SHOUT OUT: 5 REASONS TO LOVE CANADA

Five reasons Canadians love Canada (that have nothing to do with maple syrup).

Even though we all live in igloos and ride moose and wear snowshoes everywhere (since we can’t drive because there’s too much snow) and Tim Horton’s comes out of our taps, us Canadians sure do like it up here. Besides the whole health care thing (nothing to sneeze at) here are five things we love about being Canadian:

We have amazing, spectacular, jaw-dropping nature

From Lake Louise in Alberta to the coast of B.C to the Gaspesie in Quebec to Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada is chock-full of sublime natural sites. Which, if you think about it, makes sense since despite being the 2nd largest country in the world, we have a comparatively tiny population.

We have truly multicultural cities

Just as an example, half of all Toronto residents were born in another country. Even ten years ago, Toronto’s Census reported residents from more than 200 distinct ethnic origins.

We’re nice

And it’s something to be proud of. We smile at each other in greeting and we apologize when we slam into you on the street. We could always try whacking everybody across the face instead, but being nice works too. Actually, let’s just keep being nice!

We keep churning out insanely good talent

Given that our population is about the size of California we have a pretty high ratio of talent repping in Hollywood. People like Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling and Ellen Page and Jim Carrey and Seth Rogan and Elisha Cuthbert and Rachel McAdams and Will Arnett and Catherine O’Hara and – OK, we’ll stop.