The may-pole leaf forever!

In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of nations - it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir. - Stuart Keate

HAPPY CANADA DAY!

Ten Good Things About Canada...

Just for the heck of it... because it's Canada Day...

Ten Good Things About Canada

1. Water. Clean water, and plenty of it: oceans, ice floes, falls, Great Lakes, and wide rivers.
   
2. Gay marriage. A country where "equal rights" means equal rights.
   
3. Paul Gross, Roy Dupuis, Grace Park, Tahmoh Penikett, Christopher Plummer, Amanda Tapping, Tricia Helfer, Nick Mancuso, Taylor Kitsch, Michael Shanks, Donald and Keifer Sutherland, Sebastian Spence, Eric Schweig, Keanu Reeves, Ryan Reynolds, Rachel McAdams, Colm Feore, Patrick Huard, Kevin Zegers, Tom Rooney, and so many other Canadian actors whose work I have enjoyed and admired.
   
4. Kindness is a national passtime.
   
5. Michael Bublé, Jill Barber, Cowboy Junkies, Leonard Cohen, and all the great Canadian music.
   
6. Antonine Maillet, Margaret Lawrence, Jane Rule, and Karin Lowachee. Canadian writers whose work I love.
   
7. Multiculturalism.
   
8. Our history. We don't like wars.
   
9. Wild strawberries and blueberries, especially the ones that grow in Nova Scotia.
   
10. Some of the best scenery anywhere.
    

Torchwood: Asylum...

I just listened to the Torchwood radio pay "Asylum", available this week on the BBC website.

It's a rather nice Canada Day present to me. There's lots I liked about it...( Cut for the sake of spoilers... )

More! Soon!

Toronto's Maria...

After watching the fireworks from maaseru's balcony, we watched a CBC documentary about the Marias in How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, the show we went to a taping of last year in Toronto - when I was still on crutches.

A lot of the documentary was about how hard it was on the girls in the TV show, but eventually we got to the parts that interested me more - the subsequent careers of the girls who didn't get the part, and the success of Elicia, the one who did. We also got a glimpse and a line from John Barrowman, and some interesting reactions from people like Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Mirvish.

Now I want to go and see The Sound of Music.

Barrowman about Captain Jack...

"The biggest challenge about playing Captain Jack—it's nothing kind of internal, because I'm not one of those kind of actors. I just get up and I do it. I'd say one of the biggest challenges is running in that damn coat [laughs]. I guess, if you want a deeper kind of answer, the challenge to keep him fresh [is] that he represents all people, and that's why people have connected to him. And also the challenge is to make him honest and make him truthful rather than being a stereotype." - John Barrowman