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.

Canada Day Trivia

Every country has national legends.  These can be myths like Paul Bunyan or real stories that start out as fact and, over the years, gain a life of their own.  George Washington didn’t chop down his father’s cherry tree, and if he did, he probably blamed it on Billy, the kid next door.  William Tell didn’t actually shoot an apple off his son’s head.  In fact, the facts are sketchy on whether Tell even had a permit to carry a crossbow.  Legends define a country, though; they give it an identity.  They embody the best qualities of a nation and serve as a signpost for young people.

We don’t have a lot of heroes in Canada.  We tend to steer away from hero worship and avoid our own history as if it could give us a rash or something.  Interestingly enough, seven of the top ten Greatest Canadians are part of our living memory, not our historical one.  It’s not that Canadians don’t like history; we just aren’t interested in our own.  When we go looking for heroes, Terry Fox trumps Laura Secord and Tommy Douglas trumps Thomas Darcy Magee — for good and sufficient reason.  There are tons of Canadians who’ve never heard of Laura and Darcy.  Plus, Canadians, like Americans, have all kinds of misconceptions about our country.  For example, Gideon Sundback, the guy who invented the zipper, wasn’t Canadian.  He was born in Sweden and lived in the United States.  The factory was in Canada – in St Catherines.  But here are few things that are true and may give you an insight into our national character.

Canada is one of the few nations in all of history that has never fought a war for territorial gain.  Historically, when we fight (and fight hard) it’s for human principles, possessing other people’s dirt doesn’t interest us; we prefer to wage war for ideals.

Toronto, the town we love to hate, is the most educated place in the world.  There are more university degrees in Tee-Oh than in any other major city on the planet.  (It makes you wonder where all the Maple Leafs fans come from, but it is what it is.)

Up until February 15th, 1965, Canada did not have a national flag.  Nobody felt the need for one.  On state occasions, when all the other kids were hoisting their flags, we borrowed the Red Ensign.  However it was never our official anything.

Contrary to popular belief among foreigners, our national symbol is not a Tim Horton’s coffee cup.  It’s the beaver, who is probably smarter than the British lion, the Russian bear and the US eagle combined.  As the world’s only official rodent, castor canadensis embodies all that is Canadian: hard work, diligence and a genius for reshaping a harsh environment to everybody’s benefit.

Canadians consume more macaroni and cheese than any other people in the world.  And that’s not per capita, folks; that’s straight up-and-down bulk.  Therefore, at any given time in Canada, chances are good that somebody, somewhere is eating Kraft Dinner or a reasonable facsimile.

Canada has the longest coastline in the world – 243,000 km or 151,000 miles.  There’s nothing significant about it.  We just got lucky with Hudson’s Bay and all those northern islands.  However, trivia lists all point it out like it’s something we’ve accomplished.  Hurrah, Canada!  Standard time, the Canadarm and coastlines!  Woohoo!  We’re Number One.

Canada is the largest producer of Icewine in the world.  We also produce the best Icewine in the world because — by law — the grapes have to be colder (-8 degrees Celsius) than other countries’ grapes, before they can be picked.

The Canadian comedy team Wayne and Shuster were on the old The Ed Sullivan Show more times than any other act.  They made sixty-seven appearances, an American media record which still stands and is not likely to be broken any time soon.  Americans like Canadian comedy.

Long ago, Canadians discovered insulin.  Recently, we captured the incredible energy source, antimatter, for a record 16 minutes and the other day we may have found a cure for Hepatitis C.

There is a story that goes like this.  When the Nazis overran the Netherlands in World War II, the Dutch royal family fled to Canada to escape capture and ensure the continuation of the royal line.  During their exile, Princess Juliana became pregnant.  The child, who would be 4th in line to the Dutch throne, could not be born in a foreign country.  The Canadian government issued a proclamation declaring that Princess Juliana’s hospital room was extraterritorial so the new princess would not have dual citizenship.  It was a wonderful gesture between two embattled nations, and it’s remembered every year during Ottawa’s tulip festival – tulips originally given by a grateful Dutch monarch.

When I was very young and the old guys had a few too many adult beverages, I heard a different story.  It was about a group of Canadian soldiers who slipped across the English Channel one dark winter night in 1942.  It was the middle of World War II, and Nazi military strength and the occupation of Europe were at their height.  Canadians had raided Hitler’s Europe once before, at Dieppe in August.  They suffered over 3,000 casualties, nearly half their contingent.  However, the little Canadian boat sailed on through the night, avoiding German submarines and patrols and ducking under the primitive radar.  It anchored quietly in the pitch black, off the coast of Holland.  The Canadian soldiers left the ship and rowed ashore.  They went inland a few hundred yards to get off the sand.  Half of them stood guard and the other half dug up enough Dutch dirt to fill a couple of burlap bags.  They carried them away and rowed back to the ship in total darkness.  When they were loaded, the ship turned and ran for England.  The bags were transferred to a Canadian Navy corvette which sailed, as a convoy escort, back to Canada.  They were given to the Dutch royal family and the dirt was carefully placed under the four legs of Princess Juliana’s hospital bed.  Princess Margreit, Juliana’s third child, was born on Dutch soil.

I don’t know whether my story’s true but it’s the stuff legends are made of.

Happy Canada Day, everybody!

Michele Bachmann: Take Her Seriously

On Monday, Michele Bachmann declared she was a candidate for President of the United States.  Nobody was shocked but I — and several million other people — got real interested in American politics – real fast.  Ms. Bachmann brings huge flair to a GOP campaign that, so far, has lacked a discernable pulse.  John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are peeing their pants anticipating their autumn TV ratings.  The girls from The View are sharpening their claws.  And journalists from here to McMurdo Station, Antarctica are dissecting every word she’s ever uttered to find a “pants on fire” error.  The big gun personalities, however, are still waiting in the weeds, but they’ve put their assistants on bread and water until they come up with 2012’s defining “gotcha” question.  Chris Wallace seriously jumped the gun on Sunday when he asked her — point blank — “Are you a flake?”  Pure idiot – he probably won’t get another crack at her and will be sniping from the sidelines once the action really heats up next year.

If I sound jaded, I’m not.  If I sound like a supporter, I’m not.  I’m just very aware that Bachmann is being painted as Sarah Palin in a skirt; she’s not.  There are some similarities, certainly; both desperately need a full-time fact checker, for one.  But I’m warning you, folks: take this woman seriously.

Sarah Palin was (and still is) a Republican mistake.  She was supposed to be the sacrificial “hockey mom” to the ’08 Obama juggernaut.  Unfortunately, she didn’t shut up and go home after it was all over.  Instead, she hung on to the spotlight and the microphone (I think she likes them) and became Sarah Palin, sideshow.  Along the way, she changed politics forever.

Michele Bachmann is nobody’s sacrificial lamb.  She’s serious.  She has an army of resolute supporters.  She can raise money – lots of it.  She has a message that many people want to hear — “America was great once, and it can be great again.”  She’s guaranteed tons of press, mainly because Palin was such good copy.  And she has arrived at a time and a place where she (because Palin is unelectable) is the stand-alone candidate.  Plus, she is the most dangerous of all opponents; she believes in what she’s saying.

Up until now, the Republicans have produced a whole bunch of candidates that ordinary people can’t name (except Newt Gingrich.)  They’ve been busy playing musical chairs with who wants to lose to Obama.  Mitt Romney and Tom Pawlenty are apparently the front runners, but from what I’ve seen, it’s a terminal case of the bland leading the bland.  Not so suddenly, Michele Bachmann shows up in Waterloo, Iowa, with nothing on her mind but the Oval Office, and suddenly she’s tied in the polls with Mitt for 1st place.  This is the kind of momentum politicians scheme about.  Bachmann is a natural press magnet.  Her name recognition is already huge and she’s only been on the job, officially, for 48 hours. Primary season is eight months away.

What everybody — including Romney, Pawlenty and Huntsman — has to remember is the primaries are not about voters.  They are about galvanizing the party faithful; that diehard 15%.  These are the people the candidates have to turn into supporters.  You can’t win primaries without them, and you’re not going to be anything but yesterday’s news without primary victories.  This is where Republican moderates are stumbling around in the dark.  The Tea Party has the high ground.  They show up in numbers and can get their people front and centre.  They can raise huge amounts of money.  They are willing to stand up and be counted.  Unfortunately, they’re also willing to present unelectable candidates (Christine O’Donnell) rather than compromise their principles.

This is the problem.  A lot of people think Michele Bachmann is just Sarah Palin with one less “you betcha,” and they are not going to take her seriously.  This is a mistake.  Bachmann can ride the Tea Party to legitimately become the Republican nominee for President.

If she does, when she gets to the national stage, Barack Obama and the media are going to tear her apart.

Perfume: The Smell of Extinction

The human race is heading for extinction.  No, guess again: it’s not climate change – not yet anyway.  It’s much more basic than that.  We stink.  We absolutely reek of chemicals.  Every day, we pour, spray and smear huge amounts of artificial smells on our bodies.  If that isn’t bad enough, we fill the air around us with a chemical cocktail, as well.  We’ve become obsessed with odor, and we attack it like it’s Satan’s grandson.  However, in our zeal to defeat aroma, we’re cloaking ourselves in a chemical cloud capable of defoliating Denmark.  Our noses haven’t worked properly in decades, and our poor lungs can’t even gasp for help anymore.  Most importantly, we’re losing our original human scent, and this will be our demise.

I know it’s hard to believe in a world filled with Driven, Hidden Fantasy and Hugo Boss, but we humans have our own smell – individually — just like cats, dogs or elephants.  It’s a perfectly agreeable odor that is simply Mother Nature’s way of recognizing her kids with the lights off.  We don’t smell it consciously anymore because we’re a gillion generations out of the caves.  Basically, we haven’t needed to distinguish our buddy Cro-Magnon Carl from the local sabre tooth man-eater for many millennia — so we don’t.  But it’s still there, all the same.  Ask any couple who’ve been together for any length of time and they will tell you their partner/husband/wife/lover has a distinct smell.  It’s recognizable on the pillow, on their clothes or in a room.  It’s identifiable.  This smell is extremely important.   It’s how animals find and keep sexual partners.

In our oh-so-sophisticated contemporary society, we don’t want to believe we’re still just really smart animals.  We think we’re halfway to the gods or something, and ordinary human activity is dirty, dangerous and offensive.  Just take a look at how we go after bacteria.  We’re willing to flush tons of life destroying chemicals into our water supply and massacre whole species of fish just so our children don’t touch anything that isn’t double-dipped in Lysol.  We treat smell the same way (worse, actually.)  We’ve convinced ourselves we smell bad, and not just occasionally – all the time.

Take a walk through any shopping mall and count the number of places that sell fragrance of one kind or another and not just perfume — any fragrance.  The only places that don’t are A & W, the bank and the guy selling lottery tickets.  There are entire stores devoted to smell and that’s just human smell.  Other stores have departments for kitchen, bathroom and household odors.  Still others have a whole aisle for air fresheners, and some have little mini-sections strictly for pets.  This is outrageous.  Clothing stores have tables for celebrity perfumes, hardware stores sell AXE and gas stations sell travel size deodorant  – just in case.  In case of what?  It’s a gas station!  It smells like gas!

We don’t generally notice the amount of retail space given over to the war on smell — simply because it’s everywhere.  However, the real problem is, it’s chemical warfare!  Most of the perfumes, deodorants, soaps, body sprays etc sold, are not naturally derived from the lavender plants of Provence lovingly crushed by the local peasants.   Trust me: 99% of the stuff we use every day is concocted by scientists in a laboratory.  And get this — it’s a secret laboratory — because the makers of all those perfumes, deodorants, soaps, body sprays etc. are not obligated by law to list their ingredients on the label.  These are unknown chemicals folks, in strange and unique combinations, and we’re putting them on our skin — which, by the way, is porous.  Unless you’re Robert Downey Jr. from Iron Man II your body is absorbing those chemicals like a brand-new loofah.

The other side of the coin is that some of those chemicals remain on our skin and attack the sensory organs of the people around us.  Try walking through the perfume department of The Bay (no offence, it was the only name I could come up with) and you can taste the fumes in the air.  Or ride in an elevator with a Radioactive AXE Man, and somewhere around the 25th floor, you’re going to need oxygen.  I have no fear of industrial air pollution because we are breathing the chemical waste of Obsession, Heat, Glow, Unforgiven and a thousand more – up-close-and-personal — every moment of the day.  No wonder there’s a pandemic of asthma and respiratory illness in our society.  Our lungs simply weren’t made to absorb this amount of crap.  These days, people who quit smoking just come out about even.

Eventually, between the amount of fragrances we use to disguise our natural scent and the damage we’ve already done to our noses, lips and tongues, we’re not going to be able to smell each other anymore.  We’ll all smell the same.  This is not a good thing.  Any anthropologist, biologist or zoologist will tell you that animals, including humans, depend on smell.  It’s the most intimate of the senses, and it’s essential — not only for reproduction but also for natural selection within the species.  If we’re not careful, we’re going to become a-scentual.  After that, it’s a straight slide to extinction.