Why I hate Canadians
Euughh. Just look at them.
For this Canada Day, I want to reflect on my first year back in my home country. Initially it was all cozy feelings of belonging and the thrill of interacting with cashiers in English. It was the charming way people stood in line at the bus stop or offered to share their umbrella with you on the street. But soon enough, the honeymoon period wore off and I realized that Canadians aren't all they're cracked up to be. One glance at the politics and non-existent commitment to, well, anything worthwhile made me question what was going on inside the heads of my fellow countrymen. As it turns out on a superficial level of examination, not very much.
This summer I took a super long 5-day weekend at the end of June to drive around southern Ontario with my mother and explore some of the beautiful natural areas we have in such close proximity. Originally, I intended in this post to showcase some of those beaches in yet another photo-heavy entry of travel-related fun.
BUT... though happy enough to spend some days lounging in the sun on the banks of Lake Huron or Lake Erie eating sunflower seeds and reading books, I can't say I really felt either the total relaxation I felt in Barbados, nor the overgrown, scenic beauty of the lakes we visited near Berlin.
It wasn't the weather - sunny, hot, perfect; it wasn't sand fleas or wind or garbage on the beach.
What bothered me most of all was the sound of other Canadians as they went about their tiresome, cliched small talk with each other.
It was all so banal, self-satisfied and commonplace.
I heard a prolonged diatribe where a Canadian family was bragging about how much better Canada is then the States to a person who was visiting from Detroit. And it was all the same bullshit - healthcare! Unparalleled access to nature! Our amazing wealth of resources! The uncorrupted politicians - even that Ford fellow is rather likeable, har har! Our lack of inequality!
It seemed incredible to me that a person could live in Canada and think those things. Those points come along with heavy baggage and counterpoints that show off the burning flaws in our country. Healthcare? Is that why we all have health benefits at work? Access to nature? For who, and for how much? How do you get there if you haven't got a car? And are you talking about the same nature that's being flattened for suburban housing? Amazing wealth of resources? You mean the ones that are steadily being depleted and sold off and exploited?
Un-corrupted politicians?!?
Canadians are damn fools.
...Oh, and the worst: how NICE Canadians are compared to Americans, followed by a story about how someone's nephew was travelling somewhere with a Canadian flag on his backpack and experienced liberal kindnesses wherever he went. It's a puerile fantasy of their noble selves that the uninformed Canadian likes to drag about with them wherever they go.
They don't see that bragging about how nice they are completely contradicts the concept of being a nice person. It's the height of tastelessness.
It makes me wonder: why are Canadians so self-satisfied with mediocrity? Why do they live within a bubble of ignorance about their own country and the issues we collectively face?
Why do they blindly ignore things that are happening within their very cities, within their very provinces?
Why is the epitome of success for them buying a house, owning multiple vehicles, and drinking watery beer while watching a mindless, monotonous ice-sport?
Do Canadians actually travel? I don't mean to all-inclusive resorts for a winter-break; I mean, do they actually engage with other people and places and seek out new and interesting and different things? How many Canadians have been outside their own province, let alone to the States, to allow them to speak with such authority on the wonderful innate qualities they purportedly possess?
Would it kill Canadians to do something other than just be satisfied with simply existing?
You would think that with some of the highest numbers of university grads; easy/cheap access to all kinds of education, culture, and interesting experiences and a relatively rich, mobile middle-class population with low joblessness, Canadians would come off a little more nuanced in their dialogues.
They must take first place when it comes to wasted resources in this world.
If you hear something once it's just random. If you hear something twice in the same week it's a coincidence. Once you hear something 3 times it solidifies in your mind as a trend.
And sometimes those trends piss me off.