Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

Advice For Millennials

I’m an optimist. However, I must admit ever since the Millennials began drifting out of the universities and into the general population, I’m losing my girlish laughter. Seriously! These people are difficult to deal with. It’s like playing chess with a pigeon — they don’t actually understand the game, but they strut around the board as if they invented it. Lighten up, folks! Here’s some advice. It might not make your lives any better, but it’ll certainly help all the people around you get on with theirs.

1 — Nobody in the real world gives a damn about your feelings. Being over-sensitive about everything doesn’t mean you’re a unique, complicated or interesting person; it means you’re an emotional train wreck who doesn’t have any coping skills.

2 — I think it’s wonderful that you want a totally cool job that utilizes your intelligence, ability and years of education. Unfortunately, your diploma in Gender Studies or any of the other 1001 bullshit degrees out there didn’t provide you with any marketable skills. To get a job (cool or otherwise) you need MARKETABLE SKILLS, so either get some or learn how to make coffee.

3 — If you live in the Western World, you’re already part of the 1%. Nobody but you — and your Instagram buddies — thinks you’re ill used, abused or downtrodden. And, like it or not, you’re not oppressed, so give it a rest. You have the bounty of this very, very wealthy society at your disposal. Bitching about that is kinda counterproductive.

4 — Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right.

5 — People who disagree with you are not assholes, morons, idiots, or Satan’s evil twin. They’re ordinary people who are just as smart, aware and informed as you think you are.

6 — The real world does not come with a safe space. That’s a pretend game the universities made up so your parents wouldn’t sue them.

And finally:

7 — Even though he’s not on Twitter, read Copernicus: he has documented proof you’re not the centre of the universe.

7 Things I Love About Canada and 1 More

Today is Canada Day — Canada’s Birthday — and, in honour of the day, here are seven things I love about my country and one I hate.

1 — Aside from the Brits, Canadians have the coolest flag on the planet.

2 — My country is incredibly beautiful. For some strange reason, cameras love Canada the way French pigs love truffles. I suppose it helps that 90% of the country doesn’t have any people in it, but for drop-dead gorgeous, even our slums aren’t that bad.

3 — Canada is safe. Yeah, yeah, yeah! There are places in this country where you don’t want to be stranded, drunk off your ass, at two in the morning. The thing is, though, those places are 2 — maybe 3– hundred kilometres outside any established urban area, and the local inhabitants there don’t want to rob you — they want to eat you. In general, to get killed, beaten up or even pushed around in my country, you really have to work at it.

4 — Hockey

5 — Go to any city, town or village in Canada and you will find a library and anybody — ANYBODY — can go there, get a book, sit down and read it — for free.

6 — We’ve got the whole world in our backyard. Walk 2 or 3 kilometres in any direction in any city in Canada, and you’ll hear at least four different languages. Keep going and you’ll eventually hear them all — even the dead ones. You can eat in a different ethnic restaurant every week for two years and never repeat yourself. You can dance, sing, read, write, paint or practice the fine art of Bulgarian nose knitting in my country — and everybody thinks that’s cool.

7 — Butter tarts, Terry Fox, Toboggans, Norman Bethune, Cheezies, Poutine, David Suzuki, Leonard Cohen, a warm parka on a cold morning, nothing between me and the horizon, Spring, Tim Hortons, Rene Levesque, mitts, John McCrae and all those other things that are so uniquely Canadian I can’t even explain them to anybody who doesn’t live here.

However:

Unfortunately, most of our “unique Canadian identity” is taken up with one overwhelming idea — we’re NOT Americans. This crap is really tiresome. We spend huge amounts of time looking over our shoulder, checking and comparing and waiting for the Americans to do something stupid so we can feel inherently superior. When George Bush was president you could cut the smug in this country with a knife. Now that we’ve got Donald Trump to kick around, we’re on the verge of a national orgasm of auto-erotic vanity that may never be equaled. This is not healthy.

But what the hell! If it wasn’t for the Americans playing silly bugger all the time, we’d have nothing to bitch about except the weather.

Happy Canada Day!