Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #50

 There will be a World Cup where Canada advances farther than Germany.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #48

 Maestro Fresh Wes is on a stamp.

It’s Okay, We Never Really Liked Hockey Anyway.

Well, it’s another year of The Great Canadian Stanley Cup Drought. Last year, I made a post about how long it’s gone on, but this year, I’m trying to be more positive. 

It was an oddity of watching Shai Gilgeous-Alexander lead the Thunder to an NBA title while Canadian hockey teams couldn’t make it to the summit yet again. That got me thinking: while the past thirty-two years haven’t been good for Canada’s NHL teams, it has been a great time for sports we aren’t traditionally good at. You know, non-winter sports. So here is my list of things that Canadians have (rather surprisingly) won since the last time a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup:

Athletics

• Men's 100 m Olympic gold (Donovan Bailey)
• Men's 4x100m Olympic gold (twice)
• Olympic Decathlon (Damian Warner)

Auto Racing

• Formula 1 world championship (Jacques Villeneuve)
• Indy 500 (Jacques Villeneuve)
• IndyCar championship (Jacques Villeneuve, Paul Tracy)
• DTM championship (Bruno Spengler)

Baseball

• MLB MVP (Larry Walker, Justin Morneau, Joey Votto)
• MLB Hall-of-Fame (Larry Walker)
• Batting title (three times for Larry Walker, one for Justin Morneau)

Basketball

• NBA MVP (Steve Nash twice, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander)
• NBA Finals MVP (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander)
• NBA scoring title (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander)
• NBA Hall-of-Fame (Steve Nash)
• NCAA Consensus Player of the Year (Zach Edey)

Football

• NCAA All-American selection (Chuba Hubbard)
• CFL Most Outstanding Player (John Cornish, Brady Oliveira)

Golf 

• Majors (Mike Weir, Brooke Henderson twice)
• Canadian Open (Brooke Henderson, Nick Taylor)

Mixed Martial Arts

• UFC welterweight championship (Carlos Newton, Georges St. Pierre)
• UFC middleweight championships (Georges St. Pierre)

Soccer

• Olympic gold (Women’s)
• Gold Cup (Men’s)
• FIFPRO Men's World 11 (For best player in the world at each position - Alphonso Davies)
• MLS MVP (Dwayne De Rosario)

Tennis

• U.S. Open (Bianca Andreescu)
• World Top Ten Rankings (Bianca Andreescu, Milos Raonic, Eugenie Bouchard)
• Davis Cup
• Billie Jean King Cup

So let’s concentrate on these positives. Nearly all of these achievements had never been done by a Canadian before that last Cup. Let’s not dwell on the fact that Steve Nash’s entire Hall-of-Fame career was during the drought, or that Bianca Andreescu, Brooke Henderson, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Alphonso Davies weren’t even born the last time Canada won the Cup. Instead, just accept that we’re becoming more well-rounded sports-wise, whether we like it or not.

Vexing Vexillology

I recently mentioned Canadian media mogul Moses Znaimer, and by coincidence, I recently came across a mention of a Polish man with the similar name Alfred Znamierowski. He was known as a great vexillological artist. That is, a great flag designer. That was of interest to me, because, like many nerdy people, I've always found flags fun. 

But I also have to ask, how does a person become known as a great flag designer? Okay, let's start with, how does a person become a flag designer? I mean, it's not like that's a big industry with a lot of work to do. You can't get a job at Flag Inc.

For instance, Canada's flag was designed by George Stanley, a historian. Note that he was a historian who once designed a flag, which doesn't make him a flag designer, because he designed that one flag, and that was pretty much all there was to do in that area. 

I can understand how you become, say, an architect, because there are always countless new buildings that need designing. But flags? Even if you count the flags of regions, cities, and organizations — that most people never see — that's still not a lot of work.

And it's not like flag design is that complex a concept. Just look at some of the flags in the world and you can see that not much effort gets put into them. (I'm looking your way, Netherlands.) Even the aforementioned Mr. Stanley just slapped a maple leaf on the Royal Military College flag. You can't really be better at that than anyone else. Or at least, you can't be so much better that you end up getting all the big flag contracts from around the world. Oh yes, we must get Znamierowski to design our flag, we couldn't possibly trust some guy off the street to slap three brightly-colored stripes together.

This brings back bad memories of when I was in university and looking for a career. I found that job search books had weird ideas of what occupations existed. I think the weirdest was a book that listed "programming language designer" as a job. Again, interesting thing to do, but really it's something a handful of people do once in their lives and that's it. Calling it a potential career is like recommending you pursue a career designing new sports. And yet, Mr. Znamierowski somehow did that.

So: 

• Job type that lots of geeks would love 
• Requires skills that a lot of people have
• Very few openings in the world 
• Somehow, one guy gets most of the plum assignments. 

It's just like how JJ Abrams got to run the Star Trek and Star Wars movie franchises at the same time. 

Anyway, the point is, this is a great tragedy of our time: there are many fun and interesting things to do in this world, yet those jobs aren't well distributed, and they so often just go to the last guy who did a similar job, even if he was mediocre at it. The rest of us are stuck doing it in our imaginations only.

Anyway, here’s my proposed new Ontario flag

Bravo, Encore

Right now, we're seeing ads gleefully telling us that “Bravo is coming to Canada!” Many of us, will then say, “I thought Bravo was already in Canada.” I remember it starting up with a wave of new specialty channels in the nineties.

The explanation is that the original Canadian Bravo that started in the nineties was based on the American Bravo, but with mostly local programming. Each network evolved in its own way in the intervening decades, with the Canadian Bravo eventually rebranded into CTV Drama. This Bravo being advertised now is a new channel, based on the American Bravo as it now exists.

So this is also a good opportunity to observe how cable channels change over time. When the previous Bravo started, it had highbrow content (okay, upper-mid-brow) and targetted as sophisticated audience as TV dares to court. It got a bit watered-down in turning to dramatic series, but in an age of Prestige TV, that didn’t mean much of a shift. That was still my mental picture of Bravo, so imagine my surprise when they attempt to relaunch with ads that are just montages of the trashiest of trashy reality shows. But that’s what Bravo is known for today. So now it all makes sense. In as much as a cable channel starting with the most sophisticated programming and ending up with the most dumbed-down crap available makes any sense.

And that concept turns out to have a name, at least according to Wikipedia. It’s called channel drift. And their article on the concept makes for depressing reading. It’s just one story after another of channels that moved to something less intelligent in search of a big audience. I mean, with so many cable channels, you’d think that there would be a few cases where they moved to programming that was a little smarter. I’m not asking for much, just a channel that switched from live police chases to Law and Order reruns. But no, all of their examples were dumbing down. The closest thing to an intellectual win were some of the failed drifts, like the mass revolt that followed the American Weather Channel’s attempt at showing movies. I suppose you could argue that HBO and AMC became more sophisticated over the years, going from mainstream movies to award-winning TV series, but they seem to have eaten up whatever intellectual demand television has, and there’s nothing left for anyone else.

So it’s time for us in Canada to pay tribute to Moses Znaimer, long-time leader of Toronto’s CityTV, and its stable of cable channels, such as the original Bravo Canada. Yes, their output could be annoying for their look-how-hip-we-are attitude, but at least they had an idea what they wanted to be and delivered that, instead of sacrificing everything to the lowest common denominator. It’s too bad that City was one of the losers in Canada’s media amalgamation Armageddon. Now we’re stuck with no-personality CTV dominating the media landscape instead, and Znaimer is trying to build a new media empire around seniors. But he was a bit unlucky in choosing the name ZoomerMedia, so now he’s struggling to convince people that “Zoomer” is a cool Boomer, not an alternate name for Gen-Z.

Welcome Back, Victoria

This is Victoria Day weekend. I'm not sure how to explain this to non-Canadians. Obviously, it's a day celebrating Queen Victoria, who was the British monarch at the time of Confederation. As a few modern Canadians have pointed out, Nineteenth-Century Canadians had an unhealthy obsession with her, as you can see from the sheer number of places in Canada that have a Victoria Park. Or, just look at this inscription on a statue of her in a Victoria park near my home.

Suddenly the adoration of Elizabeth II seems tame by comparison. So it's not too surprising that those folks wanted to celebrate her with a major holiday. 

But now, Victoriamania has worn off, so we're left with a holiday with no meaning behind it. It's kind of appropriate that we often refer to it as the Two Four weekend as a wink to the amount of beer that each person consumes, and which has become the true focus of the weekend. 

Anyway, aside from beer and lapsed monarchism, the weekend is also known for fireworks. And it's a chance for me to reflect on the changing place of fireworks in our society. 

When I was a child, there were official, professional fireworks displays for major holidays, but personal fireworks were banned. Of course, that changed, and pop-up fireworks stores became a feature of summer long weekends. But now many cities are banning personal fireworks within the city limits. So I've now seen an entire cycle of changing legislative attitude. It goes like this:

• Start with a ban that seemed a little pedantic
• Ban is lifted, is a seemingly sensible move
• There's a brief interlude of reasonable use of fireworks
• One group of people realizes that there's nothing stopping them from going overboard, and another group of people realizes there's a lot of money to be made selling to that first group of people. 
• People get tired of hearing fireworks each night of the week leading up to a holiday
• Cities start banning fireworks.

Presumably this will be followed by a slow shift to enforce the ban. And then it's right back to square one. I'm kind of curious how long it will take to forget the reason for the ban and legalize fireworks again. I suddenly have sympathy for the banned and legalized things over the years. Next time you’re wondering what the Prohibitionists were thinking, just remember fireworks.

Trans Ontario Express

As I've mentioned, there are an astonishing number of topics for video games these days. want to be a goose, a bird on a tiny skateboard, or Eastern European border agent? There's a game for each. (And, no, I haven’t bought all those. Well, I’ve only bought two of them.)

And there are plenty of games simulating actual jobs. For instance, there's a few truck driving simulations. Many would consider that dull, but enough people find it fun, relaxing, or challenging that it's become a genre of games.

There's also a genre of train driving simulators, where you can control a train, from your choice of various types of trains, various eras, and different locations around the world. Though the games about building the trains and running the railway are more popular, so that tells you something about the world.

I was reminded of this recently when I saw the latest selection from Humble Bundle. It's a non-profit that raises money for charity by selling bundles of older video games, software and e-books cheaply. Recently, one of their bundles was a collection of train simulators.

It also came with expansion packs that allowed you to add trains and locations from around the world. One of those caught my eye.

Yes, you can drive a Canadian National freight train from Oakville to Hamilton.

Of course, that struck me as odd. I assumed that if you wanted to drive a train, it would be one of the legendary trains of the world: the Orient Express, the Shinkansen (Bullet Train), or the Trans-Siberian Railroad. If you were going to choose a Canadian train, the Rocky Mountaineer would be the obvious choice, though you might also go with a line through Northern Ontario or Quebec, or into the far north. Or, if you wanted urban rail, you could go through a major city — hey, approaching Union Station in Toronto from the West, you go straight past the CN Tower and The Dome.

But no, they went with Oakville. It’s a chance to guide a freight train, slowly, through Canadian suburbs. Though you do get to pilot one of CN’s freight engines, which are kind of iconic in Canada. Though they’re iconic in the way a Coca-Cola bottle is iconic: so common, you barely even see them anymore. And that further contributes to the banal feeling. You’re doing a job that’s around you all the time. It would be like a taxi simulator. Oh, wait, they have those too.

Having said all this, I can kind of understand it. On the one hand, in our globalized world, what is mundane to some is exotic to others. I mean, I mentioned how the Shinkansen sounds exciting to me. But to a Japanese salaryman, it’s just a way to get to work. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for exploring your own world, but from perspective you’ve never seen. I have to admit that when I watched the preview video for the Oakville expansion, I was intrigued by the part where they show the perspective of entering the cab. Like most Canadians, I’ve seen about a million of those CN locomotives, but I don’t even know what the interior looks like.

So if this strikes your fancy, don’t listen to me condemning your fantasy. Have fun with what you enjoy, and ignore the nay-sayers. That’s what’s great about modern video games: there’s something for everyone. After all, you’re living the wildest dreams of some kid in the 1950’s watching his Lionel trains go round and round.

It’s Time (Travel) For Tims

Tim Hortons is advertising retro donuts. That is, they're bringing back some of the old donut styles, for a limited time only.

On the one hand, that's nice. I miss dutchies too. On the other hand, this relates to a big part of why public opinion has turned against them in recent years: the selection is nowhere near what it used to be - it seems like every time you go in, there's one less thing on the menu. On the other hand, there will be some bizarre item that wasn’t there last time and won’t be there next time. These retro donuts are just the latest in the dizzying sequence of temporary specials.

I assume their strategy of recent years is to reduce the selection of available products to the bare minimum for efficiency's sake. They then compensate for the lack of variety by having the endless stream of temporary features. Hopefully you won't notice the jelly Timbits are gone if you're distracted by the new Chili Lasagne Bowls. But now the irony is that they're distracting us from the poor selection with the old selection.

I can understand why a company would want to restore some of what customers used to like about them. But being a temporary feature, it feels like a bit of a tease. “Hey remember how great it was when we had a wide variety of products? And you used to like us, not just tolerate us? That was pretty nice. Anyway, time's up! Next month’s feature is Chipotle Omelette Balls. Enjoy!”

I'm trying to imagine which other Canadian companies could restore what people used to like about them. Hudson Bay has already been having occasional pop-up Zellers stores, which is a similarly odd strategy of acknowledging what people used to like about the company, but without actually committing to it. I also remember Muchmusic had a daily retro video show a few years back, but even that’s gone now. Also, there’s quite a few companies like Sears where I’d say, it would be great if they’d go back to existing.

So enjoy the retro donuts while you can, and eat as many as your arteries will allow. If they sell well, maybe they’ll make a return, soon, and bring some of the extinct Timbit varieties with them. Until then, enjoy the Tuscan Sausage Dumplings.

Outback II: Electric Bugaboo

When the Outback Steakhouse started to get big, with its pseudo-Australian stylings, I wondered what a Canadian version of that would look like. And now I’ve stumbled across the fact that there was, indeed, an American chain of Canadian-themed steakhouses.

Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse appears to have been limited to the North East, but there were quite a few of them. The interiors modelled on a Canadian lodge, with log-cabin stylings. Unfortunately, they didn’t survive the Great Recession, so it’s nothing but memories and grainy YouTube videos now.

But wait, it wasn’t just Canadian symbols applied to the Outback formula, it was also a mashup with Chuck-E-Cheese. It had wall-mounted animal heads that spoke with animatronics, and a tree that would give you nuggets of Canadian trivia.

I’m kind of dumbfounded by all this. Partly that it existed at all, and partly that it isn't legendary in Canada. Usually we're obsessed with how Americans see us, and here's this very concrete artifact of their collective mental picture. You’d think this would be a part of our collective lore right up there with that car with skis on the roof and American plates that we all remember seeing that one time.

Bugaboo Creek was founded in the early nineties, and my family did a road trip through New England in the late-eighties, so we just missed it. I can’t imagine the shock we would have had if we had driven through a New Hampshire tourist-town, down that street with all the family restaurants on it, and seen this in between the Denny’s and the Ponderosa. I’m sure we would have run screaming as soon as the moose over our table started talking.

But surely some Canadians saw it — it’s not like it was sequestered in Nebraska, or some other part of the U.S. that Canadians are unlikely to go. You’d think some New Brunswicker looking for cheap beer and cigarettes in Maine would have wandered into the Bugaboo Creek in Bangor. He tells his friends, and the next thing you know, Rick Mercer is interviewing that tree for a “Talking To Americans” segment.

But when I Googled Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, all I could find — in between pages on the real-life Bugaboo Provincial Park in British Columbia — were the reminiscences of Americans who missed going there, or were freaked out by the robots, or a bit of both. Even when I specifically Googled “what Canadians thought of Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse” I couldn’t find anything.

There are still a few menus left on line, but they’re just standard steakhouse stuff. Except for a few moose and snowbird references in the names, there was nothing to distinguish it. There were none of the bad Canadian puns I was hoping for. “Prime (Minister) Rib?” “Fill-Eh Mignon?” “Sir John A. Loin?” Also, no actual Canadian stuff like poutine or Nanaimo bars or milk served in bags. So in the end it’s a half-pound nothingburger, not arousing Canada’s indignation or appreciation. Plus creepy robots.

The Future Names Of London

Here in Canada, there are a lot of places named after other places. London, Ontario, is probably the most famous, but also within a short drive of my home, you can visit Paris, Stratford, New Hamburg, Vienna, Cambridge, and Delhi. I’ve always found these weird. First, from a standpoint of culture: a borrowed name means that the identity of your place is tangled up in some other place. And secondly, from a standpoint of convenience: you’re forever saying, “I’m from London…no, not that London.”

But of course, that’s looking at it from my perspective in a country where many people live in settlements named for other, much older and more famous settlements elsewhere. It occurred to me recently to wonder at the mentality of those people who gave these sites their names in the first place. For each of those places, somebody thought it was a good idea to give it an already-used, already-famous name. I can’t really imagine what would make a person think that’s a good idea.

First of all, what inspired the names? Some British settler came across a small encampment in the middle of a forest and said, “You know what this reminds me of? London!” I suppose you could say that the name is more of an inspiration: they’re not saying it’s like London, but that it aspires to be like London. But still, that’s kind of setting it up for disappointment. Surely they’d give it a more attainable goal. I don't know, Sheffield? 

It seems a little odd today to call a city of half-a-million by the name of one of Europe’s largest cities, but how did folks in the early years call this collection of houses, “London,” with a straight face? As an early English settler in southern Ontario, you know London as this huge city, and now you’re using the name to refer to a little hamlet. “I will journey to London on the morrow. By Jove, I would that there existed some manor of hand-gesture to indicate that one uses a name of such ridiculousness with a sense of reluctance, as if it were in quotes.”

Secondly, why do they reuse the name exactly, without any changes? I mean, I can understand calling it “New” something. You know, don't confuse us with York; this is New York. Then you’re paying tribute while giving it individuality, and you’re explicitly saying it’s a new version of that old place. The Americans have plenty of “New” places, but Canada doesn’t have many, we prefer just reusing names. So in addition to not understanding why that old explorer decided to associate the rudimentary settlement with the grandest city of his homeland, I also don’t understand why he felt no need to distinguish it from its namesake. 

I guess there's a parallel with people's names: we often name people with the same name as a parent. But then we invented the word, “junior” to avoid confusion. Reusing place names is like naming a kid after his father but insisting that you not call him junior. Who would do that? 

“I’m Frank, and this is my son, Frank.”

“Ah! Frank Junior.”

“No! Frank!”

Then, years later, the kid introduces himself, "I'm Frank, no, not that Frank."

But here's another way of looking at this: To better get inside the head of those early place-namers, let’s say we Canadians were exploring space. We’re colonizing a new planet, and we’ve just established a settlement. It’s only three habitation pods and a greenhouse, but we then say, “And we’ll call it, Toronto.” Okay, that’s a bad example, Canadians wouldn’t feel right naming things after ourselves — we’d probably just name that settlement, “London.” 

So let’s say it’s the Americans establishing a space colony, and they have to come up with a name. They wouldn’t use New York, since that’s already a borrowed name. But would they call their new settlement something like, “Los Angeles” or, “Chicago?” I can’t imagine that, since those names have — for both good and bad — a lot of emotional connotations. They wouldn't feel right calling a place “Chicago” when it doesn’t have L trains, disappointing baseball teams and ketchup-less hot dogs. They’d either fall back on generic American names (Columbia, Freedom, Liberty) or name it after a person. Which brings up the question: how could you journey across the Atlantic and half of North America — in the eighteenth century — without anyone in your party doing something that deserved getting a small town named after them?

"So I'm from London...No, not that London. How about you? "

"I'm from Pickles The Ship's Cat. It's a long story."

I’m Gonna Mess Your Mind

Congratulations to Spain on winning the women’s World Cup. They now join Germany as the only countries to win both World Cups. Meanwhile everyone’s world has been turned upside-down by the jump in parity in women’s soccer, leading to plenty of upsets and Cinderella teams.

Here in Canada, we’re in mourning; we won gold at the Olympics - in our greatest soccer achievement ever - but followed that up with not getting out of the opening round here. If you’re not familiar with it, in men’s soccer, the Olympics are limited to under 23, but for women, there’s no limit, so it’s like smaller a World Cup. So you’d think it would be harder to advance in the Olympics, where you’re playing higher quality teams sooner. And yet, Canada has gone to the Olympic semi-finals three times in a row, but only made the World Cup semis once, back in 2003.

But for much of the world, the big news is the early exit for the two-time defending champion Americans. If you watch the men’s World Cup, you know that favoured teams having an embarrassing run and going home early is a regular occurrence. But now supporters of the U.S. Women are in existential panic.

Years ago, I noted that it was weird but refreshing to watch the fans of American men’s soccer, because it was one of the few places where the United States was regarded as just another country. What was especially weird was that American fans seemed to be okay with that. To be fair, we’re only talking about a subset of Americans, since the majority don’t really follow soccer even when the U.S. is involved, but there is a subculture within the U.S. that cares about its team, even on the men’s side, and it’s remarkable what an internationally-reasonable attitude they have.

All that’s happening right now is that the U.S. Women’s team is going to have to take on that same attitude. While watching the hype surrounding the Americans going for a Women’s World Cup three-peat, I realized that the truly unusual thing about the Men’s team fandom is that it’s one of the only places where you’ll see Americans being patriotic, but not buying into American Exceptionalism. They’re proud of their country, they support their team, but they don’t think their country is inherently better or apart from the others. The women’s team will have to adopt that attitude. In their case, they’re a great team, but just a team. So it’s a subtle change, but they’ll have to go from thinking of themselves as the Harlem Globetrotters to merely the New York Yankees.

Watching Americans watch their Women’s team, it’s been more like business as usual for Americans in international sports, with even well-meaning Americans seeing their team as above everything else. Take advertising, for instance. Even here in Canada, we’re subjected to ads for American brands that glorify the American women, oblivious to the fact that they’re our chief rivals, and thus, not really who we want to see celebrated in every commercial break. It’s reminiscent of that one American you see on lists of the dumbest things said on the internet, asking a British person if they celebrate the Fourth of July. 

Partly, this is because their Women’s team has been a boon for those looking for female role models. And finding role models for our kids is a universal thing, so they’re just assuming the whole world will join in on glorifying the stars of their team. It hasn’t occurred to them that if my daughter’s role model was just knocked out of the tournament by your daughter’s role model, then I won’t want to join in on the adulation.

And that brings us to the goodish news: you can look at this as another example of women’s soccer hitting the mainstream. When a sport starts out and creeps along in the margins of the sports world, there tends to be a communal feeling, like it’s all of us against the world, looking for acceptance of our sport. But once you’re in the mainstream, we can all think of it in competitive terms. This sport has finally made the big time, now that I hate your daughter’s role model.

Merry Mac’s

Where I grew up, the nearest store was a Mac's convenience store. Back then, they went by the name, "Mac's Milk," I suppose because in those days milk was the big draw for convenience stores. My dad would always call it, "Mac's the Milk," in reference to the song, Mack the Knife, famously recorded by Bobby Darrin in the 50's, but — and I didn't know this — written in 1928. Not the greatest pun, but, well, it's a dad joke. I wonder if I inherited that need to make misunderstood pop-cultural puns. (looks at blog post titles) Sigh.

Anyway, I — being a youngster — didn't understand the reference, and thus also referred to the store as "Mac's the Milk," thinking that was the actual name. My friends thought there was something wrong with me, since they also didn't get the joke, and of course, when you hear a young person saying something so nonsensical, you assume he's a little slow, not that he's the victim of a corny joke about music from a couple of decades back. And I should clarify that, in my childhood's memory, my dad 'always' said that. He probably did the joke like, twice, but in my early perception of time, it seemed like a lot.

My reason for going through this awkward, possibly deformed memory, is that the Mac's convenience store chain is mostly gone now, having been bought, and then rebranded out of existence. As the picture illustrates, they’ve all become Circle K. A brand that, fittingly, sounds like an old west cattle brand.

Of course, bygone brands are hardly news: I've already written about disappearing brands. But what's interesting is that brands disappear for different reasons. They might simply go out of business, or they might be bought out by a rival. But it gets a little more complicated when you find that the same company might operate in different places under different names. Perhaps they bought a local company and decided to operate with the name that locals already knew. For instance, the European food delivery firm Just Eat has bought some local services and used their names in those markets. So it goes by "Just Eat" in Europe, but it's known as "Skip The Dishes" in Canada, and "Menulog" in Australia & New Zealand. Yes, local branding is so important to them that they seriously made Katy Perry sing that jingle three times for the European, Canadian, and Australian & New Zealander markets.

(How much do I care about this blog? Enough to watch that commercial three times. Well, two-and-a-half.)

But in our globalized world, it often doesn't make sense to have different brands in different places anymore. After all, it's expensive to make specialized advertising, and people see advertising from different countries through the Internet, or international sports events, or movie product placements. And here in Canada, we're used to seeing our brands replaced by American ones, like Circle K. What's frustrating is that in this case, it's a Canadian company doing it. Quebec's Couche-Tard (or, "night owl") is a convenience store behemoth, owning lots of brands around the world, including Mac's. But Circle K is the most numerous, so when they decided to use one brand for all their English-language stores, they went with Circle K. I can understand the logic behind it, but it still feels like in Canada, even when we win, we lose.

At The Prime Meridian

Britain has produced a lot of world-renowned musicians over the years. That often leads people to assume that we (people outside the country) know all the famous British musicians. But no: there are some artists that make it big in the UK but not in the rest of the world.

I’ve always been amused by the fact that the British themselves are kind of oblivious about this. You might see reporters on BBC World breathlessly reporting that Robbie Williams has hinted at a Take That reunion, unaware that much of the world has no idea who that is.

In most cases, the explanation of British-only stars is that there was an American substitute. For instance, Take That were around in the glory days of boy bands, so it’s not too surprising that they couldn’t pry Americans’ attention away from Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. But there are also situations where a British artist’s work just doesn’t translate well to outside audiences.

Which brings us to Blur. Music news sites have been buzzing that they have a new album coming out.

If you’re not familiar with the story, in the Britpop era of the nineties, Blur and Oasis were the two leading bands, sort of like, well, Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. Oasis made it big world-wide — like much of the western world, I still have “Wonderwall” going faintly through my head — while Blur scored a minor hit on the North American alternative charts with. “Girls & Boys.” Then, to make the story even weirder, Blur made a tongue-in-cheek fast rock song — "Song 2," probably better known as the “Woo-Hoo” song — and scored a transcendent, world-wide hit. So now most people around the world think they’re a grunge band, even though their music was largely a reaction to grunge, and this sort of odd band who would have been named, “Seymour” if the record execs hadn’t insisted on something more marketable, will forever be played in stadiums and included on lists of the best Jock-Jams.

If you listen to their music, it’s not hard to see why it didn’t translate outside the UK. It’s rather terribly British. Not British in the commemorative-royal-family-tea-set way, but in the dryly satirizing everyday life sense.

Of course, whenever I see something like this in another country, I naturally ask myself if there is any Canadian equivalent: If there can be a band so British that only the British really “get” it, can there be a band so Canadian that only we “get” it. Of course, we do have that: The Tragically Hip. Which then leads to the shocking revelation: The Tragically Hip is Canada’s answer to Blur? (Okay, The Hip started a few years earlier, so Blur is the U.K.‘s answer to The Tragically Hip, but still, the point is that it’s a weird comparison.) Really, they're bands that take very different styles to their music, with Blur's irony and satire and The Hip's cryptic can-lit and history references. It would be interesting to see someone take Blur's playful approach to life and focus it on Canadian culture. Although, arguably, those different levels of irony are themselves a reflection of the national identities of the respective bands. Okay, now my head hurts.

This leads me to wonder how many other countries are sitting on something like this: a band they love that never made it with the outsiders. Obviously, many countries have a language barrier that keeps local musicians from making it big world-wide. But this phenomenon even keeps some English-speaking performers local, even from countries that have produced world-famous musicians.  So I googled, “Australian bands that weren’t popular outside Australia” and found a list of the best Australian bands as voted by Australian musicians. In among the usual suspects, AC/DC, INXS, Midnight Oil, and Crowded House, there was Cold Chisel, whom I had never heard of. They’re described as a "pub band" who leaned in to the wild rock lifestyle of the 70’s-early-80’s and known for wild live shows. 

Reading the comments, Australians showed a feeling of nostalgia for their music that seemed reminiscent of The Hip, that they speak to the experience of growing up and living in the country. I guess every country does have that band that couldn’t be exported, even if they vary wildly stylistically. 

My Cup Runneth Away From Me

People make a big deal about the Maple Leafs’ half-century-plus since their last Stanley Cup win. While that’s bad, I have to point out that in a league that had 20+ teams for most of that time, not winning the championship in 56 years isn’t that embarrassing. You know what is embarrassing? It’s now been thirty years since a Canadian team has won the cup. 

That’s quite unlikely statistically, given that the Canadian teams have made up between a fifth and a third of teams during that time. We have a tendency to focus on the Leafs’ drought because we love piling on the misery for Leaf fans. But consider this: the last Canadian cup win (Montreal, 1993) is now closer in time to the Leafs' last Cup win than the present. And since the last Leaf cup win was also the last season of the Original Six, the 1993 cup win is now also closer in time to the Original Six era than the present. For that matter, the Canadian cup drought (30 years) is now longer than the Original Six era itself (25 years.)

But wait, I’ve got lots of these: How long is the Canadian Cup Drought?

• It's more than one quarter of the NHL's existence.
• When Montreal won that cup, they had to beat the Quebec Nordiques in the first round.
• Long-time coach Randy Carlyle was in the league in 1993 — as a player.
• He was one of five players without helmets.
• That season, there were a bunch of neutral-site games. They included games in Dallas, Phoenix and Miami.
• Gary Bettman had been on the job four months.
• Martin St. Louis, Paul Kariya, Chris Pronger, Marian Hossa, Daniel Alfredsson, Roberto Luongo, and Daniel and Henrik Sedin had not played in the NHL in 1993, and Jayna Hefford, Angela Ruggiero, Hayley Wickenheiser, and Kim St-Pierre had not played for their national teams yet. They're all in the Hall of Fame now.
• Speaking of the Women’s national teams, the Women’s World Championship had only been held twice. The Americans still hadn’t come close to winning it.
• Only two NHL arenas from that season are still in use.
• Fourteen American teams have won the cup since 1993. That includes four cities that didn't have teams in 1993. Regardless of who wins this year, Las Vegas or Miami will become the fifteenth and fifth such city, respectively.
• Worse, during the drought, both Colorado and Tampa Bay won a cup, rebuilt, and then won another cup with a totally different team.
• Since 1993, Canadian teams have won championships in the NBA and MLS, despite the fact that in 1993 there were no Canadian teams in the NBA, and the MLS did not exist.

For the first ten years of the drought, you could explain it through economics. Between a low Canadian dollar and the lack of a salary cap, most of the Canadian teams could barely stay in business, nevermind create or keep a winner. And two of the teams that had the money to compete — Montreal and Toronto — seemed content to shuffle along with mediocre teams and hope for the best. 

After the 2004-05 Lockout, the salary cap was installed, and the Canadian dollar recovered, putting teams on an even footing. And somehow that still didn't help. The salary cap is now 18 years old, the economics will even support a competitive team in Winnipeg, and we still can’t win a cup.

For a while I thought Canadian teams' lack of success was due to their tendency to tweak a mediocre team rather than go into rebuild mode. Canadians have a belief that hockey is all about heart so you just need to squeak into one of the last playoff positions then rely on the players' character to win the day. So there's always pressure to trade a draft pick for that one gritty winger. The result was that Canadian teams stayed in the good-but-not-great level. 

I'd also heard the explanation that the lack of media oversight of American teams was an advantage here. The General Manager of a Canadian team is constantly being asked about how they're going to make the team better right now. Whereas an American GM has to answer maybe three media questions a year, so if they want to undergo a thorough rebuild, there won't be much complaining. Once again, Americans have just the right amount of enthusiasm for hockey. 

But no, that's not it either. Toronto went through a complete rebuild, and to some extent most of the other teams have rebuilt, and the new highly-skilled teams have been no more successful than any hastily-thrown-together team of gritty veterans.

Another explanation you often hear is the difficulty of getting free agents to come to, or stay in, Canada. The reason being: your choice of weather, taxes, or the media fishbowl. But I don't buy that. For the most part, Canadian teams have been able to keep their stars together for several cup runs. Yes, there are nightmare examples like Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk leaving Calgary, but that probably had more to do with Coach Darryl Sutter's toxic culture. As for signing big-name free agents from elsewhere, that's not usually a route to success in the NHL. Even successful American teams are mostly home-grown and traded-for players. 

So I'm running out of ideas. One explanation I've heard is that even when a team like Toronto commits to skill, they still hedge their bets by complimenting the skilled core with traditional big old slow guys who hold the team back. So, let’s go with that for now.

It may well be that we're just cursed. That sounds reasonable - we've surely disrespected the game as much or more than the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth. And whoever the gods of hockey are, I suspect they are truly vengeful. 

Hold This Thread As I Walk Away

Scotiabank has been promoting a new book they're sponsoring, called The Hockey Jersey. The commercials make the point that it's to promote inclusion and tolerance. That's something everyone in hockey agrees is important,  but isn't too good at actually doing. And although Scotiabank are selling physical copies of the book, you can also download a digital copy for free from their website, which is the nicest thing a bank has done since, well, ever. 

It's about a bunch of young girls who come together as a team after they get their own hockey jerseys, which somehow look better than at least half of NHL uniforms. Of course, that title is similar to The Hockey Sweater, the classic story by Roch Carrier, about a boy in Quebec who is mistakenly given a sweater of the hated rival Toronto Maple Leafs, not the Montreal Canadiens sweater he wanted. There is also an animated version from the National Film Board available for streaming.

(As an aside, I love that in the middle of the Wikipedia synopsis of the story, they point out the plot hole: the fateful sweater was ordered from Eaton’s, and Eaton’s pioneered the money-back guarantee, so the mother could easily have returned or exchanged the sweater. Don’t ever change, Wikipedia.)

This being hockey, a lot of people will surely resent something new piggybacking on something old. But I think it gives us an opportunity. Can we finally give The Hockey Sweater a rest? When I was a kid it was really over-used in school. The story was drilled into us so much, one time in junior high, when the teacher announced that we’d be reading a wonderful new story called The Hockey Sweater, the whole class groaned. She was honestly surprised we had not only heard of it but were already sick of it. Now, I find out it was only written in 1979, and thus was a little less than a decade old at the time, so I can understand her not realizing how fast it had saturated the school system.

But it's easy to get why teachers were eager to use it: it's a perfect storm of sports, Canadiana, and situations relatable to kids. Also, looking back, I can appreciate how much of mid-twentieth-century Quebec life he squeezed in: People forced to do business in English, the towering authority of the church, the place of Maurice Richard as a hero. In the eternal quest to find things that will engage students, it sounds like quite a find. 

But there's a problem with The Hockey Sweater that really bugged me - I mean besides it being overused. I've been carrying this around with me ever since, so get comfortable.

It's not really a kids' story. Yes, I know, it's about children, but that doesn't mean they're the target audience. A story can be about children or through the eyes of children without being intended for them. To Kill a Mockingbird, Angela’s Ashes, Lord of the Flies, etc.

Like those books, The Hockey Sweater is pretty dark, when you look at it. The main character doesn't do anything wrong, but ends up a social pariah. His mother doesn't care about his situation. His religion blames him for his problems. And then there's the subtext that his people are trapped in a system rigged against them. Add a murder and it would be hailed as a classic of existentialism. 

An adult can appreciate a story of frustration and futility, but at the time, I found it really depressing. At a young age, children are still expecting stories to have a moral, or at least, to not be a nihilistic commentary of on the futility of life. 

That recounting of unfair situations is also the kind of thing that is best appreciated with a buffer of a few decades to protect you from the raw reality. Sure, now I can read a story about a kid ostracized for wearing the wrong clothes. That’s a common trope of stories about young people. But back then, it was your average weekday. Seeing that happen in a story, with no comeuppance for the bullies or actions by the adults in charge was, well, again: your average weekday. When his only hope for justice is divine-intervention moths, and that’s presented as the punchline, it just seemed hopeless.

So let's retire the Hockey Sweater. Print it on a Syl Apps jersey and lift it into the Bell Centre rafters beside Richard's number 9. That girl in the Scotiabank book can annoy future generations.

The Best Games You Can Name

I just saw an ad for the video game Civilization VI. It’s been out for a while, but ever since it’s introduction, they’ve had difficulty getting players to upgrade from Civilization V. But I might be convinced thanks to a new expansion for it, which adds a number of new scenarios and new civilizations you can take on.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Civilization series has you controlling one of the great empires of history, exploring the world, expanding your territory, dealing with other nations. For the most part, the empires play the same, though they are each given unique abilities. For instance, the Iroquois are able to move their units through forests more quickly, and the Mongols can create powerful mounted archers.

What has me excited is that they’re adding Canada as one of the civilizations you can play as.

So what sort of unique abilities will we have in the game?

• Can get more production out of tundra territories, allowing you to use land that other civilizations ignore (more or less accurate)
• Your unique troops: the Mounties (You kind of had to go with that)
• Extra diplomatic abilities prevent allies from turning on you and pre-emptively attacking (a little stereotypical)
• You can build hockey rinks to improve your civilization’s morale and culture (okay, now you’re just making fun of us.)

So that got me thinking about what other video games could use a Canadian edition:

• Pokémon Go: the game is the same, but it’s presented as an episode of Hinterland Who’s Who
• Need For Speed: can you keep up with 401 traffic in a blizzard?
• Madden: renamed Buono and played with CFL rules
• Bioshock: It's a nice, orderly underwater community where everyone respects the law. Until the cod fishery is shut down, then all hell breaks loose.
• Asteroids: no guns; you have to grab the asteroids with the Canadarm
• Guitar Hero Rush Edition: for experts only
• Metal Gear Solid: the stealth classic is made more challenging by Snake’s inability to stop saying, “Sorry” and “Excuse Me”
• Red Dead Redemption: the Mounties show up and prevent the game from happening
• Frostpunk: if you're not familiar with it, this game is about building a city in an inhospitable frozen environment. Not only is no Canadian edition necessary, I think we should sue them for copyright infringement or something.

All About That Bass, No Pressure

At a recent hockey game, a commentator was discussing the scoring slump of Max Pacioretty, the winger for Las Vegas who was acquired in an off-season trade. The commentator said that he had asked a local reporter if he was under any pressure because of the lack of scoring. That reporter just said, of course not, it's Vegas. After all, hockey teams don't get nearly the media exposure in the US, even in markets where the sport is popular. The subtext is that Pacioretty had previously played his whole career in Montreal, where players are constantly in the spotlight. Had he started the season this slowly there, it would have been the only thing the city was talking about for a week.

And that's a concern that comes up a lot in Canada. Our hockey teams have never been great at attracting free-agents. Sure, the Leafs signed John Tavares this summer, but generally we haven’t made big splashy signings, and we'd like a better idea of why. Some say it's higher taxes, some say it's the cold winters. But if that were true, northern blue states would have the same problem, but it doesn’t work out that way. So many wonder if it's the media fishbowl that we put our hockey players in.

It’s great if you’re a successful hockey player in Canada; you’ll be treated like a god. But there will be a lot of pressure too. The unfortunate aspect of this is that it’s a negative with little upside. In most sports, being under the media microscope comes with more money or a better chance or winning. That’s why people love to sign with Barcelona or the Yankees. But the NHL’s salary cap means that you get the same money wherever you sign. And with that, the chance of winning is no different for Canada’s hockey teams, and the evidence is that they have even less chance. It seems that all things being equal, players would rather not have the pressure than risk it to get extra fame.

I've heard a lot of people over the years discuss this price of fame outside the context of sports. Is it worth the fame and fortune if you can't go about your life in peace and privacy? I remember a DJ once hypothesizing that bassists have the best life of any musicians. They get the same share of the money, as well as the cheers and whatever happens backstage and in the hotel. But once that’s over, they can go about their lives in peace with no one recognizing them.

But being a hockey star in the US is a similar perfect balance. Mostly, you go about your life unbothered. But then every few days you get to spend a few hours surrounded by adoring fans cheering you on. Within the arena, people know who you are and care about you, but once the game is over you go back to anonymity.

I know it's sacrilege to say, but the Americans have it right, in their own way. They care just enough about hockey, but not too much. Indeed, that’s how the whole world should work: We have this big event where everyone is really excited and has a good time, but when it’s over, we put it aside and stop worrying about it, and treat the participants like normal people. Yes, we should all learn from American hockey fans. When they show up.

With Or Without U

My alma mater Waterloo has generally not had a great football team. They had a golden era of sorts in the 90’s, when they were a perennial contender. I could point out that their good era coincided with my time at the school, but I don’t think that’s fooling anyone.

Unfortunately, it went downhill after I left. The lowlight was a one-year suspension following a steroid scandal, followed by a brutal six-year run with a combined record of 4-44. But now it appears that the team is much improved. So when I remembered that they had a big test against Western yesterday, I was curious how it went.

So here is the record of my quest to find the score of yesterday’s Western-Waterloo game on the Internet. This shouldn’t be asking too much; this is the Information Age, and I just want a tiny piece of information. But as I’ve mentioned in the past, it’s amazing how often we can’t seem to convey information. And it all gets worse when you combine it with the giant national shrug that is Canadian university athletics (or U Sports, as it is now officially branded.)

Remember, this isn’t some obscure event, it’s a football game played approximately 24 hours earlier, featuring one of the most storied sports programs in the country:

SportsNet.ca:

• Choose “More/U SPORTS” off of the top menu. I’m greeted by a month-old story about Duke’s Canadian tour
• I choose “Men’s Football” off the U SPORTS sub-menu.
• I’m given a list of the weekend’s games, which immediately refreshes to show a list of next-weekend’s games. I can’t seem to find a button to go back a week. There’s a “Previous month” link at the bottom, but it doesn’t work.

TSN.ca:

• I choose “Sports” from the top menu, which drops down a list of sports and leagues. NCAA is on it, but U Sports isn’t.
• I choose “More Sports” at the bottom of the list. It pops-up a second list of choices, including U Sports, though it’s below “Jay and Dan”
• I’m greeted by a list of stories, the newest of which is more than two months old. The fifth-most recent story is about Western winning the Vanier Cup last year.
• I can’t find any link for scores: the U Sports sub-menu just has an entry for “News,” which is the page I’m at. The score ticker at the top of the page only has CFL/NFL/MLB/NHL/MLS

CBC.ca:

• Hit “Menu” link
• Choose “Sports” from “quick links” list
• Try “scores” heading, but it only has NHL/MLB/CFL/NFL/MLS
• Try “More/All Sports” this sends me to a list of sports that includes entries for the Commonwealth games, Red Bull Crashed Ice, and Spruce Meadows equestrian, but no University sports

GlobeAndMail.com

• Choose “Sports” from top menu
• Choose “Football” from Sports menu
• There are several stories listed, I click one labeled as “U Sports roundup”
• A pop-up tells me that this content is only available to subscribers

TheStar.com

• Choose “Sports” from menu
• There are articles arranged into several categories depending on what team, sport, or city they are about, and which columnist wrote them. There’s nothing on University sports, and only three articles in the “Football” section, all on the NFL.

NaitonalPost.com

• Choose “Sports” from main menu, and “Football” from sub-menu. The sub-sub-menu only has CFL and NFL options
• Try “All Sports” item instead. That page has many sports articles, but I couldn’t find any on Canadian University sports. There’s a “Scoreboard” box, but it only has NHL/NBA/MLB/NFL/CFL

I then gave up on national sports outlets, and when to the Waterloo Region Record, site, where I quickly found a recap of the game. Unfortunately, Waterloo was about as successful as I was looking for info on the game, in which Western won easily, 67-7.

Where I’m Coming From

Just before the World Cup started, I was trying to make small-talk, and mentioned that I have an English background, so that will explain why I may be in a bad mood for the next month. Bringing up that topic, I had assumed that others would chime in with their own reasons for cheering for a particular country. This being KW, I would expect that several people would smugly announce German heritage. Possibly one or two would just burst into tears, and I would assume they are Italian.

But instead, everyone seemed unsure. Rather than proudly state the allegiance, they were non-committal. People would say, yeah, I guess I have English roots so I could shout for them.

To be clear, I wasn’t expecting that everyone would be a fanatic for the source of their DNA. But I did expect that there was an understanding that in sports, particularly out-of-the-ordinary events, you pick someone to cheer for, and put on the die-hard fan act. Getting behind the home of your maternal grandfather for a month fits the bill. But no one I talked to looked at it that way. Having temporary allegiance to a country you have a flimsy connection to is a, well, a foreign concept.

Ethnicity is a weird thing here in Canada. You’ve got some people who are wrapped up in their family’s country of origin. But others have been here for generations, and don’t think of themselves as having any connection to other lands. I first noticed this in school when we were given an assignment to find out about our personal heritage. We had to list an ethnicity for each of our four grandparents. For me, the assignment was trivial: I just wrote “England” four times and handed the paper in.

Of course, I realized that most Canadians have a more diverse background. But I hadn’t realized that it would be much more difficult for others. The teacher had to encourage the students to ask around their families. He also had to explain — like he’d been through this before — that you can’t just write down “Canadian,” however far you have to go back to find something else.

I get the same sense watching all these commercials for genealogy services and genetic testing. They promote it as discovering your roots, with examples of people who have no idea what their heritage is. Sure, I had been shown that young kids were often pretty clueless about their origins, but I had naively assumed that by the time people got to adulthood, they had been filled in on their ethnic background. But apparently it’s enough of a mystery that people will pay good money to find out.

Of course, there’s a flip side to this: many people who take their heritage as a major part of their personal definition, often to the point of displacing their Canadian identity. Again, soccer is a place where we often see this. For years we’ve seen national flags on car windows during every World Cup. This year, I noticed that a kiosk in a mall was also selling hood flags. That is, a flag that wraps across the hood of your car, so you can show your allegiance even more forcefully, with the added benefit of not compromising your aerodynamics. I wasn’t sure if this idea would take off, but I’ve been seeing more of them over the course of the World Cup.

Canada’s national soccer teams — at least on the men’s side — are notorious for having difficulty getting home teams to cheer for them. Fans often cheer for the team of their ethnic origins, rather than the country they’re currently living in. That’s a situation that’s been debated to death in the past, so I won’t do it here. Instead, I’ll just point out how this illustrates Canadians’ diverse ways of dealing with ethnic affiliations. Some of us have completely lost touch with our roots, while others hold onto them no matter what.

I’m not sure what this means, or where it’s going to go in the future. I feel like Canada’s sense of identity is slowly getting stronger, despite the persistence of strong connections to other countries. Clearly it’s more complex than I had assumed.

Dougie Jekyll And Gordie McHyde

Canada has entered a spat with the United States. Of course, it’s not a common thing for us to be in a spat with anyone. Yes, we've had plenty of disputes with the US, but they’re usually esoteric trade issues that get fought in a court. National leaders taking shots at each other? Not our style.

People sometimes bring up our territorial dispute with Denmark over Hans Island. The Canadian government says it should be ours because it is part of the Northern Archipelago which was claimed by Britain and inherited by Canada. The Danes say it should be theirs because it is closer to Greenland, which they own. This “dispute” amuses others because of the comically low-key way that it is fought. That is, it’s “fought” by each nation occasionally sending a ship to the island to take down the other country’s flag and put up their own.

It may surprise outsiders, but there are those in Canada who don't like our low key approach. I'm not talking politicians - those in government who want a more active role are still confined by the limited tax base of a country that won't put up with the military taking up half our budget. So their get-tough attitude comes out as a commitment to buy 7 destroyers instead of the 6 that those wimpy liberals would have bought.

No, I'm thinking of the talk of average people, in coffee shops, living rooms, and online. Most Canadians appreciate our civility, but you occasionally come across folks who think we need to be more forceful, that we should go in to Hans Island guns blazing and set up a Tim Hortons.

But here's what makes this week's American dispute interesting: the subsection of Canadians that longs for aggression overlaps with populist conservatives who generally love the United States and would like us to be closer to them. Of course, most of the time this correlation works out fine; The US is the poster child for aggressive foreign policy, and the easiest way for us Canadians to get more aggressive would be to tag along on their latest adventure.

So what are they supposed to do when we're having a tiff with their beloved American role models? I swear I could hear heads exploding all over the country as they tried to solve that puzzle . It's made worse by the fact that the attack on the Great White North was entirely the creation of Donald Trump, a great aggressive role model.

I was kind of worried what I might see online: so often these days, political sides trump all else, so I wondered how many conservative Canadians might take Trump's side in all this. In the past I've been disappointed that many politically naive Canadians have assumed that their mild distaste for a pretty-boy PM is the equal of the ideological diametric opposite in the White House. But to my surprise, people have been coming out in support of Trudeau. Even self-professed Trump admirer Doug Ford took Trudeau's side.

So maybe this is one of those cases where the political sides are going to start realigning. If a Republican president can be anti-trade, maybe Canadian conservatives will start being anti-American.  It might be good for us if the urge to be nationally assertive could work with the desire to have a separate identity. Watch out, Denmark.