O Canada,
Terre de nos aïeux.
Where do I even begin.
Well, I guess a good start would be to admit that I don’t really know your anthem in English. In fact, whenever I attempt to sing it in English, I get confused with the Star Spangled Banner.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a born and raised Canadian. I even sound Canadian – my “outs” are pronounced like “oots” unintentionally.
We’ll just blame this whole confusion over national anthems thing on the fact that I did French immersion from kindergarten to grade 12 and attended a French university for my first year. I also didn’t attend enough hockey games to learn the proper English lyrics to our national anthem. That’s probably the real reason there. For that, I apologize. I will work on pretending to like our unofficial national sport more. (I know! I’m as shocked as you are! I even linked it to a Wikipedia page to make it seem more credible. I see the irony now.)
Despite that minor set-back, which will probably end up with me mouthing along to the national anthem later on today, I’m pretty excited for the fireworks tonight!
For me, Canada Day either means camping or fireworks or both! One of my favourite memories of Canada Day is camping at Abraham Lake in the Alberta Rockies and eating cake with my family and our family friends. I remember being shooed away from eating the strawberry toppings that were fashioned into the Canadian flag on top of a vanilla cake covered with boiled white icing. Though we didn’t have fireworks (mostly due to the forest near the lake), I wasn’t too upset because they were too loud and it made the dogs bark. (I’ve since mostly overcome those fears.)
Abraham Lake, Alberta. The water just came off the melting glacier mountains, which makes swimming a little chilly if you don’t have a wetsuit.
This year will be the opposite. No camping in a 21-foot RV with my family of four- that test of patience will come in a couple of weeks. (Blog post on that later this month!) Instead, I’ll be able to enjoy the fireworks on Lake Ontario where hopefully pet owners won’t want to scare their dogs with loud explosions in the sky that they cannot comprehend.
What are you guys doing this Canada day? I will be taking pretty fireworks photos for all you lovelies on my Instagram! Comment your Canada Day plans below or tweet @thefttourist / post on The Full-Time Tourist wall / Insta-tag me @thefulltimetourist! Full disclosure, I may have made up that last one, but I’ll be sure to include it in my interpretation of the national anthem tonight. It’s from the heart.
