guys should make passes at girls who wear glasses.: I drew a map of Canada. Oh Canada.

In light of recent events, not to mention the fact that our country seems to have gone from police-state-style chaos to fawning over an outdated, money-sucking monarch with tenuous connections to our governance structure (NOTE: this statement does not diminish my undying attraction to Prince Harry), I wasn't feeling super Canadian going into this day. To be honest, I'm not the most patriotic person at the best of times. Too many years spent in Ottawa on this, the looniest of public holidays, makes me associate it with street-side insanity, public intoxication, and personal humiliation. And yes yes, I've been in that crowd of drunken revelers myself, and I'll admit, it can be a lot of fun. Not to mention humbling: when those kids got caught peeing on the war memorial a few years ago, I couldn't help but concede that, okay, yeah, that could have been any one of us. You just get THAT CAUGHT UP IN THE SPIRIT.

That spirit is sadly dead inside me this year, though. My plan for Canada Day plan for this year includes an unplugged phone, a whole lot of yoga and the third season of Mad Men. Nevertheless, I had a moment of unbridled patriotism while listening to Jian , who played an old Spirit of the West song, Far too Canadian. I got a little weepy, and I got to thinking about the other songs that make me feel like I'm part of this great country.

Some of them are totally cliche, like A Case of You by Joni Mitchell, or The Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot (aka the song that I can't put on any road mix because I would have to pull the car over to tear up as soon as it came on). Some of them aren't even by Canadians, like I Wish I Was the Moon by Neko Case (although I guess she gets honourary status). It's the national anthem for staring up at the sky, which we seem to do a lot of around here.

Some get stuck in my head for days, in the nicest possible way, like Stompin' Tom's The Hockey Song (although Turkey Rhubarb's version, with Paul Fralick on lead vocals, totally outshines the original). Some are pure summer sunshine, like Plaskett and Sam Roberts, while some bring me back to frigid snowy nights, huddled by a fire, drifting off to sleep.