On Monday look east and say something unkind
Given what transpired in Vancouver on Friday night, it's hard not to get overwhelmed with Canadian pride.
This is a nation great enough to plop Wayne Gretzky in the back of a pickup truck. This is a nation capable of raising three out of four legs on a hydraulic cauldron.
This is a nation that isn't afraid to place an abomination like Nikki Yanofsky on the same stage as a genius like k.d. lang.
In short, the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver-Whistler Human hair extensions Olympics showed the world Canada is just as tacky and incompetent as China, where the buffoons in charge of the Beijing Olympics pulled that child-singer switcheroo in 2008.
To be frank, who really cares? The Olympics are actually in some other country, the one where winter isn't evident in February.
This weekend, the only form of nationalism that really matters is the kind that involves maple syrup on snow, Moose emblems on hockey jerseys and a dead Metis megalomaniac with a bushy moustache.
It's Louis Riel Day, a time for every Manitoban to take a few hours of their lives to consider the crazy, charismatic dude who founded the province in 1870.
The man had style. The man had grace. The man believed God spoke to him directly.
And he was hung for talking back to Ottawa and some minor matter of executing an obnoxious racist in the middle of the Red River Resistance, the event that led to the formation of this place.
Saskatchewan signed on to Canada with a piece of paper. Newfoundland and Labrador needed only a referendum to give up its independence.
But Manitoba owes its genesis to a bit of bloodshed. Thanks to Louis Riel, this is the only Canadian province to be founded in an act of violence.
So you don't want to mess with Manitoba. We've been trash-talking Ottawa for 140 years.
While the rest of the country can spout all that nonsense about "order and good government" and be polite to each other, Manitobans interested in being true to their roots can safely eschew the "please-and-thank-you" pleasantries that give replica breitling the rest of the nation such a boring reputation.
Yes, B.C. has had a criminal premier and the crazy Quebeckers had the FLQ.
But this is a province founded by proud men and women who chased after bison on horseback. This is a place where schoolchildren are loaded up into buses every April and forced to watch garter snakes get it on in shallow caves.
This is a land where seven out of every 12 people reside in a city that employs three helicopters to rain chemical death down on mosquitoes -- but can't figure out how to buy a single whirlybird to chase car thieves.
And speaking of car thieves, this capital city is renowned across the planet for being unsafe for anyone -- Japanese rock bands, American law-enforcement officials and now Swiss Olympians -- to leave anything unattended in a vehicle for any time.
Again, you don't want to mess with Manitoba. Our provincial bird, the great grey owl, can hear its prey moving around even when it's covered with half a metre of snow. Our provincial animal, the bison, is aggressive and territorial and far more dangerous than any other North American herbivore.
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