National Canada Day: Learn To Speak Canadian
Jul 2, 2019, 1:53 PM | Updated: 1:54 pm
SANDY, Utah – On July 1, Canada Day, Alisynn Dickson tries to be especially Canadian.
“Drop a lot of ‘eh’s,” she says.
Dickson wants people to know Canada is actually its own country with its own customs and even its own brand of English.
Dickson grew up in rural southern Alberta.
Dickson plays tabletop curling
“Lots of prairies, tons of snow. We grew up ice skating all winter at the skating rink or out on the pond. And we roamed the fields in the summer.”
“My goal as a child was to be a farmer’s wife. I wanted to be a farmer’s wife so bad. It was my ‘Little House on the Prairie phase,’” she says.
There, a couch was a “chesterfield,” a hoodie was a “kangaroo coat,” and sneakers were “runners.”
When she was in trouble, she was “hooped.”
Dickson holds a Canadian candy bar, Aero
Color and flavor were spelled with an “O-U-R” and the alphabet song ended “X, Y, zed.”
She didn’t takes notes in a spiral notebook. She used a “coil scribbler.”
Dickson has lived in the States for more than 20 years, but, in part because of the pride she has in her country, she still “speaks Canadian.”
“I love Canada. I love my country. And so I just am as Canadian as I can be,” she says.
She still says “sorry” so it rhymes with “glory” and “decal” so it rhymes with “heckle.”
“I eat buns, not rolls … I throw things in the garbage not the trash. I run my garburetor not my (garbage) disposal. I stay as Canadian as I can,” she says.
“I’m fluent in Canadian and American,” she says.
So, for the record, Dickson says, Canadians do have electricity. They don’t drive dogsleds. And Canadians don’t drink soda. They drink “pop.”
And on July 1, they celebrate the date the Constitution Act of 1867 took effect and united three separate colonies into one nation.
