Oh, Canada. We share a history.
ADB-170701#261
Canada, eh?
The country was only one-hundred-and-five when I was born. And if I’m lucky (and stop eating potato chips¹), it’ll turn two-hundred when I’m ninety-five.
I was ten when Terry Fox² died, and twenty-seven when we added Nunavut³ as our third territory.
I was three when Environment Canada starting measuring the temperature in Cs instead of Fs.⁴
I was twenty-three when Quebec had a referendum⁵ to separate from the rest of the country, and only eighteen during the Oka Crisis⁶ when the Mohawk people protested the building of a golf course on disputed land.
I was still in the womb (thirty-three-week-old fetus) when Prime Minister Trudeau⁷ (Justin) was born, and twenty-eight when Prime Minister Trudeau⁸ (Pierre Elliott) died.
When I was twelve, I was enamoured (and humoured) by the federal Rhinoceros Party of Canada⁹ which promised to repeal the law of gravity, and whose slogan was, “We promise to keep none of our promises”.
For a few days I was still seventeen when The Northern Pikes released their biggest hit, She Ain’t Pretty (She Just Looks That Way)¹⁰ and twenty when the Kelowna-formed band The Grapes of Wrath¹¹ broke up (the first time).
I was thirty-five when the very first iPhone was released in America¹², beginning the death spiral of RIM, the greatest Canadian tech stock since Nortel (which went bankrupt¹³ at the tail end of me being thirty-six). Research in Motion (RIM), the creators of Blackberry, made their last physical smart phone¹⁴ when I was forty-five.
I was still twenty-six when Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman called in the Canadian military¹⁵ to dig the city out of a snow storm, and only twenty-five when “The Flood of the Century” hit Winnipeg’s Red River¹⁶, which rose over twelve metres (almost 40 feet).
Can you guess how old I am? (Hint: I’m still younger than Canada.)
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Dutch_Foods
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_(book)
- https://www.infoplease.com/well-have-nunavut
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Quebec-referendum-of-1995
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis
- http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/justin-trudeau/
- http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/pierre-elliott-trudeau/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_Party_of_Canada_(1963%E2%80%9393)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUT4sS0lsss
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath_(band)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_iPhone
- http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/key-dates-in-nortel-networks-history-1.802117
- https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/04/blackberrys-last-internally-designed-phone-comes-out-at-the-end-of-may/
- http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-calls-in-army-to-battle-storm-1.182326
- http://globalnews.ca/news/1438743/the-5-worst-floods-in-canadian-history/
All-Day Breakfast is a daily reflection on creativity and the human condition in the modern age. This is issue #261 of 555.
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