Andreatta: My loony Independence Day tradition

Editor's note: This column was originally published on July 4, 2014 under the headline, "My Loony Independence Day Tradition," and republished on July 1, 2017 to coincide with Canada's 150th birthday under hte headline, "Happy Canada Day!" 

How about all those fireworks and parades and barbecues this week? Isn’t Canada Day great?

Don’t pretend you didn’t know it was Canada Day, because nearly everyone who knows I came here from the land of loonies, twonies and Mounties wished me a happy Canada Day on July 1.

Then a few of them proceeded, like they do every year, to ask me what that’s all about and snicker when I tell them what it’s all about after consulting Wikipedia to refresh my memory.

The conversation is an annual tradition that carries right through the Fourth and goes something like this:

“It’s kind of like Independence Day,” I say.

“Canada’s independent?” Insert patronizing tone bordering on jingoism here.

“Of course it is.”

“But the queen’s on all your coins.” Insert patronizing tone bordering on jingoism here, too.

“Yeah, but on the quarter, she’s on the flip side of a moose head, which makes her a moose’s you-know-what,” I reply light-heartedly.

“Aren’t your dollars called something weird?” Insert ... well, you get the drill.

“No, they’re called dollars.”

“No they’re not,” they say, building to their big punchline. “They’re called loonies!”

They can barely contain themselves at this point.

“The currency is the dollar,” I correct them. “They’re just nicknamed loonies because they have a picture of a loon on them. The two-dollar coin is nicknamed the twonie.”

“Why?” they ask seriously, as if the answer weren’t obvious and we hadn’t run through this “Who’s on First?” routine the last five Canada Days.

“Because it rhymes with loonie.”

That usually gets them snorting and reaching for something clever to say before shaking their heads and falling back on, “Canada Day. That’s hilarious.”

This is where I get serious.

“Why’s it hilarious?” I ask.

“It just is.”

“You know, it used to be called Dominion Day,” I say, preparing for my own punchline.

Sometimes even the setup on this one elicits a condescending chortle. “What happened?”

“Dominion was a grocery store chain, so it was kind of like calling the Fourth of July Wegmans Day.”

That’s a joke from comedian Rick Moranis, a Canadian who was too funny to stay in Canada and whose dim-witted, beer-swilling Bob McKenzie character is for many Americans the zenith of all their knowledge of Canada and its people.

But it’s actually true. There was a national supermarket chain called Dominion, and July 1 was Dominion Day. It celebrated the unification of three British colonies on July 1, 1867, into a single country within the British Empire. That would be Canada.

The holiday was renamed Canada Day in 1982 when the British finally gave Canadians permission to change their own laws all by themselves. It was like Canada grew up and got the car keys.

As a kid, I watched all the drama of the bill signing unfold on a TV in the school gym. Queen Elizabeth II was there in her blue pillbox hat right next to the swashbuckling Canadian prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, whose wife partied at Studio 54 and had affairs with Ted Kennedy and Mick Jagger.

It wasn’t Lexington and Concord or anything, but by Canadian standards, it was thrilling.

“That’s it?” they usually ask, followed by a guffaw.

“That’s it,” I tell them. “Not every country was born of revolution, you know.”

“I know,” they say, as if they really did know. Then they add another, “Canada Day. That’s hilarious,” and get back to whatever they were doing before Google told them it was Canada Day.

Independence came slowly to Canada. So slowly, in fact, I’m not even sure it’s actually arrived. Like you, I don’t get why that old bird Liz is still on the other side of the loonie.

The history of it all is dull as dirt, I know, and it’s one of the reasons I love America and am so proud to live here. There’s something sexy about earning freedom though sweat and blood and standing up to bullies. Every country secretly wants that.

The whole American Revolution storyline is very impressive, and I can tell you as one with an outsider’s perspective that much of the rest of the world is impressed by it, too.

But I can also tell you this as one with an outsider’s perspective: There are few things less impressive than patronizing another’s heritage. It’s very un-American.

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.