A Post Aboot Canada

I almost didn’t write a post for today, since technically I’m on vacation in Canada’s northeast province of Prince Edward Island. However, my loyalty to PLS’s followers knows no bounds, and I decided that I could afford to take some time off from my time off to very briefly give our US readers a sense of what life is like in our neighbor to the north.

First of all, have you seen The Day After Tomorrow? Do you remember the scene where the characters get chased by a moving wall of coldness? That’ll sort of give you a sense of what crossing the US-Canadian border was like. One minute the summer heat was causing sweat to drip down my face, and the next minute that sweat had frozen into an ice mask which had to be removed with a windshield frost-scraper. That was a very painful process.

Speaking of painful processes, the travel here is quite difficult. The roads that criss-cross Canada’s frozen tundra are so encrusted with ice and snow that even our trusty team of sled dogs occasionally become exhausted and have to rest. On those days we have to rely on rented Tauntauns, which are unruly and stubborn animals—in fact, they caused so much trouble on the set of The Empire Strikes Back that they have never been used in films since.*

However, the worst part of Canada’s roads is that they are constantly crowded with the dead and dying victims of the country’s socialized health care system. Of the living, some have been denied care by government bureaucrats; others are on the run, having been sentenced to euthanasia by the Federal Death Panel. (The FDP is fairly unpopular, and is generally cited as the reason for Prime Minister Harper’s low approval ratings.) Many of the ailing vagrants I encountered requested my hand in marriage so that they could become US citizens and escape to America’s free-market system. I remember one particularly poignant encounter in which a Canadian man, his front teeth having been knocked out by an errant hockey puck, looked up at me from beside my Tauntaun and said, “Pleathe take me back with you! Pleathe! Eh?” He then repeated his statement in French, as is legally mandatory here.

I would love to write more about my experiences, but I’m being called to dinner. We’re having a traditional Canadian meal: Circular bacon and Coffee Crisp, served with a warm glass of maple syrup. It’s good food, but it does get a little tiresome after a few days.

See you next week, Yankees!

*Also, George Lucas required several stitches in his left buttock after his unfortunate encounter with a Tauntaun. He later remarked that he prefers computer-generated special effects because “CGI can’t fucking bite you in the ass.”