I'm Proud to be Canadian ...

Over the past three days as I've driven across a portion of this vast country of ours, I have listend to CBC radio ... I have listened to a variety of CDs ... I have even spent time in silence just enjoying the drive ... But one group that I have returned to over and over has been The Arrogant Worms ...

For those of you unfamiliar with The Arrogant Worms - what the heck is wrong with you???

They are a funky, off beat, irreverent, and uttely hilarious trio who offer songs that are just plain fun ... They have a wide variety of bizzare, off beat songs that are thoroughly enjoyable ... most are parodies or just plain silly - from I Am a Cow to The Last Saskatchewan Pirate, they cover the breadth and depth and width of this country of ours and they help us laugh and remember what it is that makes us distinctly Canadian ... I listened to their Live Album a couple of times each day as I drove ... In tribute to Canada, my drive and The Arrogant Worms I offer the lyrics to two of thier songs. The First is aptly titled, "I'm Proud to be Canadian," the second is "This Country's Really Big" ... They sound better than they read ... but for now:

Our fair country canada
Is north of the usa
Our maritimes are lovely
And our prairies give us hay
You might think you yankees
Are better than us canucks
But we don't need no microchips
Inside our hockey pucks

The vikings left us newfoundland
We're stuck with englands queen
The swiss give us their army knives
The french give us poutine
We watch american tv shows
For hours and hours and hours
We'll export alan thicke
But shania twain is ours

We're proud to be canadian
We're awfully nice to strangers,
our manners be our curse
It's cool in many ways to be canadian
We won't say that we're better,
it's just that we're less worse

We are a northern people
Who love the wintertime
For about two weeks
And then we start to whine
So we go down to florida
For all its southern charms
But when we get sunburned when we exercise
The right to bare our arms

We're proud to be canadian
We're awfully nice to strangers,
our manners be our curse
It's cool in many ways to be canadian
We won't say that we're better,
its just that we're less worse

and the second song:

When I look around me,
I can't believe what I see
It seems as if this country
Has lost its will to live

The economy is lousy,
We barely have an army
But we can still stand proudly
cause canada's really big
We're the second largest country
On this planet earth
And if russia
Keeps on shrinking
Then soon well be first
(as long as we keep quebec)

The usa has tanks
And switzerland has banks
They can keep them, thanks
They just don't amount
cause when you get down to it
You find out what the truth is
It isn't what you do with it
It's the size that counts!

Most people will tell you
That France is pretty large
But you can put
Fourteen frances
Into this land of ours
(it'd take a lotta work,
it'd take a whole lotta work)

We're larger than malaysia
Almost as big as asia
We're bigger than australia
And it's a continent

We're so big we seldom bother
To go see one another
But we often go to other
Countries for vacation

Our mountains are very pointy
Our prairies are not
The rest is kinda bumpy
But, man, do we have a lot
(we gotta lot of land, we gotta whole lot of land)
So stand up and be pound
And sing out very loud
We stand out from the crowd cause
Canada's really big!