Canada Quotes

“Mom talks about moving to Canada as though my father had requested she start wearing fun hats. "Why not try it?" she thought, instead of "This fucking lunatic wants me to go to a country made of ice and casual racism.”
― Scaachi Koul, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

“There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back—and I will.”
― Robert W. Service, The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

“I'm an old-fashioned guy. I believe in the Enlightenment, and reason, and logic, and you know, facts.”
― Barack Obama

“There is no concept of justice in Cree culture. The nearest word is kintohpatatin, which loosely translates to "you've been listened to." But kintohpatatin is richer than justice - really it means you've been listened to by someone compassionate and fair, and your needs will be taken seriously.”
― Edmund Metatawabin, Up Ghost River: A Chief's Journey Through the Turbulent Waters of Native History

“I am, to my core, Canadian, so, by osmosis, everything I write reflects that upbringing.”
― Elinor Florence, Bird's Eye View

“In fact, NASA doesn't use the F-word; instead, they call failure "early attempts at success.”
― Mike Myers

“Real Canada is where people wear sweaters for survival, not style.”
― Mark Leiren-Young, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen: A Rookie Reporter in the Cariboo

“It would seem I wouldn’t have written anything if I weren’t influenced by Canada’s history, its weather, the landscape, and its stories.”
― Anne McDonald

“I was obligated to be nice. I couldn’t be the one Canadian who ruined the country’s reputation. How could I live with myself if I caused a Yankee to say, “I used to think Canadians were so nice, then I met that asshole, Steve”?”
― Steven Barker, Now for the Disappointing Part: A Pseudo-Adult?s Decade of Short-Term Jobs, Long-Term Relationships, and Holding Out for Something Better

“There is room on this land for all of us and there must also be, after centuries of struggle, room for justice for Indigenous peoples. That is all we ask. And we will settle for nothing less.”
― Arthur Manuel, Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call

“What a land. What power these rivers were already yielding, far beyond her sight. Even a map of this country--lines arranged in an arbitrary way on a long rectangular piece of paper-- stirs the imagination beyond imagination, she thought, looking at the map, as other lines differently arranged in relation to each other have not the power to stir. Each name on the map says "We reached this point, by broken trail and mountains and water; and when we reached it, thus and thus we named it.”
― Ethel Wilson

“What notion did you have of Canada when you came?" Mistry smile delicately, the face behind the trimmed beard and glasses like that of a student. "I thought it would complete me.”
― Noah Richler, This Is My Country, What's Yours?: A Literary Atlas of Canada

“With thousands of years of history frozen in time, it's no wonder that many southerners like me romanticize the north as a place where we can freeze our former selves, thaw, and then bloom anew. Here it’s just you, the land, and your thoughts, and you can't leave until you've wrestled with yourself and emerged a survivor. But then again, the light is much more intense up here and everything looks different because of it. The sun hasn’t set in a couple of months, and you can see things much more clearly when it is light all of the time.”
― Shannon M Mullen, See What Flowers

“Their is beauty everywhere on earth.”
― Josef Škvorecký

“Lyme disease is preventable, but only if Canadians have the information they need to prevent it.”
― Vanessa Farnsworth, Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada

“Writing about Aboriginal themes means joining the dots from the colonial policies of the past to the problems faced by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit today. It means acknowledging the wrongs and the pain.”
― Lynda A. Archer, Tears in the Grass

“It’s an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind.”
― Sinclair Ross, As for Me and My House

“Dr. Brown's book is able to make the subject matter interesting in a very pragmatic way, without losing the attractiveness and appeal of his academic writing and sound background. I would recommend the use of this book for teaching in leadership, management and organizational behavior courses knowing that it would make a great contribution to the learning experience of the reader."

Alberto DeFeo, Ph.D. (Law)
Chief Administrative Officer of Lake Country and Adjunct Professor of University of Northern British Columbia”
― Asa Don Brown

“The movement to join Washington had a substantial following in the 1850s, centred in Montreal...It faced considerable resistance, though - in part because the United States was having one of its periodic convulsions of nativist politics and a furious debate over the slave trade. In fact, the U.S.-annexation movement would receive its final rebuff not from colonial-minded Canadians but from the Confederate states, who feared that the addition of the British North American colonies to the 31 states would tip the political balance of power away from slavery.”
― Doug Saunders, Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough

“Well, I don't know the whole situation in detail, but my guess is that it's in Quebec's self-interest to stay part of Canada―because the alternative is to become part of the United States. Quebec's not going to be able to remain independent, so it can either become part of the United States or stay part of Canada. And given that choice, I think it's better off staying part of Canada. I mean, if Quebec became independent from Canada, it wouldn't necessarily be called part of the United States―like it wouldn't get colored the same as the United States on the map―but it would be so integrated into the American economy that it would effectively be a colony. And I don't think that's in the interest of the people of Quebec, I think they're better off staying part of Canada.”
― Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

“Take Canada again: why does Canada have the health-care program it does? Up until the mid-1960s, Canada and the United States had the same capitalist health service: extremely inefficient, tons of bureaucracy, huge administrative costs, millions of people with no insurance coverage―exactly what would be amplified in the United States by Clinton's proposals for "managed competition" [put forward in 1993].21 But in 1962 in Saskatchewan, where the N.D.P. is pretty strong and the unions are pretty strong, they managed to put through a kind of rational health-care program of the sort that every industrialized country in the world has by now, except the United States and South Africa. Well, when Saskatchewan first put through that program, the doctors and the insurance companies and the business community were all screaming―but it worked so well that pretty soon all the other Provinces wanted the same thing too, and within a couple years guaranteed health care had spread over the entire country. And that happened largely because of the New Democratic Party in Canada, which does provide a kind of cover and a framework within which popular organizations like unions, and then later things like the feminist movement, have been able to get together and do things.”
― Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

“Voici les renseignements que je viens de recevoir au sujet de ce que vous m’aviez demandé sur les relations précolombiennes avec l’Amérique : les moines celtiques d’Irlande seraient allés évangéliser le Nord-Ouest du Canada, et de là ils seraient descendus peut-être jusqu’au Pérou, où l’on retrouve trace d’un évangélisateur blanc qu’on a identifié bien à tort avec l’apôtre Saint-Thomas. Quant aux Templiers, c’est au Mexique qu’ils auraient eu des possessions. Tout cela se trouve dans les travaux d’Eugène Beauvois, dont les tirages à part sont à la bibliothèque Nationale où on peut facilement les consulter.

D’autre part, j’ai vu qu’il a paru récemment un livre intitulé “Vers les Terres fortunées, 780-1490” par Mornand (Éditions de la Nouvelle France, 1946) qui, d’après le compte rendu qui en était donné, se rapporte également à l’histoire des moines irlandais en Amérique ; la date de 780 serait, si j’ai bien compris, celle de la fondation de leurs premiers établissements qui seraient ainsi antérieurs aux expéditions normandes.

Croyez, je vous prie, Monsieur, à mes très distingués sentiments.

Correspondance avec Théodore Monod,
Le Caire, le 24 août 1947”
― René Guénon

“Canada is the place where maple syrup is its own food group.”
― Jenny McWha

“Human beings are contradictory, hypocritical, a mix of good and evil, selflessness and selfishness - and our countries cannot help reflecting that. Yes, the United States, as a superpower, has done many abhorrent things. It has also done many praiseworthy things. The first can also be said of the Soviet Union and China; neither merits the second. History and politics gave the United States responsibilities few would want. It accepted those responsibilities and the rest of us tagged along. And we in Canada were happy to tag along. We wanted to profit from their economy; we have. We felt free to reduce our military to inconsequence because they would protect us; they have. (In a military sense, do the Americans really need NORAD? Hardly.) We wanted to have the television and washing machines and dishwashers they have; we do. Yet we laughed at their simple-minded glitz, their ignorance of the world - all the while heading in droves for Las Vegas and Los Angeles. We wanted the American Dream - without the name and without the responsibilities; we have it, to a large extent - and it is this that allows us to caress our little sense of moral superiority. The number of Canadians who expressed sympathy for the victim while blaming him (and watching his movies and his TV sitcoms, listening to his music, eating his food and dreaming of Florida) attained, in a time of grave crisis, a level of self-satisfied hypocrisy that is usually found only in the NDP, those paragons of democratic values who have few good words for the Americans but much mindless applause for Castro. We're lucky in this country to have none of the international responsibilities the Americans do, because then we wouldn't be able to lord it morally over them - and then where would we be? Canadians have no problems anywhere in the world, we like to boast. What we don't realize is, it's not because we're likeable, it's because we're inoffensive. We're welcome by default.”
― Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult Of Multiculturalism In Canada

“be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate and House of Commons, to make Laws for the Peace, Order, and Good Government of Canada”
― The British North America Act, Article 91

“The patronizing assumption by the powers in Ottawa that they best knew what policies would serve the interests of the West was resented by the unconsulted residents of that West”
― Garret Wilson

“If I had my way I'd move everybody up to Canada. It's nice there. Very polite. We went for a weekend last fall and got a flat tire and these two farmers with bright-red faces insisted on fixing it, then springing for dinner, then starting a college fund for the babies.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“La porte s’est ouverte tout de suite et est allée co - gner contre le mur. J’ai perçu un claquement, comme le bruit d’une paume ouverte rencontrant une eau boueuse, et la masse qui ne pouvait pas me ressembler s’est affaissée sur mon abdomen en même temps que l’humeur visqueuse m’entraînait à deux doigts de l’asphyxie. Puis un bruit sec a chassé la chose gisant en travers de moi, et celle-ci a atterri mollement au pied d’un paravent qui divisait mon appartement. Jan s’est éloigné du lit pour pousser du pied la masse presque humanoïde et a hoché la tête. J’ai eu une quinte de toux et j’ai recraché une substance peu ragoûtante. Il est venu près de moi, a détaché l’un de mes poignets pour que je m’appuie contre lui et il m’a frotté le dos en essuyant mon menton avec un coin de la couverture. Il n’a pas eu de mouvement de recul devant le bouillon visqueux qui se collait à lui. Je n’ai pas crié « Mon héros ! », mais, abandonnant tout orgueil, je me suis laissée aller dans ses bras à ma terreur rétrospective. « Nous te guérirons, disait-il, nous trouverons un moyen de venir à bout du LX-200. Fais-moi confiance, je ne suis pas ton ennemi. »”
― Sylvie Bérard, La saga d'Illyge

“The solution, Britain and its colonial leaders decided, was to import people who were loyal - but not necessarily inventive or talented or ambitious. The colonial administration was soon paying cashiered soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars and bankrupt but loyal British farmers to make the crossing. Reform politicians in Upper Canada complained that the colonial elite had issued a large number of land patents, often for sizable estates, to loyal Tories in Britain without regard for any other qualities….The strategy worked….But it also had the effect of choking the economic and civic life out of nascent Canada, at a moment when the Industrial Revolution was beginning to transform the rest of the Western world.”
― Doug Saunders, Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough

“Alaska’s like two thousand miles away from anywhere cultured. No offense, Canada.”
― Meagan Macvie, The Ocean in My Ears