July 1: My 10 favourite Canadians
In no particular order:
10. Mario Lemieux.
Had this cat stayed healthy, he would have broken some of Gretzky's records. Perhaps the greatest pure goal scorer the NHL has ever seen, Lemieux was an integral part of Team Canada's 2002 gold medal win over the United States at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
I don't think he got a point in that game but he played an integral role in helping Paul Kariya get Canada's first goal. Chris Pronger passed the puck to Lemieux who, sensing Kariya was behind him, widened his legs and allowed the puck to go between his skates. Kariya picked it up and scored and that's when Canada knew - not believed, but knew - that Lemieux was in the zone and gold was coming to the Great White North.
9. WO Mitchell
Hey, I'm a westerner so I'm not going to say Canada's greatest literary talent is Atwood or Laurence or Alice Munro. Montgomery can shove Prince Edward Island up her skirt and Mr. Leacock is just too dated. Nope, WO Mitchell gets my nod as Canada's greatest writer. Yes, plenty of his novels seized on that familiar Canadian trope of abject poverty, but Who Has Seen the Wind is a great coming of age story and is as much a literary masterpiece as Huckleberry Finn.
There. I said it.
8. Amanda Marshall
Canada's best singer. Even if she does look like a tree.
7. Lynn Johnston
She's Canada's reply to Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes and any other comic strip you've ever loved. Most comic strips are boring and forgettable; few of them are possessed by the light of genius and actually make us happy to be alive.
Lynn Johnston's For Better or For Worse gave us characters we cared about and - here's something new - grew up with. Unlike Charlie Brown and Calvin, Michael Patterson stopped being a little kid. Like everyone else, he became a teenager and then a young man and then he got married and had kids of his own. There was nothing unusual about the Pattersons - they could pass for any middle class Canadian family - and that's what made them so enduring. (That one's for you, Enid-Raye.)
6. Preston Manning
Preston Manning couldn't speak French and he was an absolutely terrible public speaker, but his vision of a stronger western Canada was a breath of fresh air in the early 90s.
In the buildup to the 1995 referendum, Manning got a lot of criticism for "trying to tear Canada apart." Actually, it was Manning who willing to give Quebec the respect the belle provence believed it had lost. When Manning questioned then Prime Minister Jean Chretien if he would respect a 50 per cent plus one vote to secede, Chretien thundered back that he would not and would do everything he could to keep the country united.
Bad play, I thought. Manning loved democracy and he insisted that the people of Quebec were smart enough to wield it. It was Chretien's arrogance that solidified the Oui vote and brought Canada to the brink of a brand new dawn.
5. Terry Fox
In 1981, my elementary school had a Terry Fox Day. I had no idea who he was, what cancer was, or why we needed to raise money to fight cancer.
We watched a short film and that was probably the best educational day I had in elementary school. Seeing this dude walk across the country, on one leg, made me feel like a heel. How many of us complained when we had to walk one block just to go to the store?
We did a fundraiser and we gave some money to the Canadian Cancer Society and I remember one kid in my class asking the teacher if that meant cancer was cured now.
The teacher looked sad and said: "Not yet, but soon maybe."
There was a pause and then the kid said: "Will it be before my grandma dies?"
I'll let you get a tissue.
4. Doug Henning
I know a poke fun at Doug Henning sometimes but I can't deny that he's probably the greatest Canadian magician of all time. He opened television up to the magic market - which was monopolized by David Copperfield for one-and-a-half decades - and totally changed the public's image of what a magician looks like. He abandoned the tuxedo and the white gloves of the classical Broadway prestidigator and instead dressed in the bell bottomed jeans and rainbow colours of the Flower Child generation.
Yes he was goofy and yes he had buck teeth but darn it - he was so bloody likable. When Doug Henning did a magic trick, he was not fooling you. He was being amazed WITH you. The genius of Doug Henning was to stop magic from being a spectator sport and turn it into sort of a fuzzy multi-coloured conversation.
3. Leonard Cohen
The reason I write
is to make something
as beautiful as you are
When I’m with you
I want to be the kind of hero
I wanted to be
when I was seven years old
a perfect man
who kills
2. Leslie McFarlane
If I asked you to guess who is the most well-read Canadian author of all time, plenty of you would probably nominate Margaret Atwood.
And I couldn't fault you for that.
But truth be told, the most widely read Canadian author is Leslie McFarlane, whose tales of teenaged adventure and suspense captivated millions of teenagers and pre-teens across North America for several generations.
The names of his books: The Tower Treasure, The Missing Chums, The House on the Cliff, and many more.
Leslie McFarlane was the first writer to write under the nom-de-plume Franklin W. Dixon, author of the Hardy Boys.
1. Jill Hennessy.
SURPRISE!!!
10. Mario Lemieux.
Had this cat stayed healthy, he would have broken some of Gretzky's records. Perhaps the greatest pure goal scorer the NHL has ever seen, Lemieux was an integral part of Team Canada's 2002 gold medal win over the United States at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
I don't think he got a point in that game but he played an integral role in helping Paul Kariya get Canada's first goal. Chris Pronger passed the puck to Lemieux who, sensing Kariya was behind him, widened his legs and allowed the puck to go between his skates. Kariya picked it up and scored and that's when Canada knew - not believed, but knew - that Lemieux was in the zone and gold was coming to the Great White North.
9. WO Mitchell
Hey, I'm a westerner so I'm not going to say Canada's greatest literary talent is Atwood or Laurence or Alice Munro. Montgomery can shove Prince Edward Island up her skirt and Mr. Leacock is just too dated. Nope, WO Mitchell gets my nod as Canada's greatest writer. Yes, plenty of his novels seized on that familiar Canadian trope of abject poverty, but Who Has Seen the Wind is a great coming of age story and is as much a literary masterpiece as Huckleberry Finn.
There. I said it.
8. Amanda Marshall
Canada's best singer. Even if she does look like a tree.
7. Lynn Johnston
She's Canada's reply to Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes and any other comic strip you've ever loved. Most comic strips are boring and forgettable; few of them are possessed by the light of genius and actually make us happy to be alive.
Lynn Johnston's For Better or For Worse gave us characters we cared about and - here's something new - grew up with. Unlike Charlie Brown and Calvin, Michael Patterson stopped being a little kid. Like everyone else, he became a teenager and then a young man and then he got married and had kids of his own. There was nothing unusual about the Pattersons - they could pass for any middle class Canadian family - and that's what made them so enduring. (That one's for you, Enid-Raye.)
6. Preston Manning
Preston Manning couldn't speak French and he was an absolutely terrible public speaker, but his vision of a stronger western Canada was a breath of fresh air in the early 90s.
In the buildup to the 1995 referendum, Manning got a lot of criticism for "trying to tear Canada apart." Actually, it was Manning who willing to give Quebec the respect the belle provence believed it had lost. When Manning questioned then Prime Minister Jean Chretien if he would respect a 50 per cent plus one vote to secede, Chretien thundered back that he would not and would do everything he could to keep the country united.
Bad play, I thought. Manning loved democracy and he insisted that the people of Quebec were smart enough to wield it. It was Chretien's arrogance that solidified the Oui vote and brought Canada to the brink of a brand new dawn.
5. Terry Fox
In 1981, my elementary school had a Terry Fox Day. I had no idea who he was, what cancer was, or why we needed to raise money to fight cancer.
We watched a short film and that was probably the best educational day I had in elementary school. Seeing this dude walk across the country, on one leg, made me feel like a heel. How many of us complained when we had to walk one block just to go to the store?
We did a fundraiser and we gave some money to the Canadian Cancer Society and I remember one kid in my class asking the teacher if that meant cancer was cured now.
The teacher looked sad and said: "Not yet, but soon maybe."
There was a pause and then the kid said: "Will it be before my grandma dies?"
I'll let you get a tissue.
4. Doug Henning
I know a poke fun at Doug Henning sometimes but I can't deny that he's probably the greatest Canadian magician of all time. He opened television up to the magic market - which was monopolized by David Copperfield for one-and-a-half decades - and totally changed the public's image of what a magician looks like. He abandoned the tuxedo and the white gloves of the classical Broadway prestidigator and instead dressed in the bell bottomed jeans and rainbow colours of the Flower Child generation.
Yes he was goofy and yes he had buck teeth but darn it - he was so bloody likable. When Doug Henning did a magic trick, he was not fooling you. He was being amazed WITH you. The genius of Doug Henning was to stop magic from being a spectator sport and turn it into sort of a fuzzy multi-coloured conversation.
3. Leonard Cohen
The reason I write
is to make something
as beautiful as you are
When I’m with you
I want to be the kind of hero
I wanted to be
when I was seven years old
a perfect man
who kills
2. Leslie McFarlane
If I asked you to guess who is the most well-read Canadian author of all time, plenty of you would probably nominate Margaret Atwood.
And I couldn't fault you for that.
But truth be told, the most widely read Canadian author is Leslie McFarlane, whose tales of teenaged adventure and suspense captivated millions of teenagers and pre-teens across North America for several generations.
The names of his books: The Tower Treasure, The Missing Chums, The House on the Cliff, and many more.
Leslie McFarlane was the first writer to write under the nom-de-plume Franklin W. Dixon, author of the Hardy Boys.
1. Jill Hennessy.
SURPRISE!!!
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