EDiF2018 - PNW "F" #8 - FRIENDS Canadienne

When I was about 10, my family went to the Seattle Arena to attend a Royal Canadian Military Tattoo. It was the most monumental experience of my young life. Handsome Mounties in scarlet coats on gleaming black horses performing intricate drills, the flash of brilliant colored kilts, the skirl of bagpipes and the pounding of drums. It was electric. I never recovered.
That moment was the beginning of my love for all things Anglo and Canuck. I love the mountains, the trains, the prairies, Toronto and Vancouver. My first great lust was for a handsome BC horse wrangler at a fish camp north of Kamloops (though I survived that experience intact, damn polite Canadians).
So here are just two of the things I love about Canada - the RCMP, and the British Columbia Pipers (who I see a lot in Vancouver). But there’s also Red Rose tea, Mackintosh Caramels, Caramilk Chocolate and Nanaimo Bars to consider. Luckily, all of these have found their way south.
In fact, all my life, in Washington and Michigan, I have enjoyed living next door to Canada. Today it is just 100 miles and 2 hours up the road from me at Blaine, where the gleaming white Peace Arch straddles the border. As the motto on the arch says, we are “children of a common mother”.