Oh, Canada: Here’s at Least One Vote, and You’ll Need It

Now that the United States of America has elected a new fearless leader, perhaps you are not terribly pleased with the way it turned out. Maybe your favorite candidate lost. Maybe you are so skeptical about how our country will cope with this other chief in command, you are one of those jokers who has been going around making threats, serious or otherwise, that you are thinking about moving to Canada.

Well, go on. Move there.

Canada needs you. Canada needs some new blood, and fast. Canada is our neighbor, so we should get right up there and donate our time and services. You may be just the man or woman Canada needs.

Maybe you can fight. Canada needs a new prizefighter. The best one it had, Donny Lalonde, took it on the chin--and the chest, and the eye--from America’s Sugar Ray Leonard before a large crowd in Nevada Monday night. It wasn’t really a bad performance for the Canadian. He finished second.

Or, maybe you can run. Canada needs a new sprinter. The best one it had, Ben Johnson, can’t run for the Canadians anymore. He has been suspended for 2 years from sanctioned competition after disgracing himself in South Korea, where his gold medal in the 100-meter dash turned out to be a commercial for a better life through chemistry. America’s Carl Lewis ended up with the gold, that lucky rascal.

Or, maybe you can skate. Canada needs a new figure skater. The best one it had, Brian Orser, was good, but not good enough to beat Brian Boitano of the United States at the Winter Olympics last February in Calgary. The hosts thought their Brian would be the winner, but Boitano skated figure 8s, and Orser only skated figure 7s.

Or, maybe you can play hockey. Canada needs a new hockey player. The best one it had, Wayne Gretzky, now plies his trade in California, the Great White South. In fact, the best two hockey players in the world, Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, now make their livings in Los Angeles and Pittsburgh, respectively, while poor old Canada, where hockey is the national pastime, is stuck with some Canucks and Dale Hawerchuk.

What has Canada been able to win in 1988?

The Stanley Cup and women’s synchronized swimming.

That’s it.

Look, I have never felt sorry for a whole country before, but don’t these poor people need our help? Can’t we send them a couple of our spare superstars, the way we send foreign aid to other less fortunate nations? I mean, we don’t need both Magic Johnson and James Worthy, do we? We mustn’t be greedy pigs.

Canadians usually go out of their way to accommodate us. Most speak English. They let us drive right into their country without showing passports or ID. All we have to do is tell somebody in a glass booth where we’re from, where we’re going, and then deny that the trunk of our car is full of automatic weapons, and we’re in. They let us pass. Canada is a nice place to visit. Maybe we should live there.

Canada was even nice enough to take up our national pastime, baseball. (Did we take up curling? No.) Toronto and Montreal made it to the major leagues, then relaxed and enjoyed themselves and refused to disturb us during the World Series. The Blue Jays and Expos haven’t been to one yet. Imagine how lousy we would feel if no United States team could make it to the World Series.

The only requirement Canadian professionals have made is that we listen to two national anthems before every Can-American event. This is a small price to pay, seeing as how Canada’s anthem is a lovely, stirring tune, while ours is the most annoying music in the world, with the possible exception of the fight song from Notre Dame.

Canada doesn’t ask much of us. It just wants to finish first once in a while. It hasn’t won many wars, remember. Think of what a spot we all would be in if Canada and Mexico ever got into a war against one another. They’d be lobbing bombs right over us, assuming either one of them has bombs.

It doesn’t seem fair that Canadians can’t finish first more often. Elizabeth Manley out-skated Katarina Witt in the Olympic figure skating final, but still ended up with the silver, not the gold. One of the few Canadians to win an Olympic gold this year was that Waldo woman who put a clothespin on her nose in South Korea and danced underwater.

I am not sure why Canada’s athletes have been having so much rotten luck in 1988. Nothing much has gone right. The only way Edmonton could keep the Stanley Cup was to have somebody sneakily douse all the lights at Boston Garden one night, forcing the series to move back to the Oilers’ home ice. Canadians will try anything to win something.

It is going to be a long, hard winter for them. They are not going to win the National Basketball Assn. championship, or the Rose Bowl, or the Super Bowl. No tennis players are emerging from Canada to challenge Steffi Graf. Without Gretzky, Canada’s most successful team, the Oilers, now have to rely on Jimmy Carson, who was born in--oh, the shame of it all--Michigan.

Can’t we do something for this poor country? Can’t we permit the prime minister to annex Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Washington for 5 years or so, at least until Canada gets back on its feet?

Come on, let’s do it. Let’s help Canada win something. We are all North Americans, after all, so let’s aid our allies. As they give us their tired, their poor, their weak, let’s give them our energetic, our rich, our strong. Let’s give them some of our surplus baseball players and boxers. Let’s give them some of our horses and golfers. Let’s loan out Gretzky, on weekends.

We should all be more generous. Then we can say: Thanks to us, Canada is working, the United way.