although why bother? Here is a clip from the infamous series on This Hour has 22 Minutes, by Rick Mercer who is also in our blogroll but really needs to hire me to feed and walk his blog while he’s away.
What’s really funny is that the person who posted it on YouTube doesn’t know any more than the rest of these clueless and corn-fed specimens of Amerawkana.
DID YOU KNOW that the capital of Canada recently relocated from Ottawa to Toronto? Former Vice-President Al Gore did!
In fairness to Gore, he knows better and probably did the quick “I don’t have time to correct this dude” math in his head before coming out with the stock answer.
raincoaster 
A) I can name at least three Canadian prime ministers other than Trudeau without doing a Google search – Mackenzie King, John Diefenbaker and Brian Mulroney
B) I like this site.
C) Enjoyed the visit and, with our kind permission, will add you to my blog link list.
Thank you. You may. Even though you brought up B**** M*******, a name which is generally neither uttered nor typed on this blog unless prefaced with the words “that beacon of mediocrity and mendacity.” We’ll let it go this time.
And blogroll you back, on the merits of the possum prose. You obviously need to get a shorter dog, to get under the stove. Try a dachsie, they’re mean buggers. And the Spitfire wasn’t the finest plane to fly in WWII, the Mustang was. It’s so solid that the Canadian airforce was still using the ones they got second-hand as late as the late seventies.
Hmm, well, I guess this video is funny. At least to Canadians.
Canadians that want to think of themselves as so much more refined and intellectual than Americans.
But if they really were so much more refined and intellectual than Americans, they would realize that this video just proves the irrelevancy of Canada to the rest of the world.
Go to any nation on the planet, pose as a journalist, and mix up the capital of any country just as the reporter does in this video… and 95% of the people will agree with you.
Unfortunately, all this video proves is that nobody knows anything about Canada because nobody cares.
Aha! I was waiting for someone to bite on that Spitfire thing! Actually, the best Mustangs weren’t those bloody awful, unstable post war P-51D/Mustang IV’s, but the Mk. 1’s that the Brits and Canadians used early in the war and that could make Spitfires look rather sedate. A decent condition mid mark Spit, however, could eat a P-51D’s lunch from sea level to 15,000 feet.
I’m still a Tempest and Sea Fury fan, however, and you as a good Canadian ought to know that a Sea Fury makes a Mustang look like a rocking chair.
You’re impressing more though, I’ll admit >B^/
Well, yes FE, but what makes you think that the Mustangs I'm referring to weren't from the early part of the war? My father was an aircraft mechanic who was still patching them up in '76. And the Mosquitos. Those things were practically indestructable. The finest military aircraft in history, though, is the Hercules. The prettiest was the Corsair, don't you think?
As for Canadian aeronautical patriotism, it begins and ends with the Avro Arrow. And now I must go and cry.
riposte, tell it to someone who cares. Sixty percent of y'all can't find your hometown on a map, Canadians outscore Americans on the IQ test that Americans invented, Americans travelling abroad are advised to pose as Canadians so they don't get taken out and shot for what their country's done, and my Italian friend was asked "What part of Arkansas is Rome in?" when she got pulled over for, national cliches intact, speeding.
True American spirit is embodied by the people my mother worked with in Saudi Arabia in the early part of the eighties, when Americans were just starting to be Most Wanted on the terrorist hit list. They printed up tee shirts that said "AMERICAN AND PROUD" on the front in letters, and on the back they had an enormous red white and blue target. That takes balls. If you had them, you'd leave a trackback.
“Canadians that want to think of themselves as so much more refined and intellectual than Americans.”
Better than Americans what ain’t talking proper, innit?
Actually, I did sort of follow riposte’s suggestion when I was in Indonesia. I told people I was from Vancouver and they heard my accent and started shouting, “U.S.! U.S.! U.S.!” and began to get rather agitated in an unwelcoming sort of way. They’d never heard of Canada, which is fair enough, but they certainly had a strong opinion about Americans.
I was lucky to get out of there alive; I proved we were a separate country by showing them our money. Everyone, it turns out, knows what an American dollar looks like. Since the Canadian quarter has a caribou on it and the Indonesian word for water buffalo is “Caribou” they think we have some funny-looking waterbuffaloes. In fact, it was the kids nearly laughing themselves to death over the weird Canadian waterbuffaloes that saved my skin. I shall be taking a full range of change with me the next time I travel abroad. I’ll bet there are plenty of people who’ve never seen a Canadian beaver, Pam Anderson’s excepted.
Aha again. You’ve found yourself talking to somebody who actually studied a little Canadian aeronautical history (knew that bachelor’s would come in hand one day wink, wink, nod nod, say no MORE!)
I agree very much on the Arrow. Its demise set back Canadian AND American aerospace technology two decades, what with the Iroquois powerplant’s potential and the airframe’s capacity for development. As much as I love the Phantom, the Arrow it ain’t.
And than big lovable lug, the CF-100 – way better looking than our F-89 Scorpion. And I’ve seen moe than a few Arguses on visits to NAS Norfolk in my teen years.
And all the Mustangs in postwar Canadian squadron use were P-51D’/Ks or Mustang IV’s (same birds basically – just different contracts, canopies and propellers). RAF and Canucks wrung all the good use out of the Allison-powered birds, which were much sweeter handling and faster on the deck than the Allison Mustangs. Remember, it was the Americans , not the Canadians, who started packing fuel in the D’s and not paying all that much attention to dynamic stability issues ;^J
But y’all had to be the only air force that made the F-104 look good -dark green and mean.
And yes, Herks are the DC-3 of my age group too.
The Corsair has its charms, but those few childhood years I spent growing up on an RAF station broadened my horizons a bit.
Hunters and Lightnings and Vulcans oh my!
Yeah, I think I’ll keep coming back to your blog. Much cheers!
I know Corsairs were never the best birds in the sky, Black Sheep Squadron notwithstanding, but they sure were purty.
Did you know that there were still DC-3’s flying overseas? When I flew into Manila there was one, still with the ancient Air Canada petroglyph on the tail, sitting at the side of the runway. Scary. Also scary was the fact that they allowed squatters to build houses right up to the edge of the tarmac. A plane landed a bit short a few years ago and took out something like 20 houses and six people.
The plane I’m fondest of, though, has to be the Cessna 172. That was the plane my father would take us up in on the weekends. He was a bit of a showoff and it’s hard to think of any aerobatic move he didn’t execute in that tin box. And, upon landing, he would always say the same thing, “Don’t tell your mother we did that.”
Oi! Did I get un-blogrolled? I’m looking, but I’m not seeing myself (and that almost never happens in raincoasterland).