In honour of Canada Day, we’ve decided to combine the Internet’s two most powerful tools in enticing people to click their computer mouse in bored curiosity — lists and manipulative headlines. You will literally spit out your cold-pressed organic juice with the liquid magically forming an exclamation mark and question mark after you read K&K’s “Top 11 Craziest Canadian Facts that You Need to Know RIGHT NOW.”
1. The name Canada is derived from Kanata, the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word for “Keeper of the chewy nougat filled chocolate bar.”
2. Canadians’ global reputation for being overly polite is the leading cause of celibacy among Canadians travelling abroad, followed by wearing socks and sandals and having a Rush song as your ringtone.
3. Mitsou’s “Bye Bye Mon Cowboy” is the greatest Canadian song since Crowbar’s “Oh What a Feeling.”
4. If you get pregnant while listening to Anne Murray’s “Snowbird,” there is a 20 per cent chance your child will be born with no eyes.
5. The signature red leather pants worn by Loverboy frontman Mike Reno were originally made of sealskin dyed in Tabasco sauce. However, the material chafed the slats of Reno’s thighs so badly after a particularly humid show in Tacoma that he had to spend two nights in the hospital. Fortunately for us, during Reno’s convalescence, he wrote the lyrics to “The Kid is Hot Tonight,” “Hot Girls in Love” and a power ballad to be sung with Heart’s Ann Wilson called “Baby, Put Some of that Soothing Talcum Powder on My Burning Loins,” which later became “Almost Paradise” and appeared on the Footloose soundtrack.
6. In addition to costumes, Mr. Dressup’s “tickle trunk” contained first aid supplies, canned goods, bottled water, and a small arsenal of weapons in anticipation of the Apocalypse, which Ernie Coombs and the show’s producers repeatedly warned viewers of via subliminal messages that would have been clear to any lip reader who paid attention to what Finnegan was silently yapping about.
7. Canada’s motto “A Mari Usque ad Mare” means “From sea to sea… but we would seriously not hold it against you if you got rid of everything from Calgary to Sudbury, cuz that is one lonnnnng and boring drive.”
8. While Thunderbay is the armpit of Canada, and Prince George is the armpit of B.C., Nanaimo is known at the “taint” of Vancouver Island.
9. Bootsauce was really the name of a popular Canadian band in the 1990s and they really named one of their albums Sleeping Bootie.
10. CBC’s kids show The Friendly Giant got its name after test audiences responded poorly to such titles as The Cuddly Giant, If the Flute’s a Rockin’ Don’t Come a Knockin’, Hey Kids… Please Enter My Castle and A Man in Medieval Clothes Who Loves Woodwind Instruments and Hangs Out with a Giraffe and a Rooster.
11. Canada’s top exports are crude oil, woodchuck ghosts, narwhal jerky, bar bands with chlamydia, old mix tapes labeled “rock” on one side and “roll” on the other, former Randy River managers and a misguided sense of moral superiority.
