For Wilshire Baptist Church
“You guys have a game tonight, right?” “Yes.” “Gonna be cold and snowy out there.” “Yes.” “Good luck.” “Thanks.”
The Wilshire Adventurers shared a hotel in Calgary recently with the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League who were in town for a Saturday night game against the local Stampeders. We saw them on the elevator and in the lobby, and LeAnn and I sat at a table next to four of them at a little breakfast joint down the street. Nothing fancy, just good hearty food for tourists, locals and professional football players.
Two of the guys were wearing their numbers and I looked them up later. Both were native Canadians, in their 20s, and apparently willing to play without the celebrity — or the incomes — of their NFL brothers to the south. Nobody bothered them as they ate, and a little more research revealed the average salary for CFL players is $80,000 compared to $2.1 million in the NFL.
I know I’m generalizing but “less is OK” seems to be the mindset in Canada. An unscientific sampling while on vacation shows that Canadians are content, and that creates a friendliness, civility and hospitality that seems lacking in much of the United States today. Their football players are low ley and cordial as our brief conversation showed, but I’ve long been impressed by Canadians who have made their fame in the United States but haven’t lost their humility and humanity. I’m thinking Peter Jennings, Michael J. Fox, Gordon Lightfoot, Alex Trebek, Mike Myers, Celine Dion, Christopher Plummer, Ryan Gosling, others.
Compare that to U.S. celebrities who announce they will move to Canada if an election doesn’t go their way. I find it disrespectful and laughable. On the one hand, their whiney, cut-and-run attitude is so petty in a country where so many people have sacrificed for their right to whine. And on the other hand, the people who make these threats to leave clearly don’t belong in a country as nice as Canada.
Canada is the second largest country on the planet but its population of 37 million is less than California’s 39 million and not much greater than Texas’ 28 million. I don’t know if it’s the expanse of their land or the extreme winter cold but Canadians seem less inclined to pick fights and more prone to get along. The exception being hockey, of course.
Even their exit signs are friendlier. Instead of our red and white signs that practically scream “EXIT,” their signs say nothing at all. Just a green stick figure running through a white portal in a green wall, as if to say, “Go ahead and run outside now.” Instead of leaving some place, it looks more like going out to some place – probably the beautiful outdoors.
I’ve been to Canada three times now — twice to the eastern province of Quebec in the 1980s and now to Alberta in the west. Canada wasn’t then and is not now a utopia. Their history mirrors much of ours, and a scan of current events shows they struggle as we do with a wide range of issues: opioid addiction, uneven economy, environmental unrest over energy production, rising property costs, taxes, imperfect government solutions. What seems to be different is the attitude of the people.
I’m not throwing my homeland under the bus. It didn’t take me 24 hours back in North Texas to appreciate the best of what has always been my home. LeAnn and I walked the Katy Trail on Sunday afternoon, and while a different experience from hiking up Tunnel Mountain in Banff a few days earlier, it was enjoyable and special in its own way. And I know that in a tourist town like Banff, servers in restaurants and clerks in shops tend to be on their best behavior. Their livelihoods depend upon it.
Even so, I think we have much to learn from our neighbors to the north about civility, contentment, hospitality. Even if it’s a false front, exposure to it at least has me thinking more about these things. Coming back with that in my head — and some great pictures and memories — are the only souvenirs I brought home and all I really need.
My only disappointment in the trip to Canada was that they didn’t stamp our passports when we walked through customs. No maple leaf, no polar bear, not even a red ink box with the date and place. It was as if they were saying, “Oh, we’re just Canada. No big deal, eh?”