CANADA QUOTES II

quotations about Canada

Oh Canada
You're a tree among towers
Just starting to climb
Please don't grow too quickly now

DAN HILL

"Canada", Hold On


Canada could have enjoyed:
English government,
French culture,
and American know-how.

Instead it ended up with:
English know-how,
French government,
and American culture.

JOHN ROBERT COLOMBO

attributed, The Bumper Book of Insults


A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.

PIERRE BERTON

attributed, If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?


We have never been a melting pot. The fact is we are more like a tossed salad. We are green, some of us are oily, and there's a little vinegar injected when you get up to Ottawa.

ARNOLD EDINBOROUGH

attributed, If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?


Do I do business with Canadian racketeers? I don't even know what street Canada is on.

AL CAPONE

attributed, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada


If Canada is to survive, it can only survive in mutual respect and in love for one another.

PIERRE TRUDEAU

televised address, November 24, 1976


You're just America-on-ice.

ANDREW O'HAGAN

The Illuminations


Mom talks about moving to Canada as though my father had requested she start wearing fun hats. "Why not try it?" she thought, instead of "This f***ing lunatic wants me to go to a country made of ice and casual racism."

SCAACHI KOUL

One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter


Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples. French-Canadians consumed by self-pity; the descendants of Scots who fled the Duke of Cumberland; Irish, the famine; and Jews, the Black Hundreds. Then there are the peasants from Ukraine, Poland, Italy and Greece, convenient to grow wheat and dig out the ore and swing the hammers and run the restaurants, but otherwise to be kept in their place. Most of us are huddled tight to the border, looking into the candy store window, scared of the Americans on one side and of the bush on the other.

MORDECAI RICHLER

New Criterion, Sep. 2001


As a country that is less than a superpower, Canada cannot rely on its muscle to make itself heard. Our influence comes from a capacity for wisdom, from being a trusted source of information, knowledge, and judgement on some of the most difficult issues facing the world.

BOB RAE

What's Happened to Politics


As always, Canada will now bury its war dead, just as the rest of the world, as always, will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does. It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance.

KEVIN MYERS

The Daily Telegraph


The beaver, which has come to represent Canada as the eagle does the United States and the lion Britain, is a flat-tailed, slow-witted, toothy rodent known to bite off its own testacles or to stand under its own falling trees.

JUNE CALLWOOD

attributed, If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?


Because of the "city upon a hill" sound bite, "A Model of Christian Charity" is one of the formative documents outlining the idea of America. But dig deep into its communitarian ethos and it reads more like an America that might have been, an America fervently devoted to the quaint goals of working together and getting along. Of course, this America does exist. It's called Canada.

SARAH VOWELL

The Wordy Shipmates


Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.

P.J. O'ROURKE

attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes


Rather than a genuine friendship, the skeptics might say, the relationship between the US and Canada is like the classical Greek story of the crocodile and the trochilus ("crocodile bird"). The crocodile opens its mouth to let the little bird pick bits of food from between its teeth, and both benefit. The crocodile resists the urge to try to take a second lunch, because it knows it will need to have its teeth cleaned again tomorrow. But if the bird pecks a little too hard in a sensitive spot, then there will be a loud snap, and one less trochilus on the riverbank.

BRIAN BOW

The Politics of Linkage


The Lord said "Let there be wheat" and Saskatchewan was born.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

My Discovery of America


Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavor -- we're more like celery as a flavor.

MIKE MYERS

attributed, If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?


We should be past tolerance in Canada... In Canada, can we speak of acceptance, openness, friendship, understanding? It is about where we are going and what we are going through every day in our diverse and rich communities... Tolerating someone means accepting their right to exist on the condition that they don't disturb us too, too much.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU

The Guardian, August 23, 2016


Canada, you proved your worth
You got snow peaked mountains tumbling down
You had them from birth
Say it clear, so the world can hear
I swear I never left you
Without shedding a tear

PILOT

"Canada", Morin Heights


You have to know a man awfully well in Canada to know his surname.

JOHN BUCHAN

attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes