Canada's Top 10
I’m a fan of Canada. It’s my second favorite country. That’s why I waxed poetic about the greatest hamburger of all being in Canada.
So today, on Canada day, let me share with you the 10 greatest things Canadian.
Toronto: Of all the “world cities”, Toronto is one of my favorites. It’s a large, diverse city. There are tons of food options. There are tons of museums, including one of my favorites the Royal Ontario. There are fantastic food options. The Hockey Hall of Fame. And fabulous local brews. There are some drawbacks, sure. The traffic is notorious. The Blue Jays home yard, Rogers Center, is terrible and is home to the worst hot dog I have ever eaten. But I very much enjoy visiting Toronto, which is why I’ve gone three times.
Hockey: No, hockey is not my favorite sport. Heck, hockey isn’t even my favorite Canadian sport. But it is one of Canada’s greatest exports, and potentially its most diffuse. Hockey is now played in many northern climes around the world, and the greatest of these players come to the NHL, itself a Canadian institution that has taken over North America.
Even if this is a story about Canada, I’m still sharing the last minute of the Miracle on Ice.
Curling: No, this is Canada’s greatest sport. Every four years, Americans get enamored with it too during the Winter Olympics. There was so much interest after the 2018 Games that NBC Sports started airing “Curling Night in America.” But curling is fantastic because it’s one of those sports where you don’t have to look like an athlete to be an athlete. It looks like anybody can walk off the street and learn how to curl. And that’s its beauty. It is not a game of speed, or strength as much as it is a game of skill. Physics and geometry are just as important as athletic skill, which makes the game as cerebral as it is physical. And how Canadian is in that in curling, the tradition is that the winners buy the drinks, not the losers?
Québec City: Québec City, particularly downtown, is a timewarp out of the North American and back to Europe. I had always heard this before traveling there and I can assure you, it’s all true. When you visit Vieux-Québec, which is built both at the top and at the bottom of a large promontory, it looks like you are visiting a riverside city in France. Shops, narrow cobblestone streets, the Cathedral, and city hall sharing a square. Plus great historical sites like the city walls, La Citadelle, and the Hôtel du Parlement add to the old world vibe. It is gorgeous, it is beautiful. It is nothing like Montréal, which is fine but has largely modernized and lost a lot of charm. Plus, the people in Québec City are friendly as heck, particularly to an American tourist who doesn’t speak a lick of French trying vainly to ask for something in French and not look like a total goof about it.
Vancouver: This though, is my favorite Canadian city. Vancouver is such a wildly diverse city, with so many great different locations across the city. The food is fantastic, the historic Granville Market is incredible, and Stanley Park is the greatest park in the world (look it up). Vancouver is probably the most beautiful major city in North America, and you don’t have to get too far out of town to find places even more beautiful, like Cypress Provincial Park or Horseshoe Bay. If you ever get the chance to go to Vancouver and it’s surrounding environs, go.
Comedians: I don’t think people realize how many great comedians and comedic are Canadian. Mike Myers. Dan Aykroyd. John Candy. Rick Moranis. Michael Cera. Colin Mochrie. Ryan Stiles. Norm Macdonald. And that’s just a sampling of a very large list of funny people. And that’s to say nothing of The Second City, which launched dozens of career and basically fed talent to Saturday Night Live.
The world we be a less funny place if Canada didn’t make such funny comedic minds.
John Diefenbaker: Most of you probably haven’t heard of John Diefenbaker, who’s among my favorite politicians. Dief the Chief was something else, and I mean that in the best possible way. Diefenbaker was a perennial candidate for office in Saskatchewan for 15 years before finally getting elected as a Conservative candidate to the Hosue of Commons. He spent years there being an ineffective member, before being elected Conservative Party leader on his third try and ultimately became Prime Minister for almost six years. Diefenbaker is complicated; he was persistent, irascible, an underdog, a patriot, a self-promoter. But he is fascinating in the way he was a proud Canadian who stood up for his beliefs, stuck with them, and didn’t quit when things got rough.
I recommend you spend the time to read Rogue Tory, a biography written about Diefenbaker 15 years after his passing.
Professional Wrestlers: Professional wrestling would be nothing without Canadians. I mean that. Take a look at a partial list of great Canadian. Stu Hart. Bret Hart. Owen Hart. Chris Jericho. Kenny Omega. Trish Stratus. Natalya Neidhart. Roddy Piper. Pat Patterson. Steve Corino. Lance Storm. Edge. Christian. Killer Kowalski. Gene Kiniski. Ivan Koloff. Kevin Owens. Sami Zayn. Kyle O’Reilly. Rick Martel. Vampiro. Iron Mike Sharpe. That’s a very very partial list. Heck, even The Rock is Canadian (his dad Rocky Johnson was born in Nova Scotia).
But the influence of Canadian wrestling goes even further. Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling invented the ladder match. Stu Harts’s famous Dungeon trained tons of Canadian wrestlers, plus non-Canadians like Bad News Brown, Ken Shamrock, The British Bulldogs, Billy Graham, Jushin Thunder Liger, Masahiro Chono, Mark Henry and others. Killer Kowalski trained wrestlers like Triple H, Kofi Kingston, Aron Stevens, and Tomasso Ciampa.
It’s hard to imagine what wrestling would look like without this influx of great Canadians.
Tim Horton’s: Tim Horton’s is a Canadian institution. Full stop. Founded by hockey player Tim Horton, his eponymous donut company eventually took over Canada. It’s why Canada has more donut shops per capita than any other nation on earth. Yes, Tim Hortons is a chain. No, the donuts are not the best donuts in Canada (that would be Suzy Q Donuts in Ottawa, by the way, which are freaking fantastic). But Tim Horton’s are far and away the best chain store donuts around. I particularly enjoy the Canadian Maple and the Oreo. Plus their Timbits (donut holes) have fantastic flavors like strawberry, cherry, birthday cake, apple fritter, and blueberry (my favorite). My wife speaks highly of the coffee (I don’t drink that stuff). If you have a Tim Hortons near you, you don’t need to worry about ever visiting a Dunkin’. Compared to Timmy’s, Dunkin’ is trash.
Sadly, the closest publicly accessible full-service Tim Hortons to me is 220 miles away. But no matter what, I make sure that I visit a Tim’s on every trip to Canada.
Poutine: Poutine is not the greatest Canadian dish (though I’m guessing that certain Québécois would be mad I called it Canadian at all). It is the greatest dish. Period.
Basic poutine consists of three things:
French fries
Cheese curds
Brown gravy
There are other variations of it, but that is your basic poutine. Like all great things, there are many claims as to who invented poutine and where. But there is no mistaking the fact that poutine is the perfect greasy spoon or bar food. Wikipedia has the best definition of how people (read: snobs) viewed poutine:
Poutine was largely perceived as an unsophisticated backwoods creation or unhealthy junk food to be consumed after a night of drinking.
We don’t know where poutine was invented for sure or why, but we do know that it was perfected at La Banquise in Montréal. A 24-hour poutinerie praised by no less than Anthony Bourdain, La Banquise serves over 30 different kinds of poutine. Once you get past basic poutine, you can add all sorts of toppings and cheeses to it. I mean, look at this menu in all its glory. The first time I went to Montréal, this was on my list of must-visit places. I wasn’t disappointed.
Poutine is available all across the Province of Québec, and across most of Canada. Most fast food chains have poutine on their menu, whether they be Canadian like Harvey’s, to Canadian outposts of the Golden Arches. There’s even a poutine based fast food chain. There’s a fantastic poutinerie in Calgary. You can even get good poutine in the States, such as the poutots at the Dog and Pony in Bar Harbor, ME or the duck fat fries poutine at Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, MD.
But poutine, it remains essential Canadian and, honestly, it is the most Canadian of all possible things. Poutine is Canada’s greatest creation.
