Happy Birthday Canada, 148 years young today.

Today is the day where Canadians quietly spread around cool facts about our country. Where we again have a giggle that our country is really ‘the village’ and we are all simply villagers. Kanata is our village. I guess when you spell it with a ‘C’ it makes it a country village.

Canada is a country to be proud of, for the most part. I do have had a few reservations about some of the new laws that are being passed. I wish people were less controlled by the state and had more freedom to do what they like so long as they did not infringe on other peoples rights. On a personal level I was recently shocked to discover that if our Lily has and kids outside of Canada’s boarders they will not be Canadian! More shocking a new law has been passed which says if we get her an Irish Passport she could have her Canadian one revoked if she upset Canada somehow, only people with one passport are safe to make Canada cranky and still be called Canadian.

On a happier note, Canada still is a great nation, the land itself is breathtaking, the people as a whole are kind, I know many folks who don’t have to lock their doors, there is space to just disappear into nature, raw beautiful nature. I love Canada and I am happy to call it my home, it is not ideal but it is perfect in its own way.

Some other little tidbits (not to be confused with Timbits) that make Canada or Kanata special.

– Our flag is longer than most and the only flag the is 2:1 in the world.

– We were the invented basketball.

– We were the first to use wood pulp to make paper.

– There are just short of 35,000,000 people who call Canada home. We are the 8th least densely populated country in the world.

– We are just short of 10,000,000 square kilometres.

– We spell colour with a U.

– We created poutine and other far more useful things like snowmobiles, insulin…

– We use the ‘washroom’ rather than the ‘toilet’ which seems rather crude to us.

– A, B, C, D… Z (zed not zee)

– We drive a truck, not a lorry.

– Eh! Eh? Eh. Eh, Eh 🙂

– We have a loveable large rodent as a mascot for the country, our beloved Beaver.

Whoo hoo Happy Birthday Canada!

Seems even the heavens are celebrating Canada’s birthday. There is a celestial event being called the Star of Bethlehem 2015 in the night sky June 30 and still visible thru July 4th. This star is actually the planets Venus and Jupiter coming into what is called conjunction (aligned in our view) seems they have not been this close (2°) for 2000 years. We missed seeing it last night, not knowing about it and tonight even if Denis and Lily were awake with me, we are sheltered from the view by what I hope are rain clouds.

Sometimes we just have to trust that great things are happening even when we can’t see them.