Well it was Canada Day this past weekend. Everyone here seems to really take advantage of long weekends, and they certainly partied this one up. The street by my apartment actually closes down a few blocks for an all day/night street party which is pretty well attended. They have street performers singing and entertaining the crowds. I'll be updating this post with pictures when I have some pictures on this machine. There is also a big festival which takes place at the heritage site in Winnipeg called "The Forks". The Forks is actually just the place where the two main rivers running through Winnipeg join, and this is of significance because of this was a meeting place for fur traders of old. So the forks is also a family event where they have various different entertainment things going on from concerts to clowns and magicians. This past weekend was also the first weekend that they opened the new skate park there, which apparently is one of the best facilities of its sort in North America.
They also have a fireworks display on Canada day night, which everyone and their dog seemed to come to. I went to that, and it was pretty impressive, I was trying to take photographs of the fireworks, which just wasn't working without a tripod, but it was worth a try none-the-less.As Canada day occured on a Saturday they declared Monday to be a public holiday, which meant a long weekend. In addition, because of the close ties with the US the Tuesday (4th July) was also taken by many businesses as a holiday.
As a note for all those wondering why the title of this post appears to be mispelt - this was intentional. Canadia is the "backformation" of the word Canadian which describes people from Canada. Back formation works for America (American) and Africa (African) - why did Canadia have to be different?!?
2 comments:
Ridiculous that every man & his dog should attend the fireworks- if our dogs were anytrhing to go by,they would HATE the noise - they should take their children instead, and if they can drag them away from the stove, their wives as well.....!
Well, as any school child can tell you, it's because of how Canada was named. Contrary to the popular story that it was a mist-translation of a native word for 'The Village', Canada in our infancy wanted to have a cool Three Letter Acronym like our pals in the USA. Not knowing what to use, we just chucked all the letters in the alphabet into a beaver skin hat and drew out three. Then the presiding official began reading them back.
He said:
"C, eh? N, eh? D, eh?"
CANADA. Done deal.
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