With the big celebration upon us, we reach into last year’s newspaper to once again salute this fantastic country. From the July 1, 2008 edition of Kamloops This Week, a slightly updated tribute to our nation:

Canada is now 142 years young and Riverside Park is ripe for celebration.

There is so much to celebrate about this crazy country of three ocean coastlines and five time zones

Give a toast to this country of comics, of Royal Commissions, of wild weather, of vinegar on french fries, of hockey, of complaining without taking action, of CanCon, of pogey, icky-bicky, loonies and twoonies, of adoring the CBC, of hating the CBC, of voting, but against rather than for a party, of choosing not to vote but bitching about the results anyway, dammit!

Salute today this remarkable land that has blessed us with all this and more. Don’t for a moment think we cannot be brilliant.

Consider just a smidgen of what Canada has offered up to the rest of the globe:

CPR dummy, anti-gravity suit, automatic lubricators, Balderdash, basketball, electric cooking range, electric wheelchair, Fuller brush, ice hockey, kayak, kerosene, lacrosse, computerized braille, electric car heater, electric light bulb, JAVA, instant mashed potatoes, prosthetic hand, film colourization, Pablum, jetliner, Jolly Jumper, zipper, snowblower, snowmobile, garbage bag, Avro Arrow, heart pacemaker, electric organ, IMAX movie system, goalie mask, electric microscope, electric streetcar, gramophone, lawn sprinkler, insulin process, Marquis wheat, Robertson screwdriver, newsprint, odometer, football goalpost with single base, Trivial Pursuit, paint roller, Plexiglass, Mcintosh apple, standard time, telephone, music synthesizer, television camera, safety paint, television, portable film developing system, telephone handset, railway sleeper car, undersea telegraph cable, mobile blood transfusion service, light bulb, walkie-talkie, wireless radio, Pictionary, birchbark canoe, retractable beer-case handle, snow shoes, steam foghorn, table hockey, Superman, toboggan, synchronized swimming, Velcro, five-pin bowling, Abdominizer, Yahtzee, AC radio tube, acetylene — and, of course, three-down football, the way God meant it to be played.