go canada

Sometimes it's not easy being Canadian.

It's not easy being Canadian when you hear Terry Jacks singing, "Seasons in the Sun," for example.

I know it couldn't have been easy being Canadian when beaver hats fell out of fashion and our only national industry died.

And it sure must have been hard to be Canadian before there actually was a Canada, and the best you could be was "British North American" which must have sounded gay even then.

But the hardest time to be Canadian has got to be during the Summer Olympics.

I went to the paper today, hoping SOMEONE had won a medal of SOME color (yes, I know, "colour" in Canadian, but WIN A FRICKIN' MEDAL CANADA, AND THEN WE'LL TALK). What I discovered, under the headline, "What Canada did Tuesday," was that Christine Girard who finished "four kgs out of the bronze medal" in the Women's 63 kg was a STAR.

She'll be able to go back to the village and lord it all over the FIFTH-place men's slalom kayak dude, the SEVENTH-placed synchronized diving duo from Montreal, and the NINTH-placed 'eventing' team. I don't even know what 'eventing' is and I'm pissed.

But even these guys can feel superior to the one-person dinghy man, who is currently sitting pretty at 16th overall after the second of 10 races; the one-person dinghy woman, who is currently 24th, and the two-person dinghy team who have had four races and are now - be still my proud Canadian heart - TWENTY-EIGHTH.

I would like to go and give the whole team a pep talk. "DUDES!" I'd begin, "The ITALIANS have NINE MEDALS."

And that's where I'd end.

I did a little research (I googled "Canada Olympics Suck") and it seems Canada has a Summer Olympics STRATEGY. It's called the "Road to Excellence" campaign and it's the summer equivalent of the winter "Own the Podium" program (my prediction? the only way Canada is going to OWN a podium is if it buys one at IKEA).

The catch, however, is that the "Road to Excellence" heads directly to London, 2012, bypassing Beijing 2008 completely.