While I was in Europe, I went to the French Military Museum in Paris and snapped this photo of a Canadian D-Day soldier. Lots of great artifacts in the French Military Museum, as if the French military had a habit of dropping their equipment to be perfectly preserved as artifacts

Regular readers – HI MOM – will notice I haven’t been around in the last couple weeks.

That’s because I was in Europe.

And drunk.

Mea culpa.

Your MapleRag had a post lined up for Halloween all about which hot Canadian politicians to dress up as, but that boat’s sailed. Maybe we’ll save it for next Halloween. Maybe the following joke will still be fresh in 2012: “Dress up as an out-of-work StatsCan census worker, carry around a clipboard, a copy of the newspaper Want Ads and a checklist of how many predictable Lady Gagas/Twilight vampires/Females dressed up based on the formula “sexy”+[any profession]s/Pirates you come across.” Topical!

In any case, having passed our Halloween in godless Europe (where they celebrate a weird, perverted version of Halloween with all of the drinking elements but none of the costumes, or as Europeans call it, “Sunday”) we’ve now come to Remembrance Day, an important holiday for all Canadians which often slips between the cracks after the age of “13 year old forced to recite poem at school assembly” and before the age of “90 year old who killed Nazis for your ungrateful ass.”

To honour this occasion, we really think the best thing we can do is refer you to our post from Remembrance Day last year, honouring Filip Konowal, the most badass soldier to ever suit up for the Canadian military.

If we find a more badass man by November of next year, then maybe we’ll consider an original post.

Page 21:

WHOA WHOA WHOA, who decided this crap? I can think of SOMEONE BETTER.

Overall Note:

So far in this pamphlet, there’s been at least 7 apologies to various mistreated ethnic groups. I mean, I get why they have to put that stuff, but Jesus, how Canadian is that? Our immigration guide – the booklet that’s meant to convey the main message, the main spirit and most bone-basic history of our country, is a bunch of variations on the sentence “In Year X, Canada committed this injustice. We apologized in 200_.” I mean, when you get the guide to Britain do you really think every page in their book is “We committed this colonial atrocity, our bad, chaps”?

We’re such a friggin’ apologetic country.

Sorry for going on a tangent. It won’t happen again.

READ MORE, I guarantee that at the end you’ll learn something new about Canada that new immigrants are already expected to know!

Page 25:

Oh my God what a crock. They’ve taken the volatile, complex issue of Quebec seperation – the idea that you, new immigrant, might be living in a country that could be literally ripped in half like the dreary Balkan hellhole you escaped – and they’ve turned it into a charming quirk. “Oh, by the way, Frenchies wanna separate, how drole! Just one of those zany, unique things that shapes our country!”

Also not mentioned: The FLQ/October Crisis! And trust me, the rest of this guide ain’t exactly skimping on history, you’d think “Terrorist crisis involving the War Measure Act” would make the cut if there’s enough room for profiles of United Empire Loyalists, bronze-medal sprinters and an explanation of Canadian football.

Page 26:

This is one of the biggest lies in this document.

“Yeah, new immigrant! We totally just sit around in Canada, from coast to coast, cuddling up with our loved ones and watching hit shows like Heartland, Robson Arms and Dragon’s Den. If you want to assimilate with your Canadian friends, instead of discussing the trite and bourgeois programs of America, try saying ‘Hey, did you see the Ron James Show last night?’ or ‘Hey bro, wanna borrow my This Is Wonderland DVD set?’ ”

Page 27:

Can we give this Bell shit up? HE WAS SCOTTISH. HE MOVED TO AMERICA. HE VACATIONED IN CANADA. God, lemme just Wikipedia this for you:

Bell was a British subject throughout his early life in Scotland and later in Canada until 1882, when he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1915, he characterized his status as: “I am not one of those hyphenated Americans who claim allegiance to two countries.”

Of the three nationalities you could call him, Canadian would be a distant third. He vacationed here. Imagine if Mexico had claimed an inventor as a national son if the inventor had come upon an idea while on vacation in Cancun. And he’s our number one inventor that we listed!

Fun fact: Bell died of diabetes! He probably wouldn’t have died if he had some insulin, too bad that wasn’t yet invented by 100% Canadian Frederick Banting, who should be in the guide’s #1 spot.

Page 34:

Crap, I didn’t know there’d be a quiz! Good thing you’ve got an authentic Canadian Politics Blogger(tm) on your side!
ANSWER KEY:

a) DUHHH easy it’s the Prime Minist-wait, what, it’s not?

b) Seriously, can we get back to that first question, I thought I was moving to some first-world self-governing nation, not a quaint colonial berg swearing devotion to an unseen old broad whose German family had enough coups and incest to assume the throne

c) The Bollywood dancing guy I saw on TV, WHAT A HUNK

d) Republican

e) Michael Ig… Ig-na-chef… Ig-na-tee-eff… Ig-na-tchyef… Iggy, his name’s Iggy.

f) Again with the Her Majesty’s shit, why does Her Majesty get involved in the name of the opposition but not any other title in this quiz? Classic Liberal favouritism.

g) I mean, I can’t be expected to know the leader of every single minor political party in Canada. Let’s just go with the major ones. Blair T. Longley, Marijuana Party. Liz White, Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party. Francois “Yo” Gourd, Neorhino. Those are all the ones that come to mind.

h) I can’t have an Ottawa MP, I don’t live in Ottawa. Next.

i) …… Canada.

Page 39:

Eww! Boo! Hiss! Habs! STOP GIVING OUR NOBLE IMMIGRANTS GROSS PROPAGANDA.

Page 41:

OH. HELL. YES. This guide’s officially alright by me.

Also Page 41:

What the hell? Sir John A. Macdonald Day? Sir Wilfrid Laurier Day? Ahaha, what?

Well, that’s a good place to finish off – I learned that there are entire holidays I’m completely unaware of. I’m completely inadequate as a citizen. Oh well!

[Source: The Guide]

And a damn fine moustache, too

Let me introduce you to the most badass man in the long, proud history of the Canadian military.

Although he doesn’t show up in many history textbooks, it’s an absolute disgrace that more people aren’t familiar with Filip Konowal. He was fierce, he was proud, he was humble. He’s one of the thousands of nameless Canadians who’ve made the choice to go to a foreign land with a rifle on their back to defend their values, their freedoms and their homeland. Except Filip Konowal wasn’t just a footnote in history. He was a bullet-dodgin’, ass-kickin’, Kraut-bayonettin’ man’s man.

In a culture obsessed with over-the-top acts of machismo, Filip Konowal was the ultimate badass. He was a real-life Rambo, a one-man, invincible killing machine. His manliness makes Maddox’s Alphabet of Manliness look like The Notebook. Without further ado, the life and times of Filip Konowal, Victoria Cross recipient:

Filip Konowal was a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada. He joined the war effort during WWI because, well, he had to – Ukrainians were designated as enemy aliens by the Canadian government, meaning he could have been sent to a wartime concentration camp otherwise (bet they glossed over that fact in Grade 8 History class, huh?) He fought in all the major battles in the war and earned the rank of Corporal, when finally one day during 1917’s Battle of Hill 70, Filip Konowal flipped.

He went into God Mode.

Filip was sick of waiting in the trenches. He was knee-deep in mud and grime, surrounded by death and disease, waiting for his turn to die. If Filip was going out, he was going out in a blaze of glory. If Filip Konowal’s life were a video game, this would be where he unlocked the cheat codes. Actually, most of the stuff Filip Konowal did would be impossible in a war video game.

Day 1

He hopped out of his trenches and just started running. Apparently, his general tried to shoot him because he thought Filip was deserting. Problem was, he was running forwards – towards the German lines. Now, for anyone familiar with the dynamics of World War I trench warfare, this is essentially suicide.  With bullets whizzing by, the crazed Ukrainian makes it across No Man’s Land, finally reaching enemy lines.

And that’s when the Krauts started getting their asses kicked.

In the first crater he encounters, he kills three German soldiers… with his bayonet. He kills another seven soldiers single-handedly. The man’s on an absolute rampage.  He reaches a German machine gun which had been causing chaos for the Canadian lines. He kills the entire machine gun crew.

Oh, he’s not done.

He lifts up the machine gun and carries the whole thing back to Canadian lines.

Having already single-handedly killed over a dozen dirty Huns and carried an entire WWI-era machine gun on his back across No Man’s Land, he wasn’t done. Oh, Filip Konowal was just getting started.

He could have just stayed in his trench, and probably earned himself every award for heroics in the Commonwealth. But he wasn’t nearly done. He was Filip Goddamn Konowal.

Day 2

The next morning, he runs back behind enemy lines. He finds another German machine gun, and yet again, he kills the crew. This time he couldn’t carry the gun back to his lines, so he did the next best thing and destroyed the gun with explosives, saving countless of his own men. In two days of work, he killed at least 16 German soldiers. In the whole war, he killed at least 52. No wonder the Canadian army was the most feared by German generals – we must have seemed like insane, Rambo-esque killing machines.

And then, Filip Konowal’s heroics were over. He was shot in the face by a German sniper.

…

What, did you think he died? Have you read any of this? We’re talking about FILIP KONOWAL, the biggest badass in Canadian military history. Of course he lived! Getting shot in the face by a sniper rifle? Pshh, only a flesh wound!

Post-war

His work done, he was forced to return to  Canada. He received his Victoria Cross personally from King George, who said that Filip’s exploits were among the most heroic he’d seen in the history of the British commonwealth. Despite all of this, he was an incredibly humble man. He took the only job he could get in the Depression, working as a janitor on Parliament Hill.

That’s right – perhaps Canada’s greatest war hero, reduced to emptying the wastebaskets of the bureaucrats who’d sent him to war in the first place.  When asked about it, he said “I mopped up overseas with a rifle, and here I must mop up with a mop”.

He became an honoured member of the Royal Canadian Legion. When he was filling out his Legion paperwork and was asked to state why he was discharged, he charmingly wrote “War was finish.” Finally, Filip Konowal still had a bit of fight left in him – in 1939 when World War II broke out he tried to enlist to fight overseas again, despite being far too old.

He died in 1959.

I hope everyone had a chance to honour all of Canada’s veterans and current soldiers in their own ways today. May we never forget.

[Cobbled together from Wikipedia and this excellent page]