go, Canada!

[winterbadger]

OK, so it turns out that one of my two new shows I really like, Flashpoint is from *Canada*! As is one of it's stars, and one of my favourite actors of recent years, Enrico Colatoni. This just goes to further prove my impression that if the UK doesn't work out for me, Canada would be another great place to go. Any country that can produce shows like this, Wonderfalls, and Slings & Arrows, as well as actors like Colatoni, Sarah Polley, Molley Parker, and Paul Gross, is pretty cool. And I've seen enough of it (cities like Montreal and rural areas like Nova Scotia) to get the feeling I'd be right at home.

Comments

[magaidhbhan.livejournal.com]

I've really enjoyed my visits to Canada. Vancouver Island is beautiful; Nova Scotia is friendly and welcoming and lovely.

That being said, it freaks me out a little. I don't think I'd want to live there -- there's something about it that's somehow ... it's a little bit like the abject, to me. So like my own place, and yet unlike; attractive and repelant at the same time. If they spoke with more "foreign"-sounding accents, or if things were just a little more different, I think I'd have a much easier time recognizing it as its own thing. Vancouver Island is particularly like this for me -- being as I am an East Coast girl, the fact that the modern world has such shallow roots in the place is disconcerting. It seems like the wilderness is all around, breaking through the cracks in the pavement, the cougars coming to play in the University's woods. But it's so subtle -- it took me days to identify what about the place made me so uneasy. Weird.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent. Canada's a cool place. I'd come visit! :)

[winterbadger]

the fact that the modern world has such shallow roots in the place is disconcerting. It seems like the wilderness is all around, breaking through the cracks in the pavement, the cougars coming to play in the University's woods.

Which to me makes it even more appealing! I guess that's one of the reasons I like the writing of Charles de Lint (a Canadian author!); a lot of his stories are imbued with that idea, that modernity and what most people think of as 'normal' is just a thin veneer over a deeper, more complex reality.

I guess I like the way that Canada blends some things that are familiar to Americans with a more European sensibility (and, at least in eastern Canada, culture). Maybe I'm just naive, but I can't imagine a saying like the one I've heard going around int he wake of Gov. Palin ("My hockey mom can beat up your soccer mom") being really popular there--I don't think of Canadians (as a whole--obviously there are personal exceptions to anything) as being that prone to in-your-face aggression. Change the "beat up " to "beat", and yes, healthy competition, sure. Oh well, enough waffle.