Great Answers / Canadians are Cool
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Posted by Thomas Alan Gray Nov 8, 2009 |
I recently received an email titled “Great Answers” (attached below). They’re good stories with snappy comebacks. But they’re not our stories. They were cribbed from an email that began, “We Americans are hated worldwide. Maybe it is because we have helped and rescued so many nations? And how quickly they forget that we SAVED their countries!”
Whoever originated the “Canadian” version of the email dropped the introduction and substituted “Canadian” for “American” with a couple of other minor changes. Read to the end for one extra story of a snappy answer that couldn’t be Canadianized.
The email ended, “Canadians are Cool.” I agree, but surely we have enough history and culture of our own that we don’t need to pretend to be Americans.
- For example, read the remarkable story of Vimy Ridge at http://wwii.ca/page9.html, where four Canadian divisions succeeded in capturing a position “so well fortified that all previous attempts to capture it had failed”.
- Or consider the liberation of Holland: Dutch people cheered Canadian troops as one town after another was freed. To show their appreciation to the pilots who dropped food from the air, many Dutch people painted, "Thank you, Canadians!" on their rooftops. In honour of their gift of freedom Dutch people have donated 10,000 tulip bulbs to
Let’s be proud of our nation, our history and our armed services without passing on American stories repainted in Canadian colors.
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Great Answers
In
Mr Harper answered by saying, 'Over the years,
A Canadian Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the Canadian, US, English, Australian and French Navies.
At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French Admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, North Americans generally learn only English. He then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?'
Without hesitating, the Canadian Admiral replied 'Maybe it's because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German.'
When Robert Whiting, an elderly Canadian gentleman of 83, arrived in
'You have been to
Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to
The official replied, 'Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.'
The Canadian said, 'The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it.'
'Impossible, Monseur. Canadians always have to show passports on arrival in
The Canadian senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, 'Well, when I came ashore on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to.'
You could have heard a pin drop.
THEY MISSED THIS ONE:
Then there was a conference in
A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: 'Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck.. We have eleven such ships; how many does
You could have heard a pin drop.
OBVIOUSLY, THIS HAD TO BE OMITTED BECAUSE
DID ANYBODY ELSE NOTICE THE ANTI-FRENCH BIAS IN THESE STORIES? HOW QUICKLY THE AMERICANS FORGET THEIR FRENCH ALLIES IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR…