Happy Canada D'eh?!

It’s Happy Canada Day and in that spirit we’d like to join our readers today in celebrating, reveling, even marinading in the greatness of this country, its people, its resources and its culture.
We are perfect, no. But we realize this, and that is part of being Canadian. And so is a certain humility, sometimes almost embarrassment, about waving the maple leaf on this, our one day of the year, to shout and rant about the greatness of this country. Allow us to add a few more reasons to be proud of your country today with this list of Canadian people, places, things and inventions that spark, for us, the flame of national pride. And if we’ve left out something precious (and of course we have) let us know.

* Hockey (or basketball… or curling)
* Wayne Gretzky (or Sidney Crosby or Mike Weir)
* Celine Dion (or Alanis Morrissette or Shania Twain)
* The Toronto Blue Jays (hey, when they were good, they were GOOD)
* Eh? (Is it a question? Is it punctuation? Is it a word? Only a Canadian knows for sure)
* Tim’s (It is this country’s most widespread addiction. All things considered, we could be hooked on worse things)
* No medical bills
* Smarties (or Shreddies or dill pickle flavoured chips – OK some of these are available in the UK too)
* The queen is on our money.
* The Canadarm
* The goalie mask
* Five-pin bowling
* Fish (from the king cod to the wild salmon to the lobster to farmed fish of today, our finned and scaly friends have always been a staple)
* The Jolly Jumper
* Ogopogo (or the Lake Utopia Monster and we’ll lay claim to Big Foot too – he’s been spotted recently in Kokanee beer ads from British Columbia)
* Bloody Caesar
* The paint roller
* Trivial Pursuit
* The phone (love it or hate it, this Canadian invention ranks among those that had the most dramatic impact on the world over the past two centuries)
* The zipper (and if you’re wondering why your zipper has “YYK” on it, it’s the name of the world’s leading zipper maker – a Japanese company)
* Tommy Douglas (the Greatest Canadian, as named by CBC viewers in 2004 brought us Medicare, welfare, pensions and mothers’ allowances)
* The other greatest Canadians - Terry Fox, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Sir Frederick Banting, David Suzuki, Lester B. Pearson, Don Cherry, Sir John A. Macdonald, Alexander Graham Bell and Wayne Gretzky (him again)
* Mike Myers (or Jim Carrey or John Candy)
* Speaking of candy… James and Gilbert Ganong (and Arthur and R. Whidden and David too… oh and Laura Secord)
* The Beaver
* Our war veterans (a disappearing national treasure)
* The canoe (and the bold, clear, wide and fresh rivers we paddle)
* The view (no matter where in Canada you are or where in Canada you’re from, the view from here is simply the best and we are all fortunate, and today we are all thankful, that when we look at the world we get to see it through the eyes of a Canadian).