What the Heck is Tibb's Eve?

It's a tradition in Newfoundland to celebrate Tibb's Eve (some call it Tipp's Eve or Tipsy Eve) on the 23rd of December, to really officially kick off the Christmas Season. I've noticed that in other parts of Canada, at least in recent years, the Christmas Season seems to last the month (or two) leading up to December 25, and then Christmas is abruptly forgotten on the 26th. Back when I was growing up, the real holiday celebrations happened after Christmas Day, through New Years right up until "Old Christmas Day," or January 6th. For example, it wasn't uncommon when I was a kid to go to relatives' houses the weekend after New Year's for a "Christmas visit." If I showed up at someone's house in Ontario on January 5th asking for a drink and some cookies, I doubt they would even open the door.

"It's your sister and her idiot husband coming for a Christmas Visit!"

"What? It's nearly Spring! Turn off the lights and hide in the closet!"

But what exactly is Tibb's Eve? Newfoundland was a traditionally Christian area, and the Advent Season leading up to Christmas Day was a sober, religious time, when it was inappropriate to drink alcohol. (A month of abstinence before Christmas is probably also the reason for the two week-long party afterwards). At some point in the mid-twentieth century, folks decided they just couldn't wait until the 25th and decided they would start drinking on the 23rd instead, and used the Feast of St. Tibb as an excuse to celebrate.

They've got their own shirts and everything.

Who is St. Tibb? I'll let you in a little secret: she doesn't exist. St. Tibb was just a joke made up to go over children's heads. The word tib or tibb is an archaic slang word for a "promiscuous woman." The name "Tib" was popularly used in 17th century English plays for the prostitute character. So calling drinking day "Tibb's Eve" was just an excuse to make children think there was actually a holiday to excuse daddy's drunken foolishness.

Seriously though, more people would still go to church if we had more saints like this.

Fun fact: Until recently, there were still a lot of archaic English language floating around in rural parts of Newfoundland. It was a side effect of the population growing up in isolated pocket communities, where they had little outside contact for generations. I remember growing up my grandmother always called ants "emmets," but no one knew why. It wasn't until I went to university that I discovered "emmet" is actually an Old English word for ant, dating back to Shakespeare's time.

Tibb's Eve is also an old English/Irish word meaning never - in other words a day that will never come, as in, "He'll pay you back on Tibb's Eve." This gives the holiday yet another mischievous sort of feeling, a way to get around the Church rules and traditions, since it's not a "real" day.  The "Tipp's Eve" variant in some parts of the island probably comes from another old word, "to tipple," which means to drink heavily, or "a tipple," which is another word for alehouse.  "Tipsy Eve" is probably obvious from there.

Do you have any Labatt's Blue?

So if you're feeling in touch with your Newfoundland or Old English roots today, or if you're just feeling frisky or need a drink to calm your nerves after hours of shopping, then raise a glass to Saint Tibb! And maybe put on a mask a do a little mummering while you're at it, eh b'y?

Santa Claus Lives In Canada

Officially, according to international law, no nation owns territorial rights over the North Pole. So shouldn't that mean that Santa Claus is a resident of no country? A citizen of the whole world, as it were?

Sort of. Five nations have borders that overlap the Arctic Circle, and thus occasionally, unofficially, try to stake claim to the North Pole (especially the potentially resource-rich seabed beneath). All five of them also claim to have direct lines to Santa, but one of them is obviously trying way harder than the others.

In Denmark and Norway, kids send their letters for Santa to Copenhagen and Oslo, respectively, where helpful postal workers "pass on" the mail to the Big Man up North, and he sometimes sends personalized replies. In Russia, the government encourages kids to use standardized templates for their letters and not to include personalized information like their age, address and school to avoid their identities being stolen (because Russia).

In the United States, kids only get replies from Santa if they send their letters along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope... and also include's Santa's reply, hand-written by their parents. I swear, that's seriously how they do it. At least they mail them to the post office in Anchorage, Alaska, which I guess is sorta close to the North Pole.

You know. Relatively speaking.

But in Canada, we do it right. Kids in Canada (and technically from around the world) can write letters to Santa Claus at:

Santa Claus
North Pole H0H 0H0
Canada

That's it. No weird PO boxes or redirects to post-offices in the capital city. Santa Claus has his very own, custom postal code ("Ho, Ho, Ho," get it?) You don't even need to add a stamp; it will get delivered if you just put a glow-in-the dark Minions sticker on the corner instead. And the best part? He always sends back a personalized letter in return.

Since 1981, Canada Post has run a program where hundreds of volunteers open, read and respond to children's letters to Santa received from around the country and the world. In 2017 alone, over 1.6 million letters were answered, requiring over 200,000 volunteer hours to accomplish. Even the Amazon warehouse can't process orders that efficiently, and they pay their employees! (well, sort of)

Even this year, when a postal workers labour strike delayed some mail delivery, the program continued and the post office urged kids to keep writing their letters (they just had to make the deadline to get them in a little earlier). I know some people grumble at postal workers, but I can't find fault with anyone who devotes so much time and energy to making little kids happy.

I think the strike had something to do with them forcing everyone to wear these dumb hats.

Sure, lots of places lay claim to being the home of Santa Claus. The real Saint Nicholas lived and died in 4th-century Turkey. The cities of Bari and Venice in Italy both claim to house the bones of St. Nick, stolen from their resting place during the Crusades. Somehow this makes them a tourist attraction, though I don't know how you explain the grave-robbing part to kids. A tiny village in Alaska, which changed it's name to "North Pole," has a pretty good gig going, though I doubt the real Santa has a 50-foot tall statue of himself in his front yard.

I also suspect there's significantly less barbed-wire at the real North Pole.

The province of Lapland in Finland has long been rumoured to be the home of Father Christmas (though other Scandinavians vehemently disagree). When Eleanor Roosevelt visited the city of   Rovaniemi, Lapland during a 1950 post-war reconstruction tour, she insisted on meeting Santa Claus, so the locals quickly built a cabin and told her it belonged to him. The First-Lady was apparently satisfied, and I can't figure out if the Finns were making fun of her or not. They did, however, turn that hastily-built cabin into a massive theme park that now sees 500,000 visitors a year, which is further proof that Europeans are good at suckering Americans.

But for all the claims, I think the best one is clearly with Canada. We have a legitimate postal code for Kris Kringle, and he always finds a way to write you back. The North Pole obviously has a red and white maple leaf flag flying over it.

Just don't tell the United Nations about it.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Any Mummers 'llowed In?

The knock came again, fierce and aggressive.

"Who's that?" asked the old woman, rocking slowly by the fire. The lights were dimmed, while the tiny bulbs on the Christmas tree blinked in-and-out, reflecting against tin ornaments and throwing dancing, prismatic rainbows against the wall.

The boy peaked through the tattered curtains of the picture window and his eyes grew wide. "It's mummers, granny."

Out on the snowy lawn, a large group of masked individuals shuffled and stamped, demanding to be let in. With hoods and weird hats, dressed in mismatched, garish clothes, they were unidentifiable. Most carried sticks and clubs, and they showed no intention of leaving until they received an invitation inside.

They pounded on the door again.

"Any mummers 'llowed in?"

Seriously: When a gang of masked, unidentifiable hooligans show up at your house at night in the dead of winter, demanding booze and wielding strange sticks with nails sticking out of them, do you open the door?

In Newfoundland you do.

Mummering is a strange Christmas tradition practiced in Newfoundland, Canada (and remote areas of Ireland) where people show up at your home wearing masks and acting weird and demand to be let in. I am seriously not making this up.

"Traditional" (and I use that term only in the loosest sense of the word) mummering (also called mumming) involves a group of friends and relatives dressing up and visiting local homes during the Christmas season to perform songs, dance and jokes in exchange for food and drink. The mummers dress in outlandish outfits made from whatever they can find - oversized clothes, blankets, jackets stuffed with cushions, pillowcases for masks, whatever. Wearing underwear outside the clothes is popular, as is dressing in drag. Part of the game and performance involves the house inhabitants having to guess the mummers' identities, and the mummers doing their best to remain incognito by altering their mannerisms and speaking with funny voices.

Note the improvised weapons in their hands. Dubbed "Ugly Sticks," these ungodly contraptions are banged to make music. And also to warn you of your impending demise.

The custom dates back to England and Ireland, and the exact details vary from community to community. The reason I put "traditional" in quotes above is because the act of mummering we know today is actually due to a folk revival stemming from the popularity of "The Mummers' Song" by Newfoundland musical group Simani (the video is above) released in 1982. It's a selective and idealized conceptualization of a custom that hadn't really been practiced on the island for a hundred years.

Why had the custom fallen out of practice? Well, probably because it was illegal, since a group of mummers murdered a man named Isaac Mercer in Bay Roberts, Newfoundland on December 28, 1860. The local constables never found those responsible, thanks to their convenient disguises. As a result, the act of wearing a mask in public was banned in Newfoundland, a law that technically still stands to this day (don't tell that to cosplayers at the local comic con).

Of course Newfoundland has a comic con. Hell, they even have comic cons in Libya, but it doesn't go over well.

My cynicism aside, it's a fun and silly holiday pastime that the Island embraces wholeheartedly. Mummers have become a symbol of Newfoundland Christmas, moreso even than Santa or Rudolph. There's songs, books, toys, parades, decorations, you name it. I'm not even sure exactly how much people do "actual" mummering, but the idea of it, and what it represents, is ubiquitous.

So next week, after all the presents are opened, the food is cleared away, and you're bored and looking for something to do, maybe pull on a mask, a big wool coat and some over-sized boots and go pound on your neighbour's door.* You might be in for a grand ol' time.

*Disclaimer: Don't actually do this. In most parts of the world this will get you shot.

It's not just me, right? This picture is super creepy, right?

Art by Rod Hand

The History of "In Flanders Fields"

"In Flanders Fields" is a famous poem lamenting soldiers lost in World War I, but has since come to be associated with Remembrance Day (also known as Armistice Day or Veterans Day), and is commonly read at services across Canada on November 11. It was written by Major John McCrae, a Canadian military doctor and artillery commander during the Great War, and Canadians have latched onto it hard. I don't think it's wildly known in the US, but in Canada it's a huge, cultural touchstone that school children are forced to memorize somewhere between the National Anthem and the theme song to Hockey Night in Canada. For those who are not familiar, it goes a little something like this:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

According to legend, on May 2nd of 1915, young artillery officer named Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed in Ypres, Belgium. The chaplin had been called away to preside over what was surely an endless string of funerals, so Major McCrae was asked to conduct the burial service for Lt. Helmer. After the service, looking out over the lines of crosses and the poppies blowing between them, a grief-struck McCrae was moved to pen the original draft of the poem. Dissatisfied with his work, he crumpled it up and tossed it aside, but another soldier in his unit found it and, moved by the doctor's stunning words, urged him to have it published.

While it is true that Lt. Helmer died on May 2nd and Major McCrae conducted his funeral, the more likely version of the story is that it actually took the doctor months to write the poem, whenever he had free time between tending to horribly injured soldiers. Not quite as romantic, but far more visceral.

Want to hear something even less romantic? McCrae originally submitted the Poem to The Spectator, a conservative London-based magazine of politics, culture and current affairs. In 1915 it had already been around for nearly 100 years, and is actually still in publication today. Like most first-time writers, McCrae's work was rejected. I guess the editor had reached his poppy quota for the quarter.

After being turned away by one of the oldest and most prestigious publications in London, guess where McCrae turned next?

Car AND General insurance? Sign me up!

Punch Magazine was a weekly periodical of humour and satire, and they practically invented the political "cartoon" comic in the 1840s.

I don't understand any of this.

For a modern comparison, I wanted to say it was like getting rejected from the New Yorker and submitting to Mad Magazine instead, except the The Spectator is probably more like far-right rag The New York Observer, which holds the distinction of being one of the only newspapers that endorsed Trump during the 2016 US election. Coincidentally, the Observer is owned by Trump's son-in-law.

So yeah, it was like McCrae got rejected from The New York Observer then submitted his poem to Mad Magazine. Either way, it's still weird.

But at least the classic poem got a classy presentation worthy of its future status as a cultural milestone and a stirring reminder of the horrors of war, right?

Like so.

The famous image above was actually a print created by the Heliotype Company in Ottawa in 1918, to commemorate the death of the poet. Here is the original page where "In Flanders Fields" appeared, in the December 8, 1915 issue of Punch Magazine:

What, it doesn't jump out at you?

In case you can't see it - apparently people's eyesight was way better back in the early 1900s - the poem appears in the lower right hand column, sandwiched between a fake catalogue of Christmas toys (including "The Frozen Pipe Doll's House" with real leaking pipes and "The Influenza Doll" that coughs when you squeeze it), and this joke:

"Will this war bring us to Kidderminster?"

English Churchman

Well, there are worse places than Kidderminster.

I don't have a flipping clue where Kidderminster is (nor do I quite get the joke), but apparently Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin grew up there. That's the kind of biting satire that was common in Punch Magazine. So what the hell was an introspective poem by a morose soldier doing in there? McCrae wasn't even credited in the original printing.

Despite its humble beginnings, "In Flanders Fields" caught on and was quickly adopted by the English Commonwealth as a stirring tribute. The significance of poppies as a symbol of remembrance links directly to this poem. Even a hundred years later, the poem and the red poppies are a solemn reminder that Canadians in particular hold close to their hearts - literally, as many wear the small flower over their left breast as a symbol to the lives lost in war.

As for the poet, Major McCrae became world-renowned for his words, though continued to serve on the front. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander and continued his work as a field doctor. John McCrae worked at numerous hospitals through the war, always pushing himself to help as many people as possible, ignoring his own health and well-being. He pushed through his exhaustion and illness and eventually succumbed to pneumonia on January 28, 1918, heralded as both a war hero and a brilliant poet.

Books I Should Have Read This Summer

So two months ago I started writing this list of books I was hoping to read this summer. I'm a slow reader at the best of times, and the last few years I've just had so much trouble concentrating that it's very hard for me to get into a book no matter how much I enjoy it and want to read it. Usually publicly declaring I was going to read something at least marginally increases my chances of getting to it.

Needless to say I never posted the list, and I haven't read any of these books. I suck. Between vacations and various people being sick or out of town and a busier-than-usual summer at work, I just haven't gotten much reading done these past few months. Maybe I'll have to bump this to my fall reading list.

A God in the Shed
by J-F Dubeau

A couple of years ago I submitted my book Hell Comes to Hogtown for a contest at Inkshares. Obviously it didn't win, but this is the book that I thought should have won. It didn't either, which is why it took so long to come out. It's been quite a wait so I'm really looking forward to it. It's has the creepy, brutal feel of a Scandinavian murder mystery with a supernatural bent. The first couple of chapters are really dark, so we'll see how this goes.

The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 
Douglas Adams

At the complete other end of the spectrum... it's been ages since I read the original HHGG books, and I must embarrassingly admit that I've never read the later ones. I was beyond pleased when I found this for $5 at a thrift store. I very much look forward to returning to the universe of Arthur, Ford Prefect et al, but I must admit I can't read Marvin the Paranoid Android without hearing Alan Rickman's voice in my head.

Jem and the Holograms Volume 5
by Kelly Thompson and Gisele Lagace

Yup, I'm a Jem fan and I won't deny it.

To be fair, this is NOT the cartoon you may (or may not) remember for the 80s, and it's certainly not that abomination of a film that came out a couple of years ago. The characters in the new Jem comics by the extraordinary Kelly Thompson are far more modern, fully-fleshed and real. They are body- and - LGBTQ-positive. They are not just barbie-doll-esque caricatures fighting over guys and trying to murder each other (wassup, Misfits) but actual human beings with goals and opinions and ups and downs you can relate to. I hope my daughter can read this book and find role-models to look up to. Hell, I hope my son can, too.

The Vagrant
by Peter Newman

The Vagrant was a big deal a couple of years ago when it came out, and it and its sequels continue to garnish rave reviews. Plus Peter Newman is a really cool guy. It's the story of a silent protagonist protecting a baby as they travel through a monstrous wasteland, so it sounds pretty badass. And a goat is very pivotal to the story for some reason, so I have to check this out. I picked up the Kindle version on a 99-cent sale so I have no excuse not to get around to it.

Beyond Redemption
by Michael R. Fletcher

Another book that was huge in my circles last year, it's the first of a trilogy that Fletcher's publisher stunningly did not pick up for future volumes, despite winning critical acclaim and even a couple of awards. It just didn't have that big sales drive out of the gate to convince the publishers that it was worth investing in future volumes. Much like movie studios, publishers as of late are more concerned with the "opening weekend box office" than anything else.

Mike has gone on to self-publish the second volume with the third forth-coming, and he continues to do well for himself and has published another series with a different publisher. He'll be fine, plus he's Canadian so he has that going for him.

Canada
by Mike Myers

I had to throw some Canadian non-fiction in here somewhere. While I doubt this has the hard-hitting satirical bite of the Canadaland book I reviewed a few months ago, sometimes it's nice to read something funny and positive. Part memoir, part history of Canada, I'm also curious to read exactly what the hell Myers has been up to the last few years. He was on top of the world with stuff like Austin Powers and Shrek, and then he just kind of vanished.

Save the Cat
by Blake Snyder

For those not familiar, this is a very famous and popular screenwriting book that brought to the mainstream a writing formula used by virtually every Hollywood film in existence. It breaks down, in mathematical detail, exactly where every beat in a script should go: when the hero should be introduced, when the theme is revealed, when the hero should suffer his greatest setback in Act II, etc. While it's intended for writing movies it translates very well to novels as well. I will shamelessly admit I've used the formula myself from time to time, even though I've never read the book it came from. I aim to correct this oversight.

King John of Canada
by Scott Gardiner

I found this book on my office's "leave a book, take a book" shelf, which is usually full of crap (Windows 95 for Dummies, or a French copy of 50 Shades, anyone?), but this looks fascinating. For those not familiar, it's the story of Canadian and British government collapsing in a series of weird accidents, and then a random guy in Toronto is named King of Canada. Only it turns out he's really good at being king, and fixes all of the countries problems with common sense solutions. It's obviously satire, but it came out during the height of the country's Conservative led-years, so I'm very curious to see where it goes.

(Side note: Funny how bad we thought it was during during the Conservative Harper years in Canada, and now we're looking down South and I bet you guys wish you had Stephen Harper running your country...)

###

The Real Origins of Canada

This Saturday, July 1st, is the 150th anniversary of Canada's Confederation (it's also the 101st anniversary of another important Canadian event you can read about here). It is not the anniversary of Canada's independence, nor is the date of the founding of the country. And it's certainly not the beginning of people living here. No, that goes back way, way farther than 150 measly years ago.

The history of Canada begins with the arrival of the first nomadic aboriginal peoples somewhere between 50,000 and 17,000 years ago to the Northern extremes of the Alaska and the Yukon. They were unable to move any further south due to glacial ice. By 16,000 years ago, the ice had receded enough that these Paleo-Indian people were able to migrate further south and populate the continent. Most of them continued their hunter-gatherer ways, but a few settled down to more permanent communities. For example, a recently-discovered site on the Haida Gwaii islands (formerly Queen Charlotte Islands) in British Columbia may be the oldest inhabited site in Canada. Ruins found off the coast indicate that people lived there at least 13,700 years ago.

Even more incredibly, nearly fourteen millennia later, the Haida people still live there.

Well, sort of. We'll get there, but as usual with these stories, it's going to get pretty bleak.

The islands of the Haida Gwaii archipelago were much larger thousands of years ago, which explains why the ruins are currently underwater. It was also probably attached to the mainland, which explains how the Haida ended up there in the first place. The ancestors of the Haida were the Koryaks, a nomadic people who originated in Russia and traveled across the Bering straight during the last ice age. The Koryaks practiced a form of Raven animism that evolved into spiritual practices still followed by the Haida today. The Haida also developed their own distinct language as well as a complex class system consisting of two main clans: Eagles and Ravens. Links and diversity were gained through marriage between the clans. This system was also important for the transfer of wealth within the Nation, as the two clans were reliant on each other for the building of longhouses, totem poles and other items of cultural importance.

Haida long houses and totem poles, circa 1878.

The Haida were a seafaring, matriarchal society. Their nation comprised some 100 villages in the Islands and were noted traders, developing trade routes with other First Nation tribes on the mainland as far south as California.

First contact with Europeans came in the 1770s, and as usual ruined everything. Haida Gwaii became an important part of the fur trade and the gold rush through the 18th and 19th centuries, and its "ownership" was disputed between the British and America. The Haida seemed to put little stock in these European claims, however, and like most First Nations alternated between helping and hindering the Colonials. The Haida were not to be trifled with at sea, though, and sunk or captured numerous European ships during this time. It was searching for the wreck of one of these ships that scientists discovered the ancient Haida site I previously mentioned.

The remains of a 2,500 year-old stone and wood fish weir (a sort of fish trap).

The Haida Gwaii islands themselves have been called by some the "Galapagos of the North," due to its unique climate and terrain. Thanks to its isolation from the mainland and favourable coastal winds, it has developed a distinct biocultural zone with many endemic (unique) plants and animals, including subspecies of black bears, otters and bats, as well as the Nootka cypress, western hemlock, and Sitka spruce not seen on the mainland.

One famous sitka-spruce in particular was the Kiidk'yaas ("Ancient Tree" in the Haida language, or the Golden Spruce), a one-of-a-kind 300-year-old spruce with a rare genetic mutation - a lack of chlorophyll in the tree's branches caused it to take on a striking yellow-gold colour. According to Haida mythology the Kiidk'yaas came about when a young boy disrespected nature and caused a terrible storm to descend on his village. When he and his grandfather fled the village, the grandfather warned the boy not to look back. The boy disobeyed, and was immediately turned into the Golden Spruce where he stood. The Haida people said the tree would stand to be admired until the last generation.

Kiidk'yaas was cut down by an unemployed engineer, Grant Hadwin, as a protest against illegal logging in 1997 (see, I told you we ruin everything). Hadwin was arrested and released on bail, then disappeared while trying to paddle his kayak 100 kilometres to the mainland in the dead of winter. The remains of his kayak were discovered later that year, though Hadwin was never seen again. I'd like to think that Mother Nature meted out her own revenge.

At the time of Colonial contact, the population of the islands was about 30,000. In the 1800s, 90% of the population was killed off by small box and other European diseases, so that by 1900 only 350 Haida people remained. Today the population of the islands now sits at 4500, with 45% identifying as Haida. Of their unique language, only 50 speakers are known to remain, and all are over 70 years old. Though efforts continue to be made to preserve their culture, in 2006 UNESCO named some of the islands as historic sites, and referenced the Haida as a "vanished" people.

Of course, Canada hasn't completely ignored the very first people of these lands. They may not always treat them well, but at least they don't pretend they don't exist. Usually. The artwork on the back of the old Canadian $20 bill (the one before our current plastic space money) actually featured artwork by a Haida artist, Bill Reid. The image on the far left is of Raven and the First Men (which is actually pretty cool so I'll blow that up below), and the prominent image on the right is Spirit of Haida Gwaii, a massive bronze sculpture that sits outside the Canadian embassy in Washington DC. The background also depicts traditional Haida imagery.

All that is pretty cool, except that the imagery was changed with the advent of the new bank note series in 2012. Now the $20 bill depicts the Vimy Ridge Memorial, which is an important event to remember, but it's also a memorial to white people fighting other white people in another country. 

Anyway, Haida Gwaii remains an amazing and fascinating piece of Canadian history, as well as an unprecedented link to the past. It is a popular tourist site for both these reasons as well as its unique natural environment. It is a definitely a place we should strive to protect, learn from, and if we can, visit to experience it ourselves. Especially before it gets sucked into the Pacific by an earthquake.

#

Good Ol'-Fashioned Saturday Night Wrasslin'

Hey it's time for my monthly pro-wrestling post that no one is going to read! ☺

This past Saturday I headed down to the local Knights of Columbus hall with my father-in-law to check out our local indy wrestling promotion, Capital City Championship Combat (C*4 for short). It was a night of laughs, thrills, poutine and watching athletic young men try to kill themselves for the enjoyment of a handful of people.

Now, those of you with limited knowledge of pro-wrestling have likely heard of World Wrestling Entertainment, also known simply as WWE, and formerly the World Wrestling Federation (which was changed to avoid confusing all those poor pandas).

Any excuse I can find to use this image.

What you may not know is that not all pro-wrestlers compete for this huge, billion-dollar multi-national corporation, because WWE is not the only company in the business, not by a long shot. Not only are there several other companies in the US alone with major TV deals (including the incredible Lucha Underground, which is available on Netflix!), but there are literally hundreds of smaller companies operating across North America, running local shows in high school gyms, barns, parking lots, bars, circus tents, veteran association halls and yes, even church basements and the Knights of Columbus. Basically anywhere you can squeeze in a wrestling ring.

These small, often low-budget affairs feature a wide range of talent, ranging from pasty, awkward kids with no training up to international stars who are considered by those in the business as some of the best performers in the world. Not to mention washed-up stars from yesteryear, guys who were on TV for the WWF back in the 80s, now in their 60s, still making the rounds and trying to make a payday on their past glories. Who shows up all depends on what the promoter can afford and what the audience is willing to pay.

Greg "The Hammer" Valentine, who was WWF Intercontinental Champion in the 1980s, now 65 years old and looks like he died ten years ago. He wrestled as recently as last month and has matches booked through the summer. Has anyone seen Mickey Rourke in the "The Wrestler?"

Some small towns run shows with just local kids who barely know how to fall without hurting themselves in front of audiences of a dozen people. In big markets like Los Angeles, some of these "independent" shows gain cult followings, drawing thousands of people and even attracting big name celebrities to the audience. In every case though, the local Saturday night wrestling show is a cultural event, a special attraction that draws a certain community together. In that way it's like any sport or performance, except the audience is very small and very niche. Those who love it adore it, and those who don't think it's stupid. It's like a lot of obsessive fandoms in that way.

C*4 Wrestling in Ottawa runs monthly shows in front of packed houses of 300-400 people. The wrestlers are usually on the higher end of quality, featuring mostly local talent from Eastern Canada and the North Eastern US, we're just lucky that most of those guys happen to be pretty good. They also sometimes bring in bigger names or guys on the cusp of hitting in big, like Kevin Steen before he became world champion Kevin Owens in WWE, or The Young Bucks just as they were becoming an international sensation and a mainstay in Japan.

The aforementioned Kevin Steen, about to be hit in the face with a fan's shoe by Michael Elgin at C*4 Wrestling. 

Photo credit: Ottawa Citizen

Because the small hall is so packed, the wrestlers often end up right in the audience faces, and if you're sitting in the first four-or-five rows you have to be constantly on the alert to jump out of the way if a wrestler falls (or jumps) out of the ring into your lap. It's all part of the charm. The guys in the ring are working hard to entertain the audience, whether through jokey comedy bits, high-flying, gymnastic acrobatics, or old-fashioned tough-guy slugfests. Because it's so intimate the wrestlers can interact more directly with the crowd, playing with them and off them, and it's a very different experience than watching it on TV or even live in an arena with thousands of people.

Respect to @kobedurst for taking this wicked bump at @C4Wrestling this past weekend! pic.twitter.com/LMQlhTJ43V

— Rob Poirier (@RobFeature) June 21, 2017

You thought I was kidding about people nearly killing themselves?

My father-in-law and I love hitting the show when we can because it's a chance to get out of the house and have a laugh and a fun night out for just twenty bucks plus the price of french fries. It's way more intimate and entertaining, for significantly less money, than going to a WWE show or an Ottawa Senators game. And how often in an NHL game do you have a sweaty player land in the seat next to you, stop to take a selfie, then hop back on the ice to keep playing without missing a beat?

Also, the NHL doesn't have Space Monkeys.

Photo Credit: Me

I'm not going to convince anyone who thinks wrestling is stupid to become a fan with this post, But I will urge you, if you ever get a chance to watch an independent wrestling show at your local high school or bar, consider taking a chance on a different kind of night out. Independent pro wrestlers are much like independent musicians, writers or stand-up comics - they're just regular people, trying to live their dream and make a living doing something they love. They're not making big money but they love entertaining their fans, and some are very, very good at what they do. Give them a chance. I promise they will literally put their bodies on the line to show you a good time.

Local Ottawa-area favourite and male stripper, Sexxxy Eddy. He'll show you a whole different kind of good time.

Photo credit: Ottawa Citizen

Indian-Canadian Jinder Mahal Wins the WWE World Heavyweight Title

On May 21, Jinder Mahal defeated Randy Orton to become the 50th WWE World Heavyweight Champion, as well as the first-ever WWE World Champion of Indian descent. Billed from "Punjab, India," before his shocking upset win last week, Mahal was best known for wearing a turban to the ring and speaking punjabi in his interviews (well, besides a brief-stint when he wore leather pants and was part of a comedy rock trio with a Scottish guy and a ginger trailer park redneck - wrestling is weird). Wearing foreign clothes and speaking a foreign language has been a surefire way to make a wrestling villain for decades, ever since we had German Nazi wrestlers after World War II and Soviet Russians during the Cold War. There was also a period in the mid-2000s when they tried it with Middle-Eastern terrorists, but that went over really badly.

What is my point, besides the fact that wrestling is terribly racist? Like most of his villainous predecessors, Jinder Mahal is not quite what he seems. Like infamous Nazi wrestler Hans Schmidt and Soviet Ivan Koloff, Jinder Mahal is actually from Canada.

Ivan Koloff, born Oreal Perras, from Ottawa, Ontario. Maybe wrestling is just racist against Canadians?

Born Raj Singh Dhesi in Calgary, Alberta in 1986. Unlike his predecessors, at least Mahal is actually of Punjabi-Indian descent (Hans Schmidt - real name Guy Larose - was Quebecois). His uncle is Gama Singh, another famous Indian wrestler, and one of his first trainers along with Bad News Allen, a famous African-American wrestler who made his home in Calgary. With that kind of lineage, Mahal started off his career on the right foot. He began training in 2002 at just 16 years old and joined the big leagues, World Wrestling Entertainment, in 2011. From the start, he always played up his Indian heritage, because it was a simple (again, racist) gimmick that made it easy for people to boo him.

I'm sure it was those early lessons from Gama and Bad News that guided the young Mahal's decisions. Gama also played up his Indian heritage, and Bad News was famous for playing a streetwise black brawler from the  New York (to be fair, he actually was a streetwise black brawler from New York - but also an Olympic medalist in Judo). Both went far with their stereotypes, but neither made it to quite the height of Mahal's recent success.

Critical to Jinder's success is his supernatural quantity of veins.

We all know that pro-wrestling is scripted, and that champions are chosen not necessarily because of their skill but because they can make their company money. There have been criticisms that Mahal is just a mediocre wrestler with a boring, old-fashioned character, but obviously the WWE sees something in him. It's true that the last year he has worked his ass off, getting into incredible shape and throwing himself fully into whatever he's asked to do. But there are plenty of guys in that boat, what makes Jinder so special?

I'll give you a clue: It rhymes with 1.3 billion people in India.

WWE is a global business. While it's a house-hold name in North America and most of Europe, it's always trying to get into new markets, especially the huge, untapped markets of India and China. India loves professional wrestling. Western wrestling shows there are rare, but always play to enormous crowds. WWE recently signed a new TV deal to bring their product directly into Indian homes, but they needed a face that the population could relate to and get behind.

Hello, Jinder.

There are also rumours he got a raise for nearly taking off an Irishman's head with an elbow.

Mahal is very aware of his position, and why he's being pushed in the direction he's going. He was in the right place at the right time, but he worked hard to be in that place, in order to get that lucky break. Wrestling works like most other types of show business. At the same time, though, he's also acutely aware that he's now a role model for Indian kids around the world, and even if he's playing a villain on TV, he wants to take that position seriously and show his heritage proudly. Hell, even though he's a villain in the US, it's quite possibly he'll get cheered overseas for beating up Americans.

Even Canada is proud of their new champion. The Legislative Assembly of Alberta took a moment last week to actually congratulate their native-born son on his big win.

Pictured: Not the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.

Will the WWE make Mahal's reign something memorable and significant? Or will he be just another cowardly foreign bad guy, looking like a chump in every match and just keeping the belt warm until another the next smiling (American) hero comes along to defeat him? History would suggest that it's probably the latter. Despite claiming to be a global phenomenon, the WWE is not known for its delicate handling of the international superstars. Take their last big Indian "star" wrestler, The Great Khali (Dalip Singh Rana). A legitimate huge name and famous movie star in his homeland (as well as appearing in big films in the US like The Longest Yard and Get Smart), in the WWE he was treated as a complete joke because he was awkward and talked funny.

Here's Khali is in a comedy team with a midget and the farting woman (no seriously, that was her gimmick). In wrestling, being foreign, small or a woman are all fair game for mockery.

Who knows. The WWE has struggled recently to become more responsible and less offensive, not just because they're targeting global markets but because it's goddamn 2017. This is not a 1950s Southern country fair. Some of the folks in charge keep forgetting that.

So good luck, Jinder, with overcoming decades of discrimination and oppression. Maybe you'll be the one to finally break through and prove that a "foreign" (again, Canadian) guy can go far in this wrestling business. As long as you keep putting on those awesome Bollywood-style dance shows, we'll be behind you.

The Canadaland Guide to Canada is the Guide I Wish I Had Written

Anyone who followed my A-to-Z blog posts last month know that I'm fascinated by weird and obscure Canadian trivia and history. Turns out I'm not the only one. The Canadaland Guide to Canada (Published in America) by journalist and podcaster Jesse Brown is a brand new, hilarious collection of weird, embarrassing, obscene and shameful facts about America's not-so-polite Northern Neighbour that reads like the textbook companion to my blog series.

This book tries really hard to make you feel ashamed to be Canadian. Canada is known as a polite and progressive country, and while that's generally true, we also have A LOT of skeletons in our closet. This book takes all of them out and shakes them in your face for the world to see. It dispenses a lot of myths about Canada that other countries have been parroting for so long that we've started to believe them ourselves.

Some of these stories are just silly. Like when American Civil War Veterans invaded Canada in 1866, the head of our military and soon-to-be first Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald, spent the entire battle drunk in his office. Or the fact that in the early days, the government tricked people into moving here by never mentioning the weather or the word "snow" in their immigration material.

Some of the stories are also horrifying. For example, did you know the Indian Act (which I mentioned in a previous post) was actually the inspiration for South African government's apartheid policy?

Some of the delightful characters you'll meet in the pages of the book.

It just goes on and on like that. Page after page of hundreds of short stories, facts and quotes, just hitting you like a machine gun full of Tim Hortons donuts. It's hilarious and cringe-worthy, but it's almost too much. I had to take breaks from it a few times because it was an onslaught of information overload. It's probably better to be read in snippets and funny chunks instead of trying to power through in one sitting. Much like a fine poutine, one cannot gorge oneself too deeply lest one risk throwing up all over the place (I think I screwed up that metaphor, but you get my point).

The level of sarcasm is orbital, which kind of actually distracts from the sheer ridiculousness and extreme unbelievability of some of the true stories. My one complaint is that Brown tries to be a bit too cheeky at times; the stories are over-the-top and funny by themselves, his snide remarks and sarcasm actually made me question which parts were actually true and which were his exaggeration, which led me to have to look up a few of the crazier-sounding facts. Which, come to think of it, may have been his point.

All in all, this is a terrific reference that every Canadian should read. So should every non-Canadian actually. God knows we can stand to be taken down a peg or three; we spend enough time mocking Americans that it's only fair we take a good hard look at ourselves, too.

In case you missed it, yes that is Drake canoodling a moose on the cover.

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Y - What the Heck is a Yukon Beaver Eater?

For a long time, the Indigenous people of the Yukon territory and British Columbia on the west coast of Canada have described a huge beast, "bigger than even the biggest grizzly bear," that has been spotted tearing apart beaver lodges and devouring the poor creatures within. On the one hand, this monster is among the rarest and most obscure of cryptids (mysterious creatures such as bigfoot, yeti, lake monsters, etc), with very little information outside of native oral tradition. On the other hand, there are several very viable but surprising explanations for the Yukon Beaver Eater.

The natives traditionally called the beast saytoechin, which literally translates to "beaver eater." When shown pictures of similar-sized potential relatives to the beaver eater, eyewitnesses have uniformly identified the creature immediately: the megatherium, or giant ground-sloth.

This ugly sonofabitch right here.

The size and appearance of the ground sloth matches the saytoechin perfectly. There's just one problem: the giant ground sloth has been extinct for over 10,000 years. The beaver eater has been sighted as recently as 1989. There's a slight discrepancy in the dates there.

Could the saytoechin be a surviving megatherium? It's not like theories that the Loch Ness Monster is a surviving aquatic dinosaur from 100 million years ago. Ten thousand years is not that long. Is it long enough for the herbivore giant sloth to develop a taste for beaver? Possible, but it's a long shot.

About as long of a shot as me getting through this post without making a crass joke.

Other, slightly more plausible if less fun theories about the saytoechin is that it could be just an unusually large grizzly bear, or a short-faced bear (Arctodus Simus), which although also extinct is at least a carnivore.

A super-weird theory is that the Yukon Beaver Eater is actually a giant beaver itself (a castoroides), which is probably the most terrifying idea of all. We're talking about a 2-metre plus (7-foot) long beaver, weighing hundreds of kilograms, that is also a cannibal? I'm glad Canada doesn't have things like poisonous snakes and giant spiders, but I think a giant cannibal beaver might be just as bad.

Yeah, no thank you.

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My A-to-Z Blogging Challenge theme for 2017 is Weird Canadian Facts and History. To see more blog posts, click here.