June 29, 2004
Canadian Election Trivia

Brief notes on Colby Cosh's coverage of the Canadian election:

  1. Most amusing bit of trivia: There is a riding in (I think) Saskatchewan called Souris-Moose Mountain. Too bad the first word is in French: translated entirely into English, the place would be Mouse-Moose Mountain.
  2. Cosh is one of the few bloggers whose entries have names or abbreviations instead of numbers, even for the links. The anchor for this one is 'vrfr', but the title displayed is "Viceregal rumbles?". I see where the V, the R, and the other R come from, but what about the F? I suppose that stands for some obscenity or other.
  3. To a non-Canadian, even cliffhanger elections are boring when they're Canadian. And a 'cliffhanger' there means wondering who's going to get a plurality, since we already know an actual victory for one side or the other (or the other or the other) is not going to happen.
  4. Oh, and thanks for getting our hopes up, Colby. I thought conservatives around the world were supposed to be celebrating a huge Conservative plurality today.
Posted by Dr. Weevil at June 29, 2004 09:22 AM
Comments

Well, I mean, come on, man.

Given the Liberal stranglehold on Canadian politics for, er, ever, it's a pretty good showing to have made them a minority government.

Especially if, as Colby suggests, they can't quite manage a majority even with their Pinko pals in the NDP.

Posted by: Sigivald on June 29, 2004 12:28 PM

All it means is that we'll have another election within a year, with more B.S. from "Team Martin" and more fear mongering fomented by various media outlets (especially the CBC and the assorted outlets owned by the Aspers). Westerners do not understand what or how Ontarians think and as a Westerner in exile out east here, I can't either. Personally, given the Liberals' track record, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't hear of 'election irregularities' in the next week or so ... that all those hand-picked/parachuted candidates won in B.C. seems very suspicious to me.

Posted by: rogueclassicist on June 30, 2004 05:42 PM

Dear Dr. Weevil: you forget, perhaps, that a majority of canadians are of scots descent rather than english.

In that light, the phrase "Souris-Moose Mountain" more properly translates into english in the manner you had hoped.

Posted by: tja on June 30, 2004 07:56 PM

Geography note: Moose Mountain and Souris both are rivers.

The Souris dips into and out of North Dakota, where it's known as the Mouse (goes through Minot, the major north-central North Dakota city).

Cross-naming further, along the Mouse in North Dakota is the Upper Souris National Wildlife Refuge.

Posted by: old maltese on July 1, 2004 03:58 PM