Happy Canada Day, everybody - Canadian or not, here’s hoping you have a wonderful day, and please, if you get the chance, share a happy thought for our ‘few acres of snow’.
Cheers!
Happy Canada Day, **Le Ministre ** and all the other Canuckistani dopers!
141 and counting. Here’s to our our good fortune and good work at building a country that is, by and large, an especially nice place to live. And here’s to continuing to maintain and improve on it.
This is the second Canada Day in a row I’ve spent outside the country, though. I used to go for a walk in the forest and watch the fireworks – this year I’m at work, which is okay, too. 
Maybe I’ll go watch some Heritage Minutes for nostalgia.
wolfstu - to add to your nostalgia, here’s some Hinterland Who’s Who . Something about that flute lick at the introduction just takes me right back…
Happy Canada Day to you too!
Happy happy!
What do you traditionally do celebrate Canada Day (feel free to share any broad cultural traditions or what you have done with your family and friends…)?
Happy Canada Day, and thank you for having me as a citizen of this great country.
Lest I forget, I should note that it is also Memorial Day, in the part of Canada that includes the former Dominion of Newfoundland, so fly your Union Jack at half mast.
Happy Canada Day, all!
(So, if I have to make a trip to get some business done on your side of the border, would July 4 be a good day for it?)
Depends where you are - some places have parades and big public picnics, just about everywhere has some kind of fireworks display. There are often big free concerts in most cities, usually unabashedly featuring Canadian bands.
It’s a day when lots of people think about and talk about what it is to be Canadian. And it’s one of the rare days when we can talk about some of our great authors, artists, musicians without seeming parochial. It can be a day of drunken navel gazing, which can be fun or tiresome depending on the crowd you’re with.
Canada is like the colour indigo - it’s hard to define without saying it’s not blue and it’s not purple, and some people can’t quite see it, so they mistake us for a different colour. Or maybe we’re like a half-diminished 7th chord - beautiful, but unsettled, and you can’t tell if we’re a min6 or a min7b5 until you hear the resolution. ‘Or maybe we’re an election year/shakin’ hands and kissin all the babies’ - a quotation from The Tragically Hip…
It is fun to talk about some of the stumper trivia questions that no one but a Canuck or a Canaphile would get, like who scored the winning goal in the 1972 Summit Series, and where were you when it happened?
For most of us, this is the first long weekend after school gets out for the summer, so some kind of outdoor activity with the kids and family is customary. Growing up, we’d be up at the cabin for certain, though May Long is the more traditional date to open up the cabin/cottage.
This year, it’s a funny one - it’s a statutory holiday, but the city workers in Toronto apparently exchanged July 1st for June 30th as the day off so they’d get the long weekend. The neighbours and I were talking about it yesterday - I can’t imagine that happening in any other country!
Happy Canada Day!
In many parts of Canada, there are fireworks in the evening, and a whole variety of different activities during the day. In my city, there was the Multicultural and Folk Arts festival at the central hockey arena, with local and international foods and crafts for sale, and performances of various kinds. The city transit offered free rides to go to the fair. I used to try to spend some time in nature, out on the water by canoe or in the forest by foot, and take in some of the community stuff as well.
But the celebrations vary from place to place, and there isn’t really a traditional common theme except maple leaf flags. In the capital, for example, huge crowds will watch open-air concerts by big-name and up-and-coming artists, take part in running races, and watch a demonstration of the military aerobatics team, and hear a speech by the Prime Minister.
At Québec, there’s cake, family activities, and a tour of a frigate. In Iqaluit they had a parade and Inuit throat singing. Calgary has breakfast, music, and a citizenship ceremony for immigrants, and smaller North Bay is having a fair and a sailing regatta.
One thing that is pretty traditional, though, is saying things like this:
Generally this isn’t done out in the public of an worldwide internet message board; rather, it’s kept tastefully within our borders, where we can indulge in some pride without doing it in front of the other countries 
But that statement is full of allusions to popular images of Candaa among Canadians. We like to believe we have an inclusive, prosperous, just society, that’s both strong for its united parts (‘continue to build together’) and respectful of diversity (‘honours our individuality’). Probably we have some way to go on each of these things, and probably its best kept to ourselves than shouted out in the international commons like this, but we’re still working on it, and you asked
Yay Canada!
Although i never really celebrated or done anything special on this day. Especially since i had work on Monday…grumble grumble
It’s nice enough weather; i might go for a walk near the river for a bit.
Ordinary working day! Everything that’s normally open on Friday should be open.
Canada Day is when I miss home most keenly. The Consulate in Washington, DC throws a party, but it’s not the same. I am not attending this year. They are celebrating Quebec City’s 400th anniversary and there’s no chance for Alberta beef - which, honestly, is almost the only reason I attend. I leave the free beer to everyone else.
My Canada Day will be spent biking a few dozen kilometers across southern Ontario.
Here’s to hoping a restaurant or two stays open. Happy Canada Day.
I met Papa Tiger at a Canada Day party in San Diego thrown by a couple of crazy Canadians, eh? (And I’m not mocking, one of the pair was a true hoser in the way he ended his sentences!) So I’ve had a special fondness for your holiday ever since.
So a very Happy Canada Day to our Canadian friends, both north of the border and those temporarily in exile!
Ginger, we should start an expatriates club, and have our own virtual party. We’ll definitely have Alberta beef, and I’ll contribute a load of the blueberries that’ve become the signature food of Sudbury.
Since we’re virtual here, I’ll offer up some of the LaRue family’s Tourtière, some Maple Syrup Baklava, and some of my Muskeg single malt Canadian whisky, aged 17 years in an Icewine cask…
Dig in…
Maple syrup baklava sounds like a terrific innovation! :eek: And if your tourtière is anything like my grandmother’s, it’s sure to be delicious.
Happy birthday, Canuckistan!
I like you guys. The whole concept of Canada and Canadian-ness is easily translatable for an Aussie, I think.
I’m having a beer for you right now!