Canada Day is upon us. An around-the-clock celebration of what it means to go for the Bronze and surprisingly wind up with Gold. To have two official languages with “fuck” in common. This year, the Big Day itself will be the filling in a long weekend sandwich. The beer will flow as freely as oil from a broken Enbridge pipeline and the fireworks will light up emergency wards from Sooke to Saint John.

And all for what?

For the pride of being second best at a lot of things and first best at a few things that really matter. For having more oil than we know what do with and shipping it abound the world to people who do. For providing the world with some of the funniest people on the planet. Canada is a spawning ground and incubator for comedians. Sadly, the few that chose to stay in the Country run for office and wind up on Parliament Hill, which is sort of our equivalent of Benny Hill.

Most of all, Canada can and should celebrate its craziness on this special day; a unique balance of exercising caution and throwing it to the wind. It’s truly time to fly proudly a flag inspired by a contest and chosen by the economies of one colour over two or three or four.

That’s it. At our best, we’re nuts. We go big or we go home to some of the most inhospitable places on earth. Which brings us to a key aspect of the Canadian character and experience: isolation. Amazing things happen when there’s no one around to fine-tune your idea around dollars rather than desire or to tell you that what you’re working on isn’t really going to be that amazing.

Oh, Canada. From the middle of nowhere to the top of the podium, party on!