Yesterday was Canada Day, so just for fun I’m going to ‘speak Canadian’:

Canada Day is one of our favourite times to celebrate!  We had a nice hot day yesterday, so we could finally take off our tuques¹ and kick back in the shade with some Freezies², which was a nice change after the long winter.

Contrary to popular belief we don’t actually live in igloos year-round, but if the hydro³ goes off in the winter we’re hooped⁴.  All we can do then is huddle in our houses and hope for a chinook⁵.  So we love summer!

And Canada Day is a great excuse to break out the hooch⁶ of your choice, whether it’s a mickey⁷ of screech⁸ , a forty-pounder⁹ of ta-kill-ya¹⁰, or a two-four¹¹ of beer.  But we don’t want to look like a bunch of hosers¹² lying around in our gitch¹³ collecting pogey¹⁴ and building our Molson muscles¹⁵, so most of us settle for a poverty pack¹⁶ when we’re celebrating.  And that saves us a hangover as well as some loonies¹⁷ and toonies¹⁸, so it’s a win-win.

No celebration is complete without food, and the unhealthier it is, the better it tastes!  Whether it’s burgers or Eggs Benny, your Canada Day fare can always be improved by adding peameal bacon¹⁹.  And if you’re really looking for a way to harden your arteries, nothing fills the bill like poutine²⁰.  Donairs²¹ are a good choice if you’d like to spice things up a bit, but dieters could eat fiddleheads²² instead if the season is right.

Let’s not forget dessert!  Canada Day is a great time to break out the gooey and delicious Nanaimo bars²³.  And speaking of sweet treats, be careful if you get a loaded beavertail²⁴ – it’s hard to eat them tidily, and if the toppings fall off onto your Arborite²⁵, it’s into the garburator²⁶ with them… and that’s just sad.

There are always lots of Canada Day celebrations to attend, but our favourite is the fireworks.  We don’t go very often because we don’t like fighting the crowds, but we felt like keeners²⁷ this year so we decided to go.  We thought we might be able to deke²⁸ into a parkade²⁹ and walk to where we could see them, but that didn’t work out.  When we discovered we’d have to go to a golf course and fight the crowds after all, we bailed at the last minute and went to bed instead.

Guess we’re just getting old, eh³⁰?

 

1. Tuque – a knitted cap (called a watch cap in other places).
2. Freezie – a brightly coloured frozen treat in a clear plastic sleeve.
3. Hydro – everybody else calls this ‘electricity’ or ‘power’.
4. Hooped – screwed.
5. Chinook – a warm dry wind.
6. Hooch (also hootch) – booze.
7. Mickey – a 375 ml bottle of liquor, often conveniently curved to fit in a pocket.
8. Screech – Traditionally, cheap, high-alcohol booze from Newfoundland, often moonshine.  Now also a brand name for rum.
9. Forty-pounder – a 40 ounce bottle of liquor
10. Ta-kill-ya – tequila
11. Two-four – a 24-pack of beer.
12. Hoser – a drunken oaf, but the term isn’t too derogatory – it’s kind of like calling somebody a goofball.
13. Gitch (also gotch or gonch) – underwear of any kind, men’s or women’s. (Where I grew up, gitch was women’s underwear and gotch or gonch was men’s).
14. Pogey – unemployment benefits.
15. Molson muscle – beer belly.
16. Poverty pack – a six-pack of beer.
17. Loonie – a one-dollar coin.
18. Toonie – a two-dollar coin.
19. Peameal bacon (Also back bacon or Canadian bacon) – cured boneless pork loin, originally rolled in ground yellow peas, but now rolled in cornmeal, though the name ‘peameal’ has stuck.
20. Poutine – french fries sprinkled with curds of new cheese and covered with hot gravy-like sauce.
21. Donair – spiced meat wrapped in a pita with lettuce, tomato, onion, and sauce (I like sweet sauce best, yum!).
22. Fiddleheads – baby ferns.
23. Nanaimo bar – a chocolatey dessert square with vanilla filling (traditional), but there are lots of other flavoured variations.
24. Beavertails – a deep-fried pastry topped with various forms of yumminess.
25. Arborite – a brand name for plastic laminate. The name is often used instead of the words ‘plastic laminate’, like ‘Formica’.
26. Garburator – a garbage-disposal unit that fits in the sink drain and grinds food finely enough to be washed down the drain.
27. Keener – someone who is overly eager. Can also be a derogatory term meaning ‘suck-up’, depending on the usage.
28. Deke – dodge or make a sharp turn. Also ‘deke out’ – to fake or feint successfully: “I deked him out”.
29. Parkade – parking garage.
30. Eh – the quintessential Canadian interjection. Turns a statement into a rhetorical question that assumes the other person agrees.

How many of these Canadianisms did you recognize?  What oddball words do you use in your neck of the woods?

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Woohoo!  I’ve finished the final edits for Book 8:  Spy Now, Pay Later, and it’s off to final proofreading!  I’ll let you know as soon as there’s a release date on the horizon, but for now I’ll just say “Coming VERY SOON”. 😀