts, sweaters, pants, full length coats,hat, earmuffs and fur lined gloves as though I was standing there bare arsed naked! Never again!
Toronto, however, is on a Great Lake and has it's own cold winds.

It is a huge city and I, being from NY, couldn't figure out where all the people were. We pulled an address of a car rental place off the internet, but we couldn't locate it. We kept freezing and walking in circles! The GPS said we were at the location, but it just wasn't there! Damn the Canadians! They can't even get the addresses right. In frustration we entered a building to ask where our destination might be and the person said, "oh that's in the galleria downstairs." Downstairs? He showed us an escalator that disappeared down a hole in the floor and there it was...a complete underground city of shops, restaurants and services stretching for blocks. No wonder we never saw anybody. They were doing their everyday, wintertime business underground...kinda like legions of pale, pink moles. What a revelation! Who knew? Everyone but us I would guess.  The GPS knew where they were, but couldn't tell us to bring picks, shovels and an excavator to dig down to reach our chosen destination.

Oh Canada! I like you. You are the nice part of America. You could stand on your border and shoot spitballs at us down below, but you don't. We really do like you down here. You do not talk much and you don't stick your nose into other nation's business.

Your Prime Minister won't take any of the bullying, bullshit tactics used by the self proclaimed genius in the White House. Bully for you Mr. Trudeau, but see if you can do something about all that cheese curd you guys are dumping gallons of gravy on every day. I realize you enjoy a national health service we would love to have here, but you won't last long with clogged arteries. We need you Mr. Trudeau.

Have you ever thought about becoming a US citizen? We could talk to Bernie and see what could be done.
Just kidding. You are too smart to fall for that one. Maybe we could swap your folks for Californians? You would get some big movie stars...and I guess some porn stars as well. Will you at least think it over? Consider who we are stuck with down here for another year and a half.
Thanks.