Soap Box

As I write this, we have just arrived in Canada for a string of show dates in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on the East Coast where the provinces (what we in the U.S. call states) are known as the Maritimes, obviously having to do with their proximity to the Atlantic Ocean.

Canada stretches across the entire width of the North American Continent and its people are as diverse and colorful as the ever-changing landscape, from the rugged north coast to the prairies of the midlands through the Canadian Rockies on to the Pacific West Coast.

Much like the United States, Canada is a nation of immigrants, rich with cultures from around the world but with a definite majority of English and French populations. French is not the second language of Canada but a co-equal language with English, and French is spoken almost exclusively in the province of Quebec and in enclaves across the nation.

Every road sign, every set of directions, even the labels on beer bottles are printed in English and French and you hear both languages and a plethora of others as you move around the country.

Canadians love their sports and most major cities boast not only a hockey team but also a football team, with somewhat different rules than the American counter part but played in the same way. Canada had two Major League Baseball teams, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Montreal Expos - until they moved to the U.S. and became the Washington Nationals. Every town, large and small, has a curling club, a fairly obscure sport until a relatively few years ago when it worked it's way into the Winter Olympics.

The Midlands and Western Canada are the home of gigantic agricultural industries, and hundreds of acres of yellow canola in full bloom is an incredible sight to behold.

In parts of Canada oil production is booming, producing enough oil for domestic consumption with plenty left over to export. They offered some of it to the US, which could have helped us stop buying oil from terrorists, if not for the stubborn reticence of a president and a congress without the guts to go against him.

One of the first things you notice about Canadian cities are how clean and well kept they are and how they take advantage of the short growing season to decorate their yards and public parks with flowers, myriads of species and colors in patterns and wild profusion making for a pleasant sight when strolling around the city.

A unique thing occurs in Canada, one I've never seen at any other place in the world. One minute you're riding through rolling prairie and without the warning of a suburb or an outlying village, there springs up, right in front of you, a major city complete with skyscrapers and teeming city streets, just a few miles away, looking for all the world as it had just been uncrated last week.

If you've never been to Canada and you have the idea that Canada is the 51st state, you are sadly mistaken and nothing could be farther from the truth.

While Canada is one of the best friends the United States of America has ever had, they are a proud and sovereign nation, with their own national personality, their own way of life and most definitely their own identity 

I have had the pleasure of touring Canada from Atlantic to Pacific and as you move from the coastal beauty of the Maritimes across to the quaint little villages of Quebec where you may have to use sign language unless you happen to speak French, to the magnificent Canadian Rockies and through Calgary, Alberta where one of the truly great rodeos is held and cowboy hats are common to the cosmopolitan high rises of Vancouver, British Columbia and the blue Pacific, the changing landscape and cultures combine to make it one of the more worthwhile treks on earth.

Thank you Canada for being our good friend, thank you for letting us come and entertain your people all these years.

May God bless the people who salute the Maple Leaf flag.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels​