Re: Best regional garden books

**"Dan Clost" d*@sympatico.ca**

>
> Canada: define

Sorry- couldn't resist this:

It is a sovereign nation north of most of those parts of the U.S.A.you 
mentioned.  As a people, we are usually an easy-going lot, wandering about 
under a sky that seems to be uniformly coloured, with a vaguely defined 
raison-d'etre of being nice to each other.
We have a lot of stuff you want, including trees, fossil fuels, fresh water 
and retail customers.
We have a Queen whom we adore, but are not quite sure what her real function 
is except to offer a toast and sing an anthem at official mess dinners. We 
have a Governor General- sort of a representative who actually doesn't have 
to be from Canada. We have a parliamentary system in which one of the main 
parties is dedicated to secession from the parent country. In the rest of 
the world that would be listed under 'treason'. When one of the founding 
parties of this country was voted out of power (completely unimaginable but 
it happened) we simply changed the name of the remaining party with the 
closest ideology to that of the ousted group and carried on. Not necessarily 
how the rest of the world does things but it works for us.
We could try and define the various areas of the country by official 
province and territory but that's just looking at a map. We tend to live in 
regions and pockets. For example, we could start by explaining the 
difference between the Maritime provinces and the Atlantic provinces- 
although the new Confederation Bridge might alter the understanding a titch.
We could define ourselves by cultural icons you might recognise- Paul Anka, 
Anne Murray, Shania Twain and Celine Dion- but we don't really consider 
Celine Canadian. Big Joe Mufferaw was someone Paul Bunyan looked up to. Ben 
Cartwright was Canadian and that says it all.
Gosh darn it there are so many ways to define ourselves- all different and 
all accurate- that I really couldn't take more of this list's time. So I'll 
just say you'll have to come and visit with us for awhile.
Start with Newfoundland and Labrador. Like the ad says, "It is as far away 
from Disneyland as you can get."

G'day, eh
Dan
> 

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