Pace on Earth

Traffic and Weather

Over the weekend I stumbled across a documentary on CBC entitled Talking Canadian. The shows goal was to shed light on how a unique Canadian language evolved from the Queen's English and it's Yankee relative. The documentary was very insightful and thanks to this glorious series of tubes can be seen in its entirety here(5 part series). The most amazing thing I learned during this (actually educational) program was the no one else in the world eats butter tarts (Pt.3 7:07). That makes me love them even more and means that I can say with even more certainty that Mom's butter tarts aren't just the best in Canada but the best in the world!

Overall they found over 2000 words that we and we only use. I suggest that we embrace them all. The most canadian phrase I could think of off the top of my head is this - "I'm on the TCH on my way to Flin Flon for a bonspiel. I'll bring you a two-four of Moosehead if I can crash on your chesterfield. Might'swell eh?"

While this show was eye-opening on why we talk the way we talk it didn't really touch upon what we talk about. And what we talk about when making small talk is weather, traffic and hockey. How cold it is, how shitty the drivers are in whatever city you are in and, finally, how shitty the Leafs are. I could talk about how shitty the Leafs are all day but I can't handle too much weather talk; we live in Canada of course the weather is all over the place. In no particular order here are my least favourite weather related sayings:
1)Cold enough for ya?
2)Its a dry heat/cold.
3)Its not so much the heat, its the humidity.
4)At least you don't have to shovel it.
And of course my favourite: Nice day if it don't rain wha?

Now that is Talking Canadian.

I went and saw The Weakerthans last night and it was actually this line that got me thinking about this - "We'll talk about the weather, or how the weather use to be"
Here is the song:

Take off eh!

Pace out.

Labels: Oh Canada

posted by Vitamin S @ 5:28 p.m.