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1. You know you're out in the Ontario boondocks, if you cut your front lawn and find a car.
2. Is Vancouver wet? Well, the official city flower is mildew.
3. The best thing that ever came out of Toronto is the train to Thunder Bay.
4. Of Pacific coast weather: Rain let up quick this morning; disappeared faster than a B.C. premier.
5. Don't judge bannock before it's fried. (A loan translation from the Ojibwa language)6. If you can't get laid in Montréal, you're just lazy.
7. Rattlesnakes are so big on the Bruce Peninsula, they don't have rattles; they have little bells that play "Nearer My God to Thee."
8. Been there. Done that. Got that maple-leaf T-shirt.
9. I've seen live bait smarter 'n' him.
10. Vite sur ses patins. Literally 'quick on her skates,' that is, clever in Québec.
11. Hey, pardner, this isn't my first Stampede. (In other words, I'm not naïve. I've been to Calgary twice.)
12. How stupid is he? If you pick him up and put your ear to his ear, you can hear the sea.
13. You can't swim in the Humber River, but you can go through the movements.
14. You are depriving a village of their idiot.
15. La rivière est tellement croche que les poissons ont des pentures. 'The river's so winding, the fish have hinges.'
16. What's the difference between Calgary and yogourt? Yogourt has an active culture.
17. The chances are slim and none, and slim is visiting Alberta.
18. I'm gonna feed you a shut-up sandwich. (A punch in the mouth is on the way)
19. We never went to bed hungry. We stayed up.
20. If God were a cucumber, I'd stick him in your ear.That last curious expression (# 20) is used, oddly enough, by members of various fundamentalist Protestant sects, when a child has overheard naughty or inappropriate language. It would not, I suppose, be worth pointing out to users of the phrase just how phallic and blasphemous a saying it is, or its obvious subtext of child abuse. Nowhere in Holy Writ, not even in the most bizarre crannies of Leviticus, does the Almighty countenance the insertion of vegetables in a child's ear to foster moral integrity. It is shocking to note, as you'll see in my book under the category Children, how many expressions have to do with punishing children. Or is it so shocking, given the multitude of sadists who parade through modern life disguised as Christian parents?
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