March 12, 2005
IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT FRANK WAS AMERICAN (via H. Koenig):
Welcome to Canada: The Great White Waste of Time (Matt Labash, 03/21/2005, Weekly Standard)
WHENEVER I THINK OF CANADA . . . strike that. I'm an American, therefore I tend not to think of Canada. On the rare occasion when I have considered the country that Fleet Streeters call "The Great White Waste of Time," I've regarded it, as most Americans do, as North America's attic, a mildewy recess that adds little value to the house, but serves as an excellent dead space for stashing Nazi war criminals, drawing-room socialists, and hockey goons.Henry David Thoreau nicely summed up Americans' indifference toward our country's little buddy when he wrote, "I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada. . . . What I got by going to Canada was a cold." For the most part, Canadians occupy little disk space on our collective hard drive. Not for nothing did MTV have a game show that made contestants identify washed-up celebrities under the category "Dead or Canadian?"
If we have bothered forming opinions at all about Canadians, they've tended toward easy-pickings: that they are a docile, Zamboni-driving people who subsist on seal casserole and Molson.
As a member of the Dartmouth College Zamboni crew, I deeply resent the aspersion cast on our Americanism. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 12, 2005 1:25 PM
Hilarious, especially "While Canadians don't exhibit road rage, he says, they are carpool-lane cheaters"
OK, we'll give you the Zamboni, but we invented basketball.
Posted by: Peter B at March 12, 2005 7:59 PMThe Zamboni is not Canadian, it's American. It was invented at a rink in Southern California (I can't remember now if it was Norwalk or Paramount, but I used to play at the rink).
Posted by: Foos at March 13, 2005 12:12 AM"There are three things in life that people like to stare at: a flowing stream, a crackling fire, and a Zamboni clearing the ice."
Posted by: Mike Morley at March 13, 2005 8:24 AM