Whoever said drinking was an unproductive activity? “Bollocks!”, I say. If it weren’t for my habitual shopping at The Beer Store, I would have ended up reading something else while on the crapper, and hence there’d be no post today. At least, no Canada-themed post today.
It’s Canada Day! 142 years ago, Canada became a nation. Sure, americans can say their country is older, but we get fireworks today and you have to wait until saturday. neener-neener.
Anyhoo, while at The Beer Store the other day, I picked up their current issue of “chill”. It had Megan Fox on the cover, so why not. Being a free issue with the same kind of content as Maxim (sans the chicks), it’s perfect company to my bowel movements. Or what? Did you think I shack up in there with the New England Journal Of Medicine?
This particular issue featured as a big highlight the whole Canada Day thing. One of its articles was, in fact, titled “142 facts about Canada and Canadians”. It was written by Randy Ray and Mark Kearney. Don’t say I don’t quote my sources. I’d like to share with you my 39 favorite “facts”. I’d share a case of beer, too, but for fuck’s sake, the Beer Store is closed today. Oh well.
They appear as numbered on the magazine.
2. The red and white found on Canada’s national flag were designated as Canada’s official colours in 1921 by King George V.
4. The first drive-in movie theatre was established in Stoney Creek, Ontario.
5. The Montral Canadiens’ nickname, the “Habs”, refers to early French settlers called habitants.
7. Methodists in Upper Canada (now Ontario) once banned the use of violins when playing religious music because of the instrument’s association with dancing and merriment.
27. The Royal William, a Canadian Vessel, became the first ship to cross the Atlantic using steam in 1833. It later became the first steam ship to fire a gun.
32. The Calgary Stampeders are the only CFL team to go undefeated during the regular season. They went 12-0 in 1948.
36. Craig Ramsay of the Buffalo Sabres is the last NHL player to play a full season without drawing a single penalty. He did so in 1973-1974.
38. Dr. James Gosling, who grew up near Calgary, developed Java, a universal computer programming language.
40. Dr. Ron Taylor, former team physician for the Toronto Blue Jays, has four World Series Rings: two awarded to him when the Jays won the Series in 1992 and 1993 and two from his previous career as a major league relief pitcher with the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals and 1969 New York Mets.
47. O Canada was composed in 1880. In 1908, Robert Stanley Weir wrote the translation on which the present English lyric is based. O Canada was proclaimed the national anthem on July 1st, 1980.
50. Canada occupies half of North America and nearly seven percent of the total surface of the Earth.
52. When WWII was declared in 1939, Canada was completely unready. While the government placed orders for uniforms and rifles, volunteers trained in their “civvies”, sometimes carrying broomsticks.
57. Sir Sandford Fleming designed Canada’s first adhesive postage stamp and proposed the present system of standard time, by which the world is divided into 24 equal time zones.
60. In 1970, Canadian skier Betsy Clifford was the youngest skier to win a gold medal at the World Championships in Val Gardena, Italy. She was 16 at the time.
68. Of the top 10 flying aces in World War I, four of them were Canadian – Billy Bishop, Ray Collinshaw, Don McLaren and William Barker.
69. Ottawa journalist Sandy Gardiner is credited by some with coining the phrase “Beatlemania” to describe the frenzy created by the 1960s rock group.
70. Canada’s first Olympic gold medal was won by a man competing for the United States. George Orton of Strathroy, Ontario took first place in the steeplechase at the 1900 olympics in Paris, but because Canada didn’t have an official team he entered as part of the American team.
71. The robbery phrase “hands up” originated in British Columbia. Bill Miner, known as “the Gentleman Bandit”, is said to first have used the phrase while robbing a CPR train in Mission Junction in 1904.
73. Jack Graney of St. Thomas, Ontario, was the first baseball player to get a hit off Babe Ruth in the major leagues. Ruth started his career as a pitcher.
76. The last Dominion of Canada four-dollar notes were issued in 1911. They were replaced in 1912 by Dominion of Canada five-dollar notes.
80. Students from McGill University introduced the game of rugby, with its oblong ball, to their Harvard counterparts in 1874, who up to that time played only with a round ball. The americans were so taken by the the game thay adopted it and it eventually evolved into the football now played throughout the country.
83. Among the names considered for Canada before it officially became a country in 1867 were Cabotia, Ursalia, Laurentia and Columbia.
84. Canadian Roy Ward Dickson gets credit for inventing the game show. His radio program “Professor Dick and his Question Box” debuted in Toronto on May 15, 1935.
89. Canada has two patron saints, Joseph, the spouse of the virgin Mary, and Anne, who was Mary’s mother.
90. The first downtown mall in North America, Wellington Square, was built in London, Ontario in 1960.
92. George S. Lyon of Canada won the gold medal in golf at the olympics in St. Louis in 1904. It’s the only time golf has been played in the Olympic Games.
93. Superman was co-created by Toronto-born Joe Schuster, who created the Man of Steel in the 1930s with his friend Jerry Siegal.
98. In the 1760s, some people in Great Britain wanted to trade their colony in Canada to the French for their West Indian island of Guadeloupe. They argued that the island’s coffee and sugar crops would be better economically than the fur trade.
102. If you have the torn half of a $20 dollar bill, it’s still worth $10 because ripped bills still have value, according to the Bank of Canada. Bills that have three fifths or more of their otiginal size remaining are worth their full value while those sheared in half are worth half their amount.
103. Winnie the Pooh is named for Winnipeg, Manitoba. A real bear cub from White River, Ontario, was taken to the London Zoo by Harry Colebourn, who named it Winnipeg, or Winnie for short. A.A. Milne (Pooh’s creator) was a frequent visitor to the zoo.
105. Louis B. Mayer, the film producer who grew up in New Brunswick, is responsible for creating the Academy Awards.
106. Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans of Toronto produced the first light bulb a good six years before Thomas Edison. The famed american inventor actually bought the right to the Torontonians’ patent.
109. In the late 1960s, rumours about Paul McCartney of the Beatles being dead were partially fueled by a badge he was wearing on his shoulder on the Sgt. Pepper album. Fans thought the badge said OPD for “officially pronounced dead”, but in fact it was an Ontario Provincial Police badge he picked up while performing in Canada.
110. Newfoundland was originally set to enter Confederation on April 1, 1949, but Premier Joey Smallwood got the date pushed back a day to March 31 to avoid any possible jokes about joining Canada on April Fool’s Day.
113. When John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, was killed during a manhunt, officials found a Bill of Exchange from the Ontario Bank of Montreal on his body. Booth had spent time in Montreal plotting with Confederate soldiers and had opened an account there.
114. Not only did Canadian James Naismith invent basketball in Springfield, Mass. in 1981, but five of the 18 players in that first game (there were nine a side back then) were Canadian.
115. If Canada was divided equally among Canadians, each person would receive a piece of land roughly the size of 27 baseball fields, or about 365,000 square meters.
132. When officials were debating in the 1860s what to name this country, one suggestion was Efisga. That derives from the first letters of England, France, Ireland, Scotland, Germany and Aboriginal lands.
140. At the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, the Canadian team, for undetermined reasons, had no flag for the opening ceremonies. Flag bearer Archie McDiarmid marched into the stadium carrying a bare flag pole.
Phew! I thought I’d never end. Anyway, I hope you find these facts about Canada interesting. I was going to comment on them, but the post is long enough as it is.
Happy Canada Day!
The Iceberg
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