Earlier this week, I was elbowing my way through Covent Garden on the way to meet a friend for coffee when I passed by London's Canada Shop. Located just a couple of doors down the street from the Molson-draft-slinging Maple Leaf pub, the Canada Shop is a sad little postage stamp stocked with Twizzlers and boxes of KD. The place is full of all the crap I didn't buy in Canada when I lived there. But walking by last week I did think of something from home I'd like to place on special order: a few good men.
I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to my male compatriots. Over the years, I have done you boys a great disservice. I have failed to appreciate you. Now that I am thousands of kilometres away, I hope you will forgive me. For all the years I rolled my eyes at your Strange Brew references, exploited your car-driving capabilities, sniffed at your ball caps, dismissed the Tragically Hip as a glorified bar band and generally took you all for granted, I am sorry. Well and truly so. In hindsight, I now see the truth: Youse guys is sure great.
During all my time in the nation of my birth, I never fell for a rotter. (I still haven't over here, but there are plenty more of them around.) I attribute this not to the idea that there are no bad Canadian men (patently untrue) but to the fact that I had a great dad -- one who embodies all the virtues of his country (hockey skills, decency, unshakeable sanity) and most of its vices too (a love of beer, tendency to bang on about health-care reform).
It is an acknowledged truth that the constancy of a good father during childhood goes a long way to prevent a girl from letting herself get kicked around by jerkface male sadists later in life -- and I am no exception to this rule.
When the undeniably cute thirtysomething London surgeon pulls up in front of my flat in his zippy little convertible and, instead of mounting the steps to ring the bell, honks the horn, my first thought is "Dad would hate this guy." (Dad, in fact, would race out the door before me, jump into the passenger side and deliver a pithy lecture on McLaren Household Doorbell-Ringing Etiquette, with one menacing Dad-paw placed on the cute surgeon's shoulder.)
Given my stringent Canadian standards, this surgeon doesn't get a second chance. Horn-honking is bad practice in a 16-year-old prom date. Coming from an educated 33-year-old, it's a sure sign of rotterdom. Suddenly I have a sore throat.
Last week, The Spectator, a London weekly, published an article I wrote on the romantic ineptitude of the English male. Since then, I've found myself invited to slag off the chinless wonders on TV, radio and the pages of various newspapers. But while it's true that English suitors leave a lot to be desired, at heart I know the real problem lies with me. Over the years, I've been spoiled silly by Canadian men.
Why do I love thee? Okay, let's count 'em . . .
1. For your superior stature. Maybe it's the benefit of all those Twizzlers and Hawaiian sprinkle doughnuts -- Canadian boys, to my eye, stand head and shoulders above the English competition.
2. For your feminism. Most with-it Canadian guys I know genuinely like women; moreover, they tend to respect us as equals. The same cannot always be said of American men (who are well known to cynically adopt New Man rhetoric in order to get chicks into bed) or English men (who think feminism was a short-lived conspiracy to introduce salads onto pub menus).
3. For your international character. Canadian men come from all over the world -- and you can tell. Even a couple of generations after their relatives landed, the Italians still shrug and look up at the ceiling, the Eastern Europeans still kiss your hand, the Irish still set about getting you as drunk as humanly possible. These men don't assimilate as quickly in Canada because, unlike England or America, there is less of a culture to assimilate into. The result is a delectable international buffet of Canadian manhood.
4. You smell good. Like cedar chips and fresh sausages.
5. You mean what you say. Canadian men are pretty honest. In my experience, they tend to lie only when they feel they have to, rather than all the time, for fun, or just because they feel like it. Better yet, you can generally get the truth out of a Canadian guy just by looking him in the eye and asking him for it. Like most Liberal cabinet ministers, they make bad liars. Unlike most Liberal cabinet ministers, they don't try to pull it off in the first place.
6. You know how to split wood -- and snuggle. In the far north of Canada, when winter begins to approach, single men and women begin pairing up like crazed rabbits. The reason being they need each other to get through the long and lonely winter, and they know it. Hibernating alone is a miserable business. I think some of this winter-induced romance has rubbed off even on urban Canadian men, who instinctively sense the importance of going out to woo when leaves start to turn colour.
7. You remind me of home. Funny how when you go away the first thing you feel nostalgic for is usually the same thing you complained about for years. I spent years in Toronto commiserating with girlfriends over the dearth of good men. How wrong I was. Forgive me, boys.