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Welcome to Canada, Mr. President: a quiz
by acanuck 2/14/2009 - 11:40 pm
Next Thursday, President Obama will make his first foreign visit since taking office. It will be to Ottawa, resuming a tradition that George W. broke by visiting Mexico first. Obama's visit is billed as a bare-bones, working meeting -- a mere five hours, no overnight stay or joint address to Parliament. No chance for mass adulation.
But we're glad he's coming anyway. To mark the occasion, here's a trivia quiz about presidential visits and general U.S.-Canada relations. Try to answer without peeking at the answers; sorry if they're so jeezly long.
1. The visit may be low on pomp and ceremony, but the first thing to occur when Obama steps off Air Force One will be unprecedented. What is it?
2. There is one Canada-U.S. issue that the Prime Minister's Office has announced beforehand will not be discussed. What is it?
3. In 1985, President Reagan paid an official visit to Quebec City. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney welcomed him warmly; they even sang a duet together. What was the song?
4. In May 1961, President Kennedy visited Ottawa. What occurrence during that visit may have played a role in his assassination two years later?
5. A Canadian connection proved problematic during one president's election campaign. Who and why?
6. I've run out of presidential trivia, but the Arthur story reminds me of another odd bit of Canadiana. Which bona-fide icon of the American West was actually born in Canada?
7. Almost exactly half a century ago, something in the air caused Canada-U.S. relations to nosedive. Huh?
8. We Canadians sometimes criticize the Patriot Act and other aspects of the Global War on Terror as overreactions to 9/11. How did our government deal with its big terrorist scare in October 1970, when the Front de Libération du Québec kidnapped a British diplomat and a Quebec cabinet minister?
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In the News
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Conversations with suicide bombers
By Elizabeth Weingarten, ForeignPolicy.com, May 23, 2012
It was 2009 in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Mossarat Qadeem was sitting on the floor of a house with about a dozen young Pakistani men -- some of whom had nearly become suicide bombers. Qadeem's goal: to undo the destructive brainwashing of the al-Qaeda and Taliban teachers who trained them in extremism, in part by asking the students to narrate their life stories.
"We were handling one of the boys, and he just came, put his head here in my lap, and he started crying and weeping," Qadeem recalls. "I was taken aback. It is very unnatural in my country that a man that tall can just sit at your feet and put his head here. [The other men] were all crying with him, and I was looking at him, and thinking, ‘my God.'"
All in a day's work for Qadeem. She's the national coordinator of Aman-o-Nisa, a coalition of Pakistani women that convened in October 2011 to combat violent extremism in Pakistan at the grassroots level. [....]
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For Native American Women, Scourge of Rape, Rare Justice
The issue of sexual assaults on American Indian women has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
.......
“We should never have a woman come into the office saying, ‘I need to learn more about Plan B for when my daughter gets raped,’ ” said Charon Asetoyer, a women’s health advocate on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, referring to the morning-after pill. “That’s what’s so frightening — that it’s more expected than unexpected. It has become a norm for young women.”
The difficulties facing American Indian women who have been raped are myriad, and include a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing. There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.
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Doctor Who Helped Find Bin Laden Given Jail Term (for...
By Ismail Kahn, New York Times, May 23/24, 2012
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency pin down Osama bin Laden's location under cover of a vaccination drive was convicted on Wednesday of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said.
A tribal court here in northwestern Pakistan found the doctor, Shakil Afridi, guilty of acting against the state, said Mutahir Zeb Khan, the administrator for the Khyber tribal region [....]
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Russia lawmakers advance bill on penalties for protesters
By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2012
MOSCOW — Stiff new penalties aimed at opposition protesters were given preliminary approval Tuesday by Russian lawmakers loyal to President Vladimir Putin, the target of mass rallies and demonstrations before his March election victory.
The bill, which opposition parliament members termed draconian and protested by threatening to file out of a legislative session, calls for fines of up to $50,000 and up to 200 hours of community service for organizers of rallies and demonstrations that grow violent or exceed the approved number of participants.
The sanctions were approved on first reading by parliament's lower house, which is controlled by Putin's United Russia party. They mark a return by the Kremlin to a tough stance against critics after concessions during the recent election campaign [...]
Also see:
Russians back Putin, strong leadership
Washington Post, May 22, 2012A Pew survey of 1,000 Russians found that President Vladimir Putin is well-liked by more than 70 percent of citizens, especially older adults.
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In Cuba, Mystery Shrouds the Fate of an Undersea Internet...
Associated Press, May 21, 2012
HAVANA — It was all sunshine, smiles and celebratory speeches as officials marked the arrival of an undersea fiber-optic cable they promised would end Cuba's Internet isolation and boost web capacity 3,000-fold. Even a retired Fidel Castro had hailed the dawn of a new cyber-age on the island.
More than a year after the February 2011 ceremony on Siboney Beach in eastern Cuba, and 10 months after the system was supposed to have gone online, the government never mentions the cable anymore, and Internet here remains the slowest in the hemisphere. People talk quietly about embezzlement torpedoing the project and the arrest of more than a half-dozen senior telecom officials.
Perhaps most maddening, nobody has explained what happened to the much-ballyhooed $70 million project....
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Why do they have to do the cheek kiss? Is this some kind of Francophone thing? Do they have to shake hands for the Anglophones and then kiss on the cheek for the Francophones? And how about that scene in Mystery, Alaska, where, before the local townsfolk played pond hockey against the New York Islanders, the national anthems of both the U.S. and Canada were sung (very slowly) to make the Isles cold in the outdoor venue? As I was saying...
I'm just fantasizing about the two-cheek kiss, which isn't part of the protocol (we're not bloody Russians). It is indeed a francophone thing -- although anglo Quebecers have picked it up. I unconsciously did it at a few conventions in the States and western Canada, and got no negative feedback.
It's not like a kiss on the lips; rather a warmer version of the handshake. If you don't want to express anything more than politeness, you can just shake hands. Two guys will normally go that route, to avoid misunderstandings.
I'd say something snarky about the Islanders always being cold, but my own team has pretty much sucked of late.
I hope our leaders avoid misunderstandings, of course.
Speaking of NAFTA, I met Austan Goolsbee in April of last year. Really nice guy. After I got back and told my brother about this, he had a strongly negative reaction. He was kind of like the one Austan Goolsbee anti-fan in America (not in reaction to the NAFTA thing, just his general economic thinking).
It's ironic in a way that after the campaign flap over renegotiating NAFTA, Obama's first act with regard to the trade deal was to reaffirm U.S. commitment to it.
I thought part of the revised trade agreement is that they had to take Bush. Didn't anyone tell the boarder guards not to let him back in?
I can't follow all these Canadian political parties. It's confusing! Can you please just get two called the Left and the Right party? I mastered Left and Right in preschool. That would be easier. Thanks, Canada!
They're called Liberal and Conservative. How much simpler can it get? What's confusing you is that Liberal Party's color is red, and the Tories (that's their nickname) are blue. The New Democrats (our pseudo-socialist party) use green, which means the Green Party is pretty well fucked.
Wouldn't that be left and wrong?
My guess was I Got You Babe. That would have been cooler.
I was thinking Let's Call the Whole Thing Off.
Hey, acanuck, sorry about that whole thing where we reserve the larger fonts for Americans.
Or was there too much GST/PST on the large fonts? :)
Won't happen again. Blow it up to 125 or 150 per cent and it looks fine.
THAT was funny aman.
The original "Manchurian" canadiandidate.
Who's Bat Masterson. You guys need a better cowboy.
You're showing your age, Genghis. And by that I mean your callow youth.
The TV series ran for years, and made actor Gene Barry famous. I know, that's a lob.
The only cowboys Genghis has ever seen were riding mechanical bulls in Chelsea.
Fat lot you know. I was born in AZ, weaned in OK (where my folks now live), and spent my formative years in IA. But I note that Gene Barry was born in NYC of Russian-Jewish immigrants.
PS I will ignore the gender preference innuendo
No induendo, that is just where the mechanical bulls are. Seriously, no offense intended... I was mostly accusing you of being a New Yorker, which I am too (and equally not a native one).
No worries, I am very difficult to offend. I've never seen the wild bulls of Chelsea but will plan a pilgrimage.
I think you misspelled Bastard'sson
I was sure this was going to be when Margaret Trudeau was reported to be at a New York party without undies, unknowingly acting as the role model for Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Although, I admit this wasn't really quite a half century ago.
When I say "almost exactly half a century ago," I mean that the 50th anniversary of the Arrow's abrupt cancellation is this coming Friday. It's considered the darkest day in Canadian aviation history. Thousands were instantly thrown out of work. Several dozen of the country's best engineers went south to work on the U.S. space program. And if the Concorde looked a little like a scaled-up Arrow, it may be because expatriate Avro designers helped build it.
The famed undieless photo may have been a mere 40 years ago...
Anyone who doesn't know what 'jeezley' is, isn't worth talking to, acanuck.
These people appear to me to be hopelessly inbred.
Worse, they're all broke.
I told you, we should just kill them and be done with it.
Jeezley.
Never seen you use the word, creep, and I hope you spend rest of the morning looking through your posts all over the net for when you did.
I didn't say I used it, just knew it. There are certain words, so secret, so powerful and sacred, they are only to be spoken at the ceremonies of Highest Solstice, and acanuck just goes and... WRITES IT DOWN! Blood sacrifice is required. Jeezley.
Seriously, Bluesplashy, I started laughing like hell when Marquis dropped it into that Dark/Stormy night post at the other place. It's a word we all grew up with Down East, but to suddenly see it in print just made my eyes cross, like "where the HELL did he get that?" One of those words churchgoing people make up when they can't swear, but need to. So I usually heard it applied to broken down things on our farm - tractors, cattle that wouldn't get up, tools that broke. My favorite is the way "ignorant" had every meaning except the dictionary one. To be ignorant usually meant to be arrogant, "That boy is some ignernt." Or to be enraged. I wonder sometimes who starts these things.
Probably that jeezley Marquis. ;-)
Well, sounds like to me you need to do something about that acanuck anyway.
I just love learning slang words like jeezley and where they come from. Years ago I got busted on for using "Heavens to Murgatroid" a lot. I went looking for where it came from and every place I looked takes it back to Snagglepuss (but I did find that snagglepuss using it came from Bert Lehr using it in a movie). What makes this interesting is I wasn't allowed to watch TV as a child so where did I pick it up? And if a cartoon character that 4/5 of the american population grew up used it, why don't I hear it more?
I didn't realized marquis was one of yourn, I be more careful, thank you for the warning. ;)
One thing I iz not is a Canukistandaburglandiastadtistanbullshitter! Heavens to Murgatroid! What are you a Jeezly Californian?
You've blown your cover, dude.
Anyone that can spell "Canukistandaburglandiastadtistan" is clearly a Canukistandaburglandiastadtistanbullshitter.
Now. Sing the anthem for the nice people, and we'll give you some nice, juicy, seal fat.
Don't sing, and we beat you with a mukluk.
Oh... Stop blubbering.
Now I know you love me as you are claiming me as one of your own
. For the health benefits I would almost wish it were true! 
But I have crossed over into Her Majesty's Dumping Ground only twice in my life. Sorry.
I love learning new slang too--especially in foreign languages and especially if it's profane.
Bring it on, Canukistanadaburglandiastadtian! We'll tell our rednecks to stop drinking Molsens, stop watching unfunny comedians and stop listening to unmusical bands, then your whole economy will collapse... um... er... just like ours.
Jeezly?!! Where did you get that word? Did you make that up? Why haven't I seen that before. I LOVe that word anut, just wonderful. Can I use it? Fantastic, thank you thank you thank you, thank you!! Jeezly oh man I can think of about 6 things right off the bat that need to be jeezuled! This is great!
Seems to me I've been using "jeezly" forever, but you've inspired me to look it up to see if it's even recognized as slang. OK, here's a definition:
jeezly \'jeez-lee\ adj/adv - Modifier used most often as an exclamation of frustration or emphasis; "That jeezly tractor better start in the mornin' or I'll be some ignernt." Sometimes the constant inverse "jeezless" is used instead; "It's some jeezless cold out tonight." See also: Geehover, jeez.
That's from http://www.dooryard.ca/indexIntro.html, a collection of Atlantic Canadian (specifically New Brunswick) colloquialisms. Derived from the interjection "jeez," a contraction of Jesus.
Yet another (unintentional) bit of Canadiana.
The jeezly tractor won't start? I prefer "the [trifl]ing tractor won't start." But I'm kind of a traditionalist.
It's the conditional form. While the speaker holds out hope it might start, it's "the jeezly tractor." In the morning, when it actually fails to do so, it becomes "the fucking tractor." Very nuanced in their vocabulary, those New Brunswickers.
I admit trifling with your comment, O.
I could say that I'm no one to trifle with, but you've met me, so you know how hollow that threat is.
Still, I think I might be able to take you in a street fight.
Or at least a crossword puzzle contest.
Is dag now part of Disney?
Your jeezly links don't work.
Right. I guess those are internal links within the dooryard site. Go there first, use the side letter tabs to get to "jeezly," then click on from there.