Oh Canada--- it's great to finally see you!- welcome

Yes, you have finally come aboard Canada. I would love to know from which part you are reading my blogs. A very good friend of mine hails from one of the beautiful islands in the area between Vancouver Island and Vancouver. If I ever get rich because you are all hitting on the adverts in my blog, I am going to surprise him and make him take me with him to visit that wonderful area of Canada and then onto the vastness between the West and east. I reckon a rail trip would do the trick, but I now damn well that I would want to get off and do heaps of side trips eh”   Hehehe—I think we both use that expressions eh, but with a different inflection.

I don’t think Doug (yes I have said his name and he will probably ring me and tell me off) knows how much I actually listen to him when he talks about his beloved Canada, especially BC. I love his stories about his Island and his family. I love to hear the down to earth descriptions of the winters and the garden he had there. I know he misses his homeland very much. He is a good Kiwi now but you can’t take the Canada out of him. We are lucky to have him.

 I think that Canada and NZ have a great deal in common. We both have big neighbours who sometimes treat us in a condescending way—maybe a bit like a know-it-all brother who thinks he knows best. You can relate to that eh? I don’t think I have to spell it our further, except to say that we both need our ‘brother for all sorts of reasons and if truth be known--- we are so bloody alike in some ways. Let’s celebrate the difference.

You for example don’t have the crap surrounding the gun laws. Look at the sad state the USA continually faces re their out-dated and dangerous love affair with guns. I am pretty sure that I’m on safe ground if I say that NZ and Canada see guns primarily as a means of hunting, not killing people, although of course we both have loonies out there who if they get their hands on a gun and ----hey presto--- same result. I wish they would take a big breath and enter into a nation-wide debate about where to go from here.

I see Canada as ‘big’ in every sense of the word. Your mountains, lakes, travelling distances, climatic extremes are all huge. I see your heats as big, so much like NZers. We may be far from each other; separated by the mighty Pacific Ocean, but our ties are close. Our First nation people are very similar, maybe not in language, but certainly in the way history has treated them. I know that both nations are trying to redress this and all that this process entails.

So Canada, give me some feedback—any—negative, positive but have a dialogue with me.

 Cheers
      neilcolemanauthor.blogspot.com