And from the NOT Grumpy Side of the Bunker
The diving around Tobermory. Robert Lepage. The fact that we all dutifully pretend to like Tim Horton’s crappy coffee. The view from Pond Inlet. Leonard Cohen. The acoustics at the Four Seasons Performance Centre. Malajube. The preserved salmon in Terrace, BC. Brian Moore. Having fellow travellers relax overseas when you explain you’re not American. Fall colours seen from Mount McBean at Sagamok. Wide Mouth Mason. Robert Sawyer. The squeaky sound of a hard-frosted snow ridge, changing pitch as you climb it. Labradoreans. Raw, frozen char with soy sauce. The McGarrigles. The breadth of political spectrum represented by our parties, coupled with the relative civility of our discourse. Riding Mountain National Park. Spider Robinson. La Bottine Souriante. Paper money with some decent colour to it. Midnight, midsummer, in a boat on Great Slave Lake. Jean Paul Riopelle. Coming back through Canadian Customs after a long trip and joking with the officials instead of being careful with them. Isuma Productions. Anne Marie MacDonald. Tomson Highway’s plays (and piano playing). Finest Kind. Our two last Governors General. “Ideas” on CBC. Margaret Atwood (sorry, I realize she’s unfashionable). Mendelson Joe. CP hotels. The beautiful drive along the north shore east of Quebec City. George St. in St. John’s (yeah, I know. I’m crass that way.) The Ottawa Busker’s festival. Alan Cumyn. Community meat freezers across Nunavik. Neko Case. The whole idea of APTN. High tea in the gardens at Annapolis Royal. Mack Sennett. Québecois graciously shifting into English once you’ve made your halting attempt to deploy that high school French. The Qu’appelle Valley on a summer evening. Thomas King. Being generally below the global radar. The Legion in Iqaluit, on a good night with the right friends. Corner Gas. Narwhals. The fact that the Rough Trade hit “High School Confidential” was Canadian. The wrecks of the St. Lawrence between Cornwall and Kingston. Denys Arcand. Northern lights over Baker Lake. The Barstool Prophets. The sheer diversity of our various separatist movements. The corned beef hash at the Nisku Inn. Robertsons Davies. Puppets Who Kill. Pang hats. Stanley Park. A national anthem with a range human beings can actually achieve. Grit Laskin guitars. Usually doing the right thing.
Good list, Balbu. I’ll add the Calithumpian Parade and fish tug parade in Port Dover.
I actually do like Tim’s coffee. I imprinted as a “too young to be drinking coffee” yoot. Little Theatres. Both Margarets, and Tim Findlay, and Charles De Lindt. Gay marriage and reproductive rights. Georgian Bay. Comedy.
These two.
The Edmonton Fringe Festival (largest in N. America)
Art Bergman
Inferiority Complexes
Great list. I would add: Bathtub Races, Nanaimo Bars, Coastal Salish art, and buying live crabs from the Native fishermen who stop at the store for coffee on their way home from hauling in their traps.
Tim’s coffee sometimes can be really good as I have experienced, most times it is just OK and occasionally not good at all. I was surprised how consistently good the coffee is at MacDonald’s, There, that is one little survey in one little small town of Bathurst, new Brunswick. (At least here, we did not think the flags at half mast were for Jackson.)
I do not pretend to like Tim Horton’s coffee, and I am not afraid to publicly state that it is among the worst coffee’s I have ever tasted.
I once worked in an garage on Baffin Island where the coffee was so thick that spoons stood upright on their own in it and so strong that the first couple of cups were always reserved as rust remover for heavy equipment brake drums – I would still take a mug of that over a cup of Tims any day of the week.
Tim’s coffee is a cheep blnd. Anything tastes good when you add 18% cream and sugar.
So that’s my problem….. I drink my coffee black and unsweetened so I’m getting what it really tastes like.
yep. That’s how I drink good coffee. Anything else it’s with fat and sugar. I do like their steeped tea though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lMOxuciYQ