#OttawaStrong

I have a lot of emotions going through my head right now.  Today was a frightening and devastating day for Canada.  What we know as a peaceful and safe country, all of a sudden became a pretty scary place.

In case you don't know, today a gunman walked up to our National War Memorial in Ottawa and shot a soldier point blank.  He killed a young, 24 year old man, left a small child without a father, and left a country in fear.  And I guess that's what he wanted, and I hate that he succeeded.  

{via}

A gunman also entered our parliament buildings and shot a security guard, walked through the halls right past where our members of parliament were meeting before he was shot and killed.

The scary thing is how little we know about the situation.  We don't know if it was the same gunman, they don't know if there were 2 or 3 of them and how many may still be out there.  We don't know why they did this, if they were working as individuals or as part of a larger group.  

Things like this just don't happen in Canada.  People with guns don't walk up to our most treasured Canadian monuments and kill people.  When watching TV today and seeing all the cops walking around Ottawa with rifles and driving these big SWOT vehicles, I was surprised that they actually even had access to those things.  (I know I shouldn't be surprised by this, but how often do they really need to use those.)  We have Mounties, not FBI and CIA.  We thought that things like this didn't happen in Canada, and unfortunately we were wrong.

It scares me that a Canadian citizen would kill a soldier at our war memorial.  I can't understand how somebody can hate this country so much to disrespect it in such a way. 

So today my thoughts are with the soldier's family, my family members who live in Ottawa, and Canada as a whole as we try to make sense of why this happened.  

{via}

10 Things I Love About Canada

As today is Canada day, I wanted to focus on why I love this country that I live in!

1. The weather changes.  Yes I hate winter.  But I really appreciate all of the other seasons when they get here because of it!  Plus, having the same weather all of the time would get boring, wouldn't it?

2. We're polite, eh?  Canadians are super polite.  It's annoying sometimes and yet we really appreciate it.  This may be the only country where you run into somebody and then they apologize to you.

3. We're tiny.  There are only about 33 million of us in this country and for our land size, that's really not very many.  

4. We're good at hockey.  Now I'm not a huge hockey fan, but I'm still pretty proud of how awesome we are at this game!

5. This is a country of opportunities.  You can be who you want and do what you want. 

6.  We brought the world Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds.  

7. Tim Hortons.  We love coffee and Donuts and love calling this chain our own.

8. We speak both French and English.  OK maybe saying we is an exageration.  A lot of us don't speak both languages.  But I love that we have two official languages.  It's a part of our history and what makes us Canadian.  And that French province brought us Poutine.  

9.   Medicare.  Sure my tax dollars pay for it, but when I go to the doctor I don't have to get out my credit card.  And that's awesome.

10.  This country is beautiful!  I haven't travelled through it nearly enough.  Good thing I have the rest of my life to check it out!

Gold Medal Game

On Sunday, Canada played against Sweden in the Olympic Gold Medal Game.  It started at 7am but that didn't stop us!  We had a party anyways!

Even the dog was cheering on Canada!

To be honest, I'm not a hockey lover.  (So un-Canadian of me!)  But I can enjoy the patriotism and the coming together of friends and family that hockey can bring, so of course I was there!

To be honest again, I didn't watch a lot of the game...and I missed all of the goals.  That's typical for me though, I swear I'm better luck when I'm not paying attention.

We had so much food...

And we won!  3-0.  But if the Women's gold medal game taught us anything, it was to not get too confident that we were going to win.  Anything can happen!  
 

The moment we won

We had a bunch of family there and a few friends and it was nice to be with people for this important event in Canadian history!

And just like that the Olympics are over.  Although not on top of the medal count, Canada did come in 3rd place (when counting by number of golds) or 4th place if you want to go by over all medals.  But for this little country with a population of 35 million people I think that's pretty impressive!  (You know what's more impressive, Norway came in second and have a population of 5 million people, wow!)  I love the olympics because they bring not only the entire country together, but the whole world.  

But the Olympics are about more than just medals.  We had some amazing stories come out of them that show who our Canadians really are and remind us of why we love our country.  

Oh well, at least now I can maybe get some stuff done on weekends again.

The Most Wonderful Day of the (every 4) Year(s)!

Guess what day it is!  No it's not hump daaaaaay, it's Olympic Day!

Today is the day that the Olympic games officially kick off.  But I'm going to be honest because technically some of the events started yesterday and I was already totally enthralled in them.  I kept hitting refresh on my browser to be updated on the most recent figure skating and women's moguls scores!

I don't know what it is about the winter olympics, but I love pretty much everything about them.  The winter olympics are definitely Canada's olympics, Vancouver proved that, and I'm hoping that we do just as well this time.

My most significant memory of the Vancouver games is Alex Bilodeau winning the first ever gold medal on Canadian soil.

{via}

I had never watched moguls before, but my sister was visiting me at school and I'm pretty sure it was on a Friday night.  We didn't know that Canada has amazing moguls skiiers so it was really a great experience to watch it all unfold.  I've been hooked ever since.  So I'm super excited to actually watch women's moguls in real time on Saturday.  (Instead of having to tape everything while I'm at work and knowing the results before I watch it.)

I'm also very excited to watch Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir as they go for the gold again in ice dance.  This year Meryl Davis and Charlie White from the states are favoured to win, but this is the olympics, anything can happen!

{via)

But the winter olympics also give you an opportunity to watch sports that you normally wouldn't.  Bobsled, luge, skeleton, snowboard cross, ski jumping.  I hope to watch it all, and I hope that my country does amazing as I feel like the olympics are our time to shine.

And although I may not actually watch most of the hockey games, I'm really rooting for both of our teams to win the gold again!

So for the next 17 days in my spare time, you'll know where to find me.
 

Thank you Canada

I'm worried about what other people are thinking about my country these days.  

First we have this winner, who continues to get publicity.

{via}

The other night he got into one of his drunken stupors again.  Apparently as he wasn't working at the time, it's ok.  Well in my opinion as the mayor of one of the biggest cities in the world, your drunken stupors should be few and far between.  And since when is being in a drunken stupor an excuse for doing whatever you want, including smoking crack?  

I would like to add a disclaimer that he's not my mayor.  

Then we have this gem.

{via}

Born and raised about an hour from where I live.  How proud we are.  In case you didn't know, the other night Justin got an impaired charge in Miami.  He's not even old enough to drink in the states!  I don't understand celebrities and impaired charges.  You are rich!  You probably own your own limo!

What happened Justin?  Oh right, too much money, too quickly, too young.  The best thing that he could do right now is take a break and come home to Stratford.  But he won't.  He will wait until his life is completely destroyed first.  We've seen it before and we will see it again.

But please people, don't judge Canada on those two winners alone.  Lots of amazing people come from this country of mine!  So please people, when you are judging Canada judge us on this:

{via}

Yes that's much better.

Spelling Lesson

Yesterday, I was writing a paper for my course and I couldn't for the life of me remember whether in Canada we spell it analyze or analyse.  (FYI, it can be either.)  So I came across this website that lists British, Canadian and American spelling of words, and there were some on there that I didn't even realize were different!

The obvious ones are things like colour (color), labour (labor) and all thouse other ou words. but did you know that aging can actually be spelled as ageing?  Here are some other fun ones:

• In England the actual spelling of airplane is aeroplane
• Canadian's and American's spell it artifact, but in England it's artefact
• Calibre in Canada is caliber in the US
• Centre in Canada is center in the US (I knew about this one and always spell it as centre, but how confusing is that for kids, I remember thinking that it was a dumb way to spell it!)
• We say lasagna, England says lasagne
• Canadians wear pyjamas, but Americans wear pajamas
• Apparently in England a tire is known as a tyre
• The appropriate spelling in Canada is grey, but in the US it's gray (but I spell it however I feel on that day!)
• Dependant in Canada is Dependent in the States

Do any of these surprise you?

 

And this is just because it's hilarious and it's hump day...