Canada Day

TNTeresa wrote:

I got so excited when I saw that tomorow is Canada Day that I decided to just go ahead and email you right now. So Happy Canada Day a little early! Have a wonderful day tomorrow and do tell us all about any celebrations that you attend. Is it much like July 4th here?

The last fourth of July celebration I can recall attending, I was seventeen, on one of those miserable Family Vacations. We sat on the White House lawn and watched the fireworks, at first excited, then saying, “Wow, it must be really expensive to have the fireworks go on so long,” and then checking watches, saying, “Maybe we should head out before they end, skip the traffic…”

So I’m not sure how reliable my comparison is going to be.

There were many people waving miniature Canada flags (Paul among them; he was just as excited about the Canadian flag on Thursday as he was about the rainbow flag during the Pride parade last week) and lots of kids with red maple leaves painted on their cheeks. There were, of course, ten times as many people waving blue and white flags, because Greece had just beat the Czech Republic 1-0 in the Euro 2004 and were going to the finals with Portugal.

Overhead on the bus, a few days earlier:

Every car within a 1/4 mile radius Beep! Beeep BEEEEP! BEEEEEEEEP! Be-bebebebebeEEEP!

Guy Jesus! Isn’t soccer over yet? I’m so tired of all this fucking noise. You know, I went to the movies last night and got out about two in the morning, and they were still! Honking! Their! Horns! and I was like, “Dude, don’t you have to go home and get some sleep? There’s another game tomorrow, and you need to be out early to honk and wave your flag.”

Personally, I like the honking. I’ll take unrestrained joy in any form I can get it.

On our way to a combination art festival/Canada Day celebration (Canada Day is the anniversary of the day that Canada became a country and was no longer a colony of Great Britain, though given what I read in Queen Victoria’s biography, it was more a face-saving gesture than anything else) we saw another festival and hopped off the streetcar. It turned out to be somewhat disappointing, though Paul had a nice time and we heard this doubtless age-old joke for the first time: “Hi folks. I’ll be your magician for the day. I’m originally from New Jersey, but I fell in love with Canada while I was stationed here during the Vietnam War.”

And then trundled off to another park which had carnival rides and was more expensive than Disneyland - which is not an exaggeration and something of a concern as Habanero’s vet bill came to $782 (Canadian. Which means your vet would have charged $590, but your vet does not have an Australian accent or a sincere love of cats or the ability to bring Habanero back from the brink of death because if he did you wouldn’t mind the extra $192).

After we had all eaten at least two pieces of corn on the cob each, everyone else went home and we headed for the Beach to watch the fireworks display. On Victoria Day, we watched the fireworks go off all over the city from the Ivory Tower and just as the Beach fireworks were reaching their final display, huge even from our far-away vantage point, I was struggling with my new tripod and trying to make it all work and missed a fantastic photo by thiiiiis much. I was determined to catch it this time.

The people on the beach were all feeling on edge and nasty. After a kid threw a rock at his sister, twice, I went over and yelled, “THERE ARE LITTLE KIDS ON THIS BEACH! YOU NEED TO STOP THROWING ROCKS!” I walked back over to Todd, and the guy on the blanket next to Todd whistled and said, “The kid just threw a rock that missed your head by thiiiiis much,” and so we hurriedly found another place to sit. No terrorizing nine year old children this time, but a bunch of stoned teenagers throwing rocks at a dog. The dog’s owner got the dog out of harm’s way, and we moved again. The third time a couple of teenagers thought throwing rocks into the lake would be a complete blast, and you know, good for them, just not over my son’s head, thank you. We moved to a spot about thirty metres away from the lake and were able to sit there for the duration of the fireworks show.

By that time I had to pee like crazy, and I found the women’s washroom and got in line. There were about fifty women in line, including two little girls who kept asking their daddy how come the men’s washroom had no line at all, and by the time I was in the hall leading to the washroom the edgy, nasty feeling was making me wish I’d found gone to a different washroom. Four women shoved their way through the line, saying, “Emergency! Emergency!” and we let them through.

A woman who was much farther back in the line came shouting towards us. “You let them in? Why the fuck you let them in? We gotta wait in line, so do they!”

There were a few murmurs of “It was an emergency,” and then someone else called, “They didn’t actually use the toilets.”

The woman subsided at this and stomped back to her place in line, sighing heavily.

The fireworks were tremendous. Not too long, not too short, and after the last blast had gone off everyone on the beach applauded wildly. Todd, Paul and I set off for the bus stop and waited there along with what seemed like hundreds of other people. We saw a streetcar farther down the street with almost no line at all and ran for it - I looked back and saw ten more people running behind us, who had spotted what we were doing. We ended up standing in the middle of a double length streetcar along with a group of twenty somethings.

That was my favorite part of Canada day. I mean that sincerely. There was such a feeling of camaradarie throughout the entire streetcar. The twenty somethings talked about alternate routes to the subway station in a desultory way and measured distances in their heads with no actual intention of leaving the streetcar. A baby cried every once in awhile and was comforted back to sleep. In the seat behind us, a teenage girl showed flashcards to a friend with Japanese characters on them.

Sawa Try this one.

Hideto Song?

Sawa No. Suuuungk.

Hideto Sun?

Sawa No, that’s table.

Hideto Sook?

Sawa, giggling No, that’s ice cream.

Hideto Sugik?

Sawa, laughing No, that’s dragon!

(If you actually know Japanese, you will be aware that table, ice cream and dragon don’t sound alike. I intended to write down the actual sound-alike words he mistakenly guessed, but by that time it was almost midnight and I was exhausted.)

After about forty five minutes, one of the twenty somethings called his mom. He spoke in a friendly, gentle voice and ended with, “I love you too.” The women in the group were a little atwitter over this display and the guy blushed and all but shuffled his feet. One of the women sat down in the aisle (a serious no-no on the TTC) and we all gratefully followed, Paul falling asleep almost the moment his butt hit the floor. After an hour we had managed an entire city block and Todd and I were planning a route home that didn’t involve the subway, because if we kept on at the same rate we weren’t going to make it by two a.m., when the subways close.

To our relief, the gridlock let up soon afterwards and when we arrived at the subway station Todd hauled all fifty pounds of Paul through yet more transit changes until we eventually arrived home. (Todd’s been lifting Paul up a lot ever since. I think he sees it as a viable alternative to going to the gym.)

So. Happy Canada Day, nasty little boy on the beach! Happy Canada Day, Sawa and Hideto! Happy Canada Day, twenty something who is nice to his mama! Happy Canada Day, baby who was too hot in the streetcar!

But most of all, happy Canada Day, to everyone who came to this amazing country looking for something better.

And finding it.