Being able to justify spending a couple of thousand dollars a year on a summer vacation may just be one of the most convincing reasons to spawn child (it is at least one of the top ten). When you don’t have kids, it is too easy to put off summer holidays because you have to build a fence, clean out the basement, or get drunk night after night on Krista’s deck. When you do have kids, you are obligated to teach them about their surroundings and show them the world.
Or at least as much of Canada as possible. Which is why I want to claim my friend Lesley’s childhood tradition for my own by spending Canada Day with the kids in the capital city of a new province every year. Helping Boh and his future siblings discover their country in this way is appealing if only for the hilarious stories they’ll be able to tell their friends someday. Like Lesley’s story about her family pulling up to Regina’s Pioneer Village while spending la fête du Canada in Saskatchewan, expecting some kind of historic site on par with the Legislative Building or the Diefenbaker homestead but instead finding…an old folks’ home (and not a particularly nice one either).
After hearing how Lesley spent her summers, I was left with only two questions: Which province would I choose for my family’s inaugural July 1st holiday? And, Who was the brainiac in charge of putting a retirement community on Regina’s map for tourists?
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7 sweet nothing:
It looks like Ottawa wins for Boh's first Canada Day. I would like to suggest Halifax for the next one.
Grandma
when's canada day? i really have no idea. i mean, the USA's indipendance-day-type-holiday is easy to remember. because we call it "the fourth of july." i guess we couldn't think of anything original.
Dear Matt,
It's today.
Grandma
So cute. Can we adopt him?
Dear Kimusan,
I think we have.
Grandma
happy canada day!
Having lived through this tradition, I can offer a few tidbits of info that you may choose to ignore:
1) Your kid(s) will hit an age where everyone else is going to Club Med or some such other place that seems so terribly much cooler than spending 2 weeks confined to a van driving from historical site to historical site. Ignore them.
2) The amount of stuff they remember will be directly proportional to their age. So, my memories of Canada day in Vancouver are really limited (I think I was about 7 on that trip), but I can remember things in pretty vivid detail about Saskatchewan (age: 16). For example, impressions of Newfoundland Canada day: cold, early (sun goes up on Signal Hill at some ungodly hour), and my sister throwing up to the extent that some kindly NFLD cops loaded the entire Taylor family in the back of a squadcar to get us down the hill). That's about it. Good ol' Regina, however, is worth about 25 or so awesome stories that I still have in my head. Like the way my brother insisted on picking up every bleached bone we found while driving around the praries and loading them into the white Dodge Caravan rental van until my dad snapped and forced him to jetison all but the coolest skull he had found. Location of bone dump: parking lot of Double Happiness chinese restaurant (mmmmm). Can you imagine the horror of the next diners to use that spot?!
3) If you can, stay in B&Bs - they are cheaper, and you get to meet local families. Just be prepared to drive away if things get dicey, e.g. the time my dad told us to wait with the van running when we pulled up to a house with used toilets as flower planters on the front lawn (also the great Sask trip). I don't know what happened to him in that house, but he looked pretty pale when he emerged and pulled the van away from the curb in a big hurry.
Anyway, overall, it was a really awesome concept. Take lots of pictures (make sure you get one of you in front of the Dildo post office in NFLD!) DO IT!
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