What’s on my mind? It is in the nature of Canadians to be meek and self-effacing. Just look at the colors of vehicles Canadians drive! An official survey* of cars, SUVs, and pickups swishing past on a major Canadian highway, 8,406 vehicles were identified as fawn, taupe, oatmeal, cream, beige, écru, tawny, biscuit, grey, off-white, and (screaming ambulance ... doesn’t count) white.
* Methodology: Browsing through Canadian muscle-car mags, combing car lots, staring at parked cars, zooming along the highway, inventing stats …
Divergents from the norm? One car was teal, another, blue. WHOA! Scientific psychological profiling suggests their drivers are the rebellious, “out there,” pot-smoking type, typically basking naked in mountainside Vancouver hot tubs.
My pencil broke midway through the survey, so I wasn’t (vroom-vroom!) fast enough to add summer’s muscular black motorcycles to the count, but my best guess is that there were there were 548, give or take 373.
A few drivers (perhaps of the gangster persuasion) flashed past in shiny black Cadillac SUVs, (the better to stash the body in, my dear …) but they’re an aberration. (Who washes those cars every day? These guys probably have underlings named Rocco or Carmine do it: “I’m on it, Boss!”).
The SUV tough guys and motorcyclist maniacs aren’t “typical.” Most of the cars, pickups, and SUVs on Canadian roads look as pleasantly staid as their kind-hearted owners.
Travel to the States and you’ll find audacious, brazen vehicles in candy-apple red, lacquered lime, jazzed-up purple (“I never saw a purple cow … I never hope to see one …”) and don’t-mess-with-me orange (reading this, Tom?). As much as I love Americans, I haven’t visited the US since the Madman of the South took power, and won’t until he’s gone.
I am Canadian. I chose my citizenship; I wasn’t to the manner born. As a Canadian who arrived as a toddler and committed to citizenship as an adult, I am neither meek nor self-effacing. I am brash, loud, and sometimes sharp-tongued. I occasionally roil around kicking my legs, screaming: “Hah-hah-hah-harrrghhh!” which is not typically “Canadian.”
The typical Canadian is kind; reaches for a hankie instead of a gun; considers family, friends, and neighbors; gives before taking; empathizes with those who suffer. Canadians help - even when those helped are nameless, faceless, sexless strangers of unknown ethnicity in countries never visited. Canadians do this because such traits are embedded in our DNA and in our tax system.
“I’ve never met a Canadian I didn’t like.” If only that were so. But the mean and the selfish and the cruel and the racist are the minority.
I think it fair to say most Canadians are “nice” - but we could be nicer. We all need to better understand and respect those who differ from us through heritage, language, ethnicity, sexual preference, and viewpoints, just as they, in turn, need to understand and respect us.
That is who we are and must aspire to be, in this place and dream we call Canada, all of us sharing rights and freedoms under the law.
On this Canada Day, just as we celebrate Canada and Canadians, we also celebrate the opportunities this country offers those who are honest and good-hearted; those who seek refuge; those who desire to make Canada even better, just as they hope to make the world a better place.
Today, we celebrate Canadians’ “niceness.” It’s a helluva place to live, this place I chose. And yes, I drive a cream-colored car.
© Nicole Parton, 2020
