"Crotches kill."

A Canadian ad advising drivers not to text while driving.

"It’s pretty racy for a Government of Alberta ad, but sex does sell and it did get people’s attention," Edmonton radio personality Rick Lee tells CTV News. "It’s good to see the Government of Alberta is taking the step to connect with younger listeners, and listeners in general, and taking the racy approach is a good way to do it I think."

Oh, Canada.

"We were in this town in northern Manitoba where polar bears literally will walk down Main Street."

"There are polar bears in this town. People will leave their cars and houses unlocked, and it's perfectly good form just to duck into any open door you can find when there's a polar bear chasing you."

"When the British evacuated New York City in 1783, they took many Loyalist refugees to Nova Scotia..."

"... while other Loyalists went to southwestern Quebec. So many Loyalists arrived on the shores of the St. John River that a separate colony — New Brunswick — was created in 1784..."

... followed in 1791 by the division of Quebec into the largely French-speaking Lower Canada (French Canada) along the St. Lawrence River and Gaspé Peninsula and an anglophone Loyalist Upper Canada, with its capital settled by 1796 in York, in present-day Toronto. After 1790 most of the new settlers were American farmers searching for new lands; although generally favorable to republicanism, they were relatively non-political and stayed neutral in the War of 1812....

"[English Canada] inherited, not the benefits, but the bitterness of the Revolution. It got no shining scriptures out of it. It got little release of energy and no new horizons of the spirit were opened up. It had been a calamity, pure and simple. And to take the place of the internal fire that was urging Americans westward across the continent there was only melancholy contemplation of things as they might have been and dingy reflection of that ineffably glorious world across the stormy Atlantic. English Canada started its life with as powerful a nostalgic shove backward into the past as the Conquest had given to French Canada: two little peoples officially devoted to counter-revolution, to lost causes, to the tawdry ideals of a society of men and masters, not to the self-reliant freedom alongside of them."

Today's "History of" country is Canada.

200 years ago today, who won the War of 1812?

We like to think we did, but...

[F]or some Canadians, the war is a seminal conflict and its commemoration an important event. Richard Merritt remembers being fed cookies and tales of Canadian heroics in 1812 by "elderly aunts" in Niagara-on-the-Lake, next to Fort George....

Presentation boards inside a former Fort George barrack aim to tell the history from all perspectives. But as he read of America's "overwhelming" numerical advantage and its "shameful retreat" from Fort George, Jim Auker, from Elkhart, Ind., thought: "There's a dig." The presentation's conclusion: "The United States did not succeed in conquering Canada or achieve the 'final expulsion of England from the American continent'."

"A man who beheaded and cannibalized a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada..."

"... won his bid to leave the grounds of the mental hospital where he is being kept, a criminal review board ruled Thursday."

The board said the passes should only be granted if Li's treatment team believes his condition is stable and that it would be "appropriate and safe for him to leave the locked ward." He will have to be escorted at all times by a staff member and a security officer.

The crime occurred only 4 years ago.

There's a human rights complaint against Earls Albino Rhino beer.

"Ikponwosa (I.K.) Ero of Vancouver has alleged to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal that the name singles out people like her who suffer from albinism, the absence of pigment from the skin, hair and eyes."

It's a medical condition, not a taste treat, Ero argues.

"You go into a restaurant and someone says, 'Can I get a palsy? Give me a palsy,'" she said. "And what it stands for is a cerebral palsy cocktail. I don't think that would fly well at all with anybody with cerebral palsy, or their families, who have to live with the condition.

"So how does it work, in [the case of albinism] that you can market food with a medical condition?"

And how does it work, that you go from believing a product is poorly named to believing human rights are violated

Ero, who was born in Nigeria, said in her complaint that in Africa ablinos [sic] are often targeted for ritualistic murder.... The threat of persecution was one of the reasons she and her family fled to Canada when she was a teenager.

You came to Canada for liberty and you became an agent of repression. But that's your idea of liberty, controlling others.

That reminds me, at the Supreme Court oral argument yesterday, the Solicitor General ended his woeful week by talking about freedom: With all the new compulsions and coercions of Obamacare, "millions of people with chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease... will be unshackled from the disabilities that those diseases put on them and have the opportunity to enjoy the blessings of liberty."

In the words of Bob Zimmerman:

Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me
“How good, how good does it feel to be free?”
And I answer them most mysteriously
“Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?”

In the words of the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy — who will decide the Obamacare case singlehandedly, as the pundits tell it, but who wrote this along with Justices O'Connor and Souter:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

Raise a glass of Earls Albino Rhino to liberty!

"Canada will be a pariah globally if it goes through with this."

Says Green Party Leader Elizabeth May about this "very damaging act of sabotage" that "will reverberate around the world."

"Joe Kapp and Angelo Mosca get into a fight on stage at the 2011 CFL Alumni Legends Luncheon in Vancouver."

"It appears there is still some Bad blood between these two after a controversial hit on the field nearly 48 years ago."

Who starts it? Kapp, who hands Mosca flowers, or Mosca, who replies "Stick it up your ass"? Kapp, who re-offers the flowers, right in the face, or Mosca, who clobbers him? I blame Kapp, because those are insultingly scraggly flowers.

Did you know the Appalachian Trail continues up into Canada?

I didn't. But then I get all my information about the Appalachian Trial from Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods," which I've listened to as an audiobook 100s of times. (I fall asleep listening to audiobooks, and this is one of my favorites.) But here's Nina, hiking the Canadian section of the AT.

We had wondered why the label for this stretch of the IAT is "difficult." How could it be, when the elevations aren't so steep. Now we know.

LOL. Read the whole thing.

Rioting...

... in Canada.

"We're here, we're sluts, get used to it."

With "SlutWalking, the old anti-rape protests acquire a new angle... after a cop at a 10-person meeting at Osgoode Hall Law School said: "I've been told I'm not supposed to say this – however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised."

The cop has already "grovelled profusely," by the way.

It gets your attention, but then the question is, do the women — and men — in the protest dress sluttily?

Some women attended the protest wearing jeans and T-shirts, while others took the mission of reclaiming the word "slut" – one of the stated objectives of the movement – more literally and turned out in overtly provocative fishnets and stilettos.

Kind of a dilemma, isn't it? Getting women to dress like sluts and all come out to a protest where it's socially acceptable acceptable to gawk and take photographs?

I wonder who, really, is promoting these protests. Perhaps a lot of different people with various mixed motives. "SlutWalking" a catchy title, but there so much that can go wrong, including divisiveness among women. How do the jeans-and-T-shirts women react to the woman who are seizing the occasion — like it's Halloween — to parade about in "slutty" clothes? 

"The Liberals, the governing party for most of Canada’s history, have been relegated to a third-place rump..."

Michael Barone, on Canada's election, which took place yesterday.

What seems to have happened is that the Conservatives have picked up enough seats, particularly in Toronto and in the 905 area code belt around Toronto, to win an absolute majority....
The New Democrats surged to second place, largely by replacing the Bloc Quebecois in the vast majority of Quebec seats; they will be the official opposition party...

What this looks like is the emergence of a two-party politics in what had been a four-party dominion. Conservatives have a solid majority and the left-leaning, statist New Democrats are the relatively weak opposition...

After the 2008 election I noted that Canada’s large metro areas were very different politically, with different parties competitive and/or dominant in each one in what was a four-party system. Now in what looks like a two-party system, they’re more alike.....

"[A]ny male at any time will be permitted in girls’ bathrooms, showers and change rooms as long as they have an ‘innate feeling’ of being female..."

That's what opponents say about Bill C-389 would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to forbid discrimination on the basis of "gender identity" or "gender expression."

The bill probably won't pass, but here's a column favoring it. Excerpt:

Society takes for granted that there are two distinct sexes, with two corresponding ways of expressing gender identity. And we have concocted a range of stereotypes to reinforce the supposed chasms of difference between men and women, boys and girls.
Despite the fact that biologists such as Brown University professor Anne Fausto-Sterling have demonstrated that “nature” itself yields not two distinct sexes but as many as five in a small but still significant number of cases, we still think male or female is something constant and unchanging. Sex is not only something viewed as uncomplicated and self-evident, but masculinity and femininity are tied to one’s birth-assigned sex.

Transsexual and transgendered individuals expose the shortcomings of our narrow categories. Because they trouble this vision of male and female, they have been “socially erased,” to borrow a term from Concordia Professor Viviane Namaste...

As faculty members teaching in the sexual studies minor program at Carleton University, we are not surprised by the comments offered by Charles McVety, president of the Canada Christian College in Toronto in The Globe. [see blog post title, above.] Mr. McVety’s use of the language of pedophilia, and other forms of sexual predation, criminal opportunism and violence within female-specific spaces serves as a perfect example of the pathologization, criminalization and fear-mongering that continues to mark the lives of those within the trans communities.

"Edmonton's Gold Medal Hockey Pee-O-Meter."

Things found in the sidebar of a Canadian website while looking for other things.

What I was looking for was that quote about poutine.

Eh. The whole quote isn't even there. It's here:

It was them criticizing me as a person, and that was something that frankly pissed me off. I’ve heard worse in bathrooms about me.... If I had the chance to sit down with them over a poutine, I think we'd all be, like, lovely people together.

How I learned to stop worrying and...

... love the global warming.

(Via Instapundit.)

There's a reason why you don't hear much talk on this subject. I'm tempted to say the reason is people don't really believe global warming is happening. But leave that to the side.

The reason is that when [IF!] global warming sets in, there will be winners and losers, and those who predict that they will win understand the value of circumspection and restraint. It's best for the Russians and the Canadians to keep quiet about the coming riches and pleasures. Don't prematurely rouse the future's losers. Global warming is a growling lamb. 

Go ahead. Argue with me. I'm ready for the malign blog war.

ADDED:  For the purposes of this discussion, assume global warming will occur.

"How am I going to celebrate? I’m going to spank some ass."

How would you celebrate a court decision finding a right to practice prostitution?

"In a city that is known for its exotic dancing and for being progressive and edgy..."

"... how sad that a woman would be banned from using her own body in a political protest."

"I'd also like to know whether Paul really believes in a conspiracy among the U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments..."

"... to turn North America into a 'borderless, mass continent' bisected by a 10-lane superhighway. Because that's what he said in 2008. 'It's a real thing,' he said of the imaginary threat to U.S. sovereignty, 'and when you talk about it, the thing you just have to be aware of is that if you talk about it like it's a conspiracy, they'll paint you as a nut.' Very little paint is needed."

Wow, the Canadians are really helping Ann Coulter with her PR!

"This has never, ever, ever happened before — even at the stupidest American university. . . . Since I’ve arrived in Canada, I’ve been denounced on the floor of Parliament — which, by the way, is on my bucket list — my posters have been banned, I’ve been accused of committing a crime in a speech that I have not yet given, I was banned by the student council. So welcome to Canada!"

Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant testify about the completely out-of-control pursuit of hate speech in Canada.

I won't attempt to summarize. Listen to the testimony before Parliament's Justice and Human Rights Committee. What has gone on in Canada is truly revolting. The procedural abuses are astounding, and to think that it was all done for a goal that is itself illegitimate — crushing offensive speech.

ADDED: Steyn:

Why is this relevant to Americans? Because the superficial fluffily benign language of multiculturalism that comes so naturally to our rulers provides a lot of cover for the shriveling of free speech....

As Canadians have discovered, liberty is lost very quietly and quickly. And trying to get it back is slow and painful — particularly at a time when artists, universities, publishers, and others who congratulate themselves incessantly on their truth-telling courage find increasingly pre-emptive self-censorship the better part of valor.