Happy Canada Day

Living in China for three months was obviously a cool experience for a variety of reasons. One of them was I looked like everyone else pretty much--minus my toque and bike helmet.

But I felt like I was missing something--it wasn't homesickness--and I couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't until I flew back and was chilling in Vancouver for our Calgary flight. I saw an Indian-Canadian couple. The woman was dressed in a sari and the man had a brightly-coloured turban. When I saw them, that's when it clicked. I missed seeing the faces of Canadians.

It's something Douglas Coupland wrote in his first Souvenir of Canada. He went to Scotland to a little town where pratically anyone could have been his relative which he found creepy.

"And this is the point where being Canadian really hits home, because what you want, and what you're missing, is the variety of people you see in Canada... I know we're all supposed to love being multicultural and all of that, and we all know how that works and how to play the game and talk the talk--but to crave it and feel deprived without it is another sensation altogether. It's one of those things that lumps your throat and makes you realize that things will probably work out in the end."

And then we watched hockey playoffs and drank beer.

So, happy Canada Day. I'm extremely glad my parents decided to move to Canada.