By: Gabrielle McLaren, Features Editor
Do I remember what I had for supper last night? Not at all. Do I have a lot of unnecessary trivia about Canada in my head, just in time for Canada Day? You bet. My summer job between first and second year was bringing groups of visitors through the halls of Canada’s Parliament. This included a lot of “hello/bonjour” greetings, explanations of the purpose of the Senate, and episodes of being yelled at for running out of tickets. Now, here I am, ready to share my borderline-useful Canadian trivia with you!
Moose aren’t supposed to live in B.C. They’re actually from the east of the country, but they followed the Canadian Pacific Railroad on its way westward. Moose literally took the train and followed the rails to set up shop west of the Rocky Mountains.
Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first prime minister, was known for many things, from his charm and mad 19th-century dance moves to his incredibly genocidal policies aimed at Indigenous peoples. One of his legacies is his raging alcoholism. “Raging alcoholism” might not be the best way to explain it: MacDonald would be sober for six months, and then disappear for two weeks and leave his friend and colleague George-Étienne Cartier in charge of the country. Like most things about MacDonald, it was sketchy. One day, MacDonald threw up in the House of Commons during debates. MacDonald wiped his mouth and turned to the Speaker of the House, calmly stating: “I get sick sometimes not because of drink or any other cause, except that I am forced to listen to the ranting of my honourable opponent.” That’s Gentleman™ for “suck my dick.”
Prior to his election, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau was blacklisted from entering the United States because he was considered too socialist, and possibly communist, by the American government.
Love it or hate it, Hawaiian pizza was invented in 1962 by a Canadian restaurant owner. That restauranter, Sam Panopoulos, actually fell in love with pizza during a stop taken in Italy while immigrating from Greece.
Winnie the Pooh is an actual Canadian bear. She started off as an abandoned bear cub until a certain Lieutenant Harry Colebourn stopped in White Rock, Ontario, on his way to England. He wrote in his journal: “August 24, 1914 Left Port Arthur 7AM. In train all day. Bought bear $20.” Yup. He named the bear after his hometown, Winnipeg, and brought her with him as he trained forces for the First World War, where she became a pet for soldiers. While Colebourn was posted in France, he made arrangements for Winnie to stay at the London Zoo. He visited her frequently and, after noticing just how much children and adults loved Winnie, decided to donate her to the zoo instead of bringing her back to Canada (how he was planning to ship a bear across a U-boat infested ocean, I have no idea). One of the visitors who got a chance to see Winnie this way, A.A. Milne, started writing fun little stories once his son fell in love with Winnie. The rest is history.
To keep morale up during his first Canadian winter, Samuel de Champlain founded the Order of the Good Time. Every day, somebody new would be in charge of entertaining those who hadn’t died of scorbut, as well as distributing rations, therefore becoming the Grand Master of the Order of the Good Time. Today, Nova Scotia’s lieutenant-governor now serves as the Grand Master, and anybody visiting his province is entitled to membership as long as they promise: “To have a good time, to remember us fondly, to speak of us kindly, to come back again.”
The first woman to be elected to Parliament was a schoolteacher named Agnes MacPhail in 1921. The first time she addressed the House, half of her male colleagues got up and left since they would have rather not be in the house at all than listen to a woman speak in it. Yikes. MacPhail stuck around in the House for a surprisingly long eighteen years, working on issues ranging from women’s rights, education, child labour, family rights, and prison reform.
In an effort to promote Christianity to Indigenous peoples of Canada, the Catholic Church proclaimed that beavers counted as fish and could therefore be consumed on Fridays and during Lent. Spoiler alert: this did not make colonialism any less bad.
One of the best known Canadian stereotypes is that we apologize too much — but this ended up having legal consequences. In 2009, Ontario passed a law called the Apology Act that prevented lawyers from using an apology as an admission of guilt, but recognized it as a sign of empathy and compassion.
Some of Canada’s national parks are bigger than entire countries. Wood National Buffalo Park (which crosses from Alberta into the Northwest Territories) dwarfs Denmark and Switzerland . . .
When Métis leader Louis Riel was elected to Parliament, he was a wanted man exiled to the United States. He never stepped into the House of Commons as a result (for fear of being arrested), and the rumour at the time was that he’d broken into Parliament in the middle of the night to sign the member’s registry without anybody knowing.
Not only is the Hudson’s Bay the second-biggest bay in the world, but massive ice sheets have literally bended its gravity by denting the Earth due to their sheer size millions of years ago. Scientists believe that the surface of the Earth will bounce back and recover its usual gravity in 5000 years.
Confederation actually began with just the Atlantic provinces wanting to join together, but the province of Canada (modern-day Québec and Ontario) crashed the party. To help warm up the East coasters, the Canadian delegation (including aforementioned alcoholic Sir John A. MacDonald) brought champagne for anyone. Not just champagne, but about $200 000 worth of the stuff in today’s currency, once we adjust for inflation. So what I’m trying to say is that the fathers of Confederation are all drunk in that lovely photo where they’re all sitting in a row in Charlottetown.
On September 11, 2001, hundreds of planes were rerouted and turned away from New York airspace. One of the prime landing sites for airborne flights was the tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland, whose population of 1300 welcomed, housed, fed, and entertained over 7000 stranded passengers from across the world for five days. A steel beam from the World Trade Centre sent to Gander in commemoration is the only part of the remains housed outside of the United States of America.
During the Second World War, Canada gave asylum to Dutch royals. Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands was pregnant when she fled the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, anxious about her new child being born outside of the country, and thus losing her right to the Dutch throne. A suite on the maternity floor of the Ottawa Civic Hospital was thus declared international territory, to keep Princess Margriet royal. As a thank-you after the war, Princess Juliana donated 100 000 tulip bulbs to Canada— asking only that a few be planted on Hospital grounds. Not sure what to do with the other thousands of bulbs, the federal government and city of Ottawa decided to host a tulip festival, which is still an annual tradition to this day.
