Don’t Mess With Canada — Seriously
We’re meaner than you think, but we’re sorry about it
Oh Canada. We’re just a syrup-chugging, beaver-worshipping, flannel-wearing, igloo-living, polar-bear riding nation of ultra-friendly people who say ‘aboot’, right?
We’re a country so nice that if you get into a competition of ‘you go first, oh no you go first’ it will suck away three hours of your day. We’re a country that apologizes for its mere existence. If we bump into you we’ll apologize. If you bump into us, we’ll also apologize.
We’re nice, right?
Nope.
You just can’t see us giving you the finger under our mittens.
If you piss us off — we’ll drive over you with a Zamboni, Deadpool style. After all, Wade Wilson (Deadpool) was a Canadian character played by a Canadian actor. Or we’ll send Kevin O’Leary (the mean guy from Shark Tank) to do a hostile takeover of your company.
And if you ever question our ruthlessness, just watch a hockey game. You’ll understand why the players have no teeth.
Unconvinced? Well, you might be surprised to hear that we have a dark history of being utterly cruel and even sadistic during times of war. Just ask the Germans.
Stop laughing. We really do have an army. It just looks tiny when compared to our gun-toting, king-of-the-world southern neighbor. Who spends more on its military than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, UK, Germany, France, South Korea, and Japan— combined.
Canadian War Crimes
Ok, technically some of the things we did weren’t officially war crimes as set out in the Geneva Conventions. That’s because they didn’t exist yet; the Geneva Conventions on war crimes were only ratified in 1949. They were set up due to brutal war tactics, most notably, the ones used by our soldiers in WWI and WWII. That’s right, we invented many of the new war crimes that the world quickly banned.
Canada did, hesitantly, sign the Geneva Conventions in 1949. King George VI, our patriarchal monarch dad told us we had to — and his face was on our money.
Canadians (jokingly) refer to these as the Geneva requests, Geneva bare minimums, Geneva ‘guidelines’, and Geneva suggestions.
We also refer to it as ‘a list of things Canada is never allowed to do again.’
Our syrup-chugging soldiers from WWI were a force to be reckoned with. They were given a nickname by the German forces, “Sturmtruppen” — which translates into “Storm Troopers”. That’s right Star Wars fans, we were the original evil Storm Troopers. This cute German pet name (and safe word) was given due to their ruthlessness, and savage take-no-prisoner and kill-the-wounded policies.
Our soldiers developed various trench-warfare tactics, including painting their faces in dark tones in order to move stealthily — to either attack at night or eavesdrop on enemies for intel. They also invented wartime mouse-holing, and improvised weapons that deviated from standard protocol, including pipe bombs and jam jars loaded with nails and gunpowder.
I’m sure at some point we threw over a maple-syrup grenade.
As Rosemary Giles, writer for War History Online puts it:
“The Canadians quickly became known as some of the most merciless combatants. They rarely took any prisoners of war, recalling that, if they did, the POWs would get a share of their rations. When they did capture enemy soldiers, however, they were known to have “the worst reputation for acts of violence against prisoners.
Perhaps one of the most shocking instances of Canadian cruelty was when they were socializing with German soldiers. They would throw cans of corned beef across the trenches, and when the enemy troops yelled for more, the Canucks responded by throwing an armload of grenades at them instead.”
Our bad. It was a horrible thing to do, as the German soldiers didn’t have sufficient rations. So the Canadians tossed them over some food, Pavlovian training them to become accustomed to it. Shortly after we started tossing grenades instead. We call it the ration-grenade switcheroo.
Canada single-handedly takes “it’s not a war crime the first time” to heart, and our motto was “If there aren’t any rules, be the reason they make rules”.
So, don’t mess with us. Please.
‘Ok, but what has Canada done lately?’
Excellent point, we have been keeping a pretty low profile since then. We’ve even worked hard to reverse the terrifying reputation we earned during the World Wars. We kind of had to, we had some apologizing to do.
It started at the end of WWII when we helped liberate the Netherlands in 1945, after a five-year German occupation. I guess the German soldiers heard about our boom-boom jam jars and ran away. As we drove them out we provided food and medical aid to the starving population, a first step to earning our new nickname ‘Can-aid-ians’.
Rumor has it that to this day, members of the older Dutch generation will still buy a Canadian a beer in a pub. Beer is as holy to Canadians as maple syrup (and marijuana), so no wonder our countries are best buds.
Here in Canada, we remain ultra polite to this day (well, most of us) to make up for our evil doings of yore.
But — back to being terrifying. Grrr.
Have you heard of CSIS? The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is our version of America’s NSA. You might not have heard of it because unlike our louder neighbours (I’m sorry!)…we’re actually secretive. You’ll never know what they’re up to, like their hemp-based submarines or thermonuclear weapons to drop over the poles (we want to turn the northern part of our land into a jacuzzi).
We also do things like airdropping wolves on the United States. Making way for entertaining headlines, like this one from VICE, “Elite Canadian Wolves Airdropped Into Michigan to Kill Moose and Have Babies”.
Canada has also been secretly infiltrating the United States and other countries with our murderous cobra chicken (Canadian Geese) attack squads.
That’s right — we’ve been lying in ultra-polite wait for our next attack. Nobody will see it coming, because it’s unbeknownst to the world that every century, Canada re-enacts WWI and carries out The Purge.
Anyhoo, one day soon Canada will take over the entire world in a shock-and-‘aww’ hostile takeover…then you’ll all be sorry.
Have a nice day.
I keep telling people that the only thing unrealistic about the movie “Pacific Rim” is that Canadians weren’t featured among the Jaeger pilots. That’s because Canada’s entry would drastically shorten the movie. Give two little old ladies from Drumheller an old sock with a rock in it, and the kaiju war is OVER.
CSIS- a real spy group. We don’t even know they exist! Because like you pointed out, they are actually secretive. Imagine that, secretive! Not loudmouthed!