It’s perfectly fine for Canadians to make fun of Canada.
“Canada is the only country founded on the relentless pursuit of the rodent.”
—Preston Manning
“Canada was built on dead beavers.”
—Margaret Atwood
“Canada was my whole world and my whole reality, and now I meet people who’ve never been there, and it’s like, ‘You’ve never been to my whole world?’”
—Carly Rae Jepsen
“I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.”
—Robertson Davies
“Outside Canada I carry the flag. Canadian nationalism isn’t as insidious as American nationalism, though. It’s good natured. It’s all about maple syrup, not war.”
—Feist
“If some countries have too much history, we have too much geography.”
—William Lyon Mackenzie King
“Canada is not a country for the cold of heart or the cold of feet.”
—Pierre Trudeau
“We sing about the North, but live as far south as possible.”
—J.B. McGeachy
“Canada is an interesting place; the rest of the world thinks so, even if Canadians don’t.”
—Terence M. Green
“There are few, if any, Canadian men that have never spelled their name in a snow bank.”
—Douglas Coupland
“A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question, ‘What is a Canadian?’”
—Irving Layton
The first flag in the British Empire was granted to Nova Scotia in 1625 by King Charles I.