Canada

The Snows of April


When I first moved here I encountered many natives who were concerned that I might have difficulty dealing with the harsh Canadian winters. Frigid temps. Elk high mounds of snow. Dark depressing months that saw less sunlight than the toes of a very fat man. But I did rather well. I ventured out when Canadians were cowering in their homes. I didn’t don long-johns until November and had them off a month or more ago. I come from the Midwest people, not California. As the snow began to melt and the weather warmed, I was ready for my first Canadian winter to melt into spring, a clear victory for me.

The weekend before last was a beatific example of spring. Warming winds and sun. Jacket doffing, capri and short weather. This last Saturday it started to snow. A lot. This morning it stopped. There is now more snow on the ground than accumulated all winter long. 

I survived winter quite well, thank you very much. Winter is nothing here in Canada. It is the spring that is a bitch in heels. She will take some getting used to.

A Kinky Mountie Update


I recently wrote about Rob calling the “Mounties” down on our guitar hero whitetrash renter neighbor. In the course of telling the story I mentioned that my late father-in-law spent time in the RCMP aka Mounties pulling ceremonial duty in Ottawa in front of the Parliament building where he was often improperly propositioned by American girls with uniform fetishes. One of my most prolific commenters seized the opportunity to make a punny joke (good on her) after I mentioned that Mounties are not “mounted” anymore. Well, the Sunday Edmonton Journal just so happened to carry this article on Mounties using their uniforms to secure, uh, dates. 

Two officers were disciplined for appearing on dating sites wearing the red serge/traditional uniform. The first was seeking a LTR with a transexual or transgendered person, preferrably Thai. The second put ads on, among other places, Plenty of Fish and was simply looking for nookie during his shift with anyone up for it. The RCMP maintains that it is wrong for officers to appear on dating sights for whatever purpose wearing the serge. The first man is still on the job while the second was forced to resign.

So there you have it. Mounties do it in their red serge. Rob’s dad was not exaggerating its power.

It’s Not a Dudley DoRight Experience


The Mounties came to tame our noisy low-rent neighbors last weekend. My husband wrote about the incident in more detail on his blog, but the short version is that our next door neighbor is a Guitar Hero junkie who likes to fire up around ten or eleven at night probably after he is finished watching the hockey games or CBC’s line-up. I guess it could be worse. He could be one of those who then switches over to the soft porn shows on the Montreal or Toronto stations (yes, Canadians are very European after hours). I guess we should be grateful for a loud and lousy air guitarist neighbor instead of a quiet pervert, right? 

Anyway, Rob called the RCMP, which is Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Mounties to the rest of the world. One of our loyal readers, Girl, made the comment saying, “Man, I want to live in Canada, just so I can call the Mounties on noisy neighbors! The Mounties!” And I can understand why she would. I am an American too, and my only experience with the Mounties was the cartoon Dudley DoRight.

 He was in the Rocky and Bullwinkle line up on Saturday mornings. Just a take off of the silent film area kind of like Penelope Pitstop. There was a villian, Snidely Whiplash and a love interest, Nell, who creepily in retrospect seemed to have a thing for Dudley’s horse, Horse. Dudley wore the old time traditional outfit of the Mounted Police, the jodpurs with the red jacket and the cool looking hat and riding boots. I thought it was a very smart outfit, and I am apparently not alone in my female admiration for it. Rob’s father was a Mountie back in the 1950’s and wore the uniform when he was standing guard duty at the Parliament building in Ottawa. He told tales of American girls who would proposition him while he was on duty. Many of them wanted to take him off into the trees and have their way with a “man in a Mountie uniform”, but he would keep them waiting until he got off duty (which if you knew the tales of Rob’s dad that I knew you’d be marveling at his self-restraint). I don’t know if he wore the uniform to met any of these girls, but American girls, in late father-in-law’s opinion, were pretty forward as my husband would more delicately put it.

The RCMP of today do not wear the garb of old. They aren’t mounted anymore either unless it is for a parade or other ceremonial duty. They are fairly typical of law enforcement officers anywhere, in my opinion. I have had only one encounter myself when I went to get my fingerprints taken for my immigration application. It wasn’t a Dudley DoRight experience.