Before Europeans arrived, the land in North America that would come to make up what is today the second-largest country in the world had many names. Of course it did: it had many different peoples. These peoples lived from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic, and many of them didn’t have any practical way to interact with each other. When Jacques Cartier started exploring what would become Quebec in 1535, looking for a sea passage to China, there was no reason to think the land that got in his way had the potential to be one cohesive nation. In a few centuries it would become one, but it took some time. It took a village. Specifically it took the village of Hochelaga to start the newcomers from Europe down the path to coming up with a name for the place. Hochelaga was a fortified Iroquois village that Cartier encountered on the St. Lawrence River. He and his party were greeted warmly by the Iroquois. Cartier named the nearby mountain Mount Royal, or Mont Réal. In ...

Halloween is often seen as a children’s holiday, or a holiday that used to be just for children but has since turned into an adult masquerade festival, too.  This was never really true.  In fact, getting kids in on the fun is a pretty recent development. The roots of Halloween are kind of scary.  They date back to pre-Christian Celtic Britain, known then as the festival of Samhain in Ireland, or Calan Gaeaf in other Celtic-speaking regions.  It took place in the middle of autumn, like it does today, as a way to mark the coming of winter.  The souls of the dead were said to walk the earth, and people would dress up as the dead in order to protect themselves from these souls.  Later, the Catholic Church made November 1  All Saints’ Day , a celebration of Christian saints, and made November 2  All Souls’ Day , a day to remember the dead.  These days were a major holiday on the Christian calendar, so October 31 was celebrated as the vi...

Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as cultural icons Bob and Doug McKenzie These days we often hear Canadians referred to as “Hosers”.  It’s a strange word, and it sounds a little insulting, but it’s sometimes used more with affection than malice.  Any such word is difficult to use correctly, especially if you don’t belong to the group the word describes.   I can’t say I feel comfortable throwing the word around, myself, but I can offer a little information about it that might shed some light on what it means. First off: is it an insult?  Yes… and no.   The word hoser can be used as an insult or as a term of endearment; the variation hosehead , is certainly an insult.  It’s a mild insult, meaning something like jerk or idiot or loser .  Its origin is unclear, and there are several debatable etymologies of the word.  One claims that it comes from the days before the zamboni was invented, when the losing team of an outdoor ice hockey game...