You really got a hold on me.

I have a bachelor's degree in Canadian Studies.  People's reactions are fairly predictable when I reveal this.  Eyebrows typically pop up, rendering a look of either amusement or surprise.  A common follow-up to the question of what I majored in is, "What?"  After I repeat my answer I am very often asked, "Oh, are you Canadian?"  When I reply in the negative, they pretty much universally seem baffled or amused, or both.  Were we in a comic book, one of those puffy thought bubbles would appear over their head, containing the word "nutjob" (or possibly just a drawing of a peanut, or perhaps a nut threaded onto a bolt).*  Sometimes I get a diplomatic and conversation-ending, "Oh, that's interesting!  I majored in [something practical, or at least something that, if not terribly useful in the job market, is widely recognized as a subject worthy of academic interest]."  Then I can ask them about that.  Other times I am asked to explain myself.

What is it with me and Canada?  I don't know if I have a satisfying answer to that; just that I can't remember a time when Canada didn't interest me.  

My first trip there was with my Campfire** group when I was in 4th grade.  We took the Princess Marguerite ferry (no longer extant) for a day trip to Victoria (I have no earthly idea why), and my two main memories of this are (1) a lady barfing into a clear plastic bag as we docked in Victoria (yuck, who does that?  Find a bathroom [washroom]), and (2) one of the members of my group having a freakish, likely unbroken-to-this-day streak of luck on the claw machine onboard and winning crappy stuffed animal after crappy stuffed animal.  I don't remember much about Victoria itself, just that they had different and very cool-looking money, I bought some rad-ass stickers (hello, I was in 4th grade and stickers were of an extremely high degree of importance) and things were a bit British-y.  This is a feature of Victoria (if you are not familiar with the place and its rep)--it's known to be a darn sight more British-y than at least the rest of Western Canada, if admittedly self-consciously so.  But this first trip really put Canada on my radar.  A foreign country, right next door, which I never really thought about before,  that barely seems different from where I live at all.  

Of course, my understanding of Canada and my feelings about it have changed and deepened in the ensuing years.  In general, America seems to be of two minds about Canada.  Many people here think Canada is a joke, an also-ran country that is pretty much no different from the US except perhaps that it is lamer.  And they know next to nothing about it.  Others--particularly those who lean to the left politically--think Canada is cool, but also don't know much about it.  It is definitely seen by some as a sort of lefty utopia, and/or a cute and quirkily lovable little place.  These ideas of Canada definitely underestimate the country and its people, and are (in my opinion) off-base.

So, what do I think of Canada?  This is difficult for me to answer in a way that makes sense to me and anyone who asks me, but here is the extremely short and un-nuanced answer:  I like it (um, just in case you didn't pick up on this).  It sounds dorky, but I find Canada endlessly interesting (again, just in case you didn't pick up on this through the fact that I majored in the study of it in college).  The place has a mysterious sort of  hold on me, hence the title of my blog (and of this particular post).

And so, what am I going to do with this blog?  Well...my university didn't have the greatest Canadian Studies program (no offense to them; I get it, I guess), so I just chose mostly to explore and work with Canadian-related topics in a lot of classes that didn't necessarily focus on Canada specifically.  I imagine I'll end up doing something similar here: talking about the things that interest me, having to do either directly or indirectly with Canada.  And, let me just say up front, I won't promise to stay on-topic.  It's, ah, not exactly one of my strengths.  I go off on tangents a lot.  I am (as you can see) fond of using parentheses, semi-colons, hyphens, colons and ellipses, and I am a rather zealous user of commas though I am trying to cut down on using them so much (I only gave up the Oxford comma fairly recently and sometimes I ache for it...).  I am also a devoted list-maker.  Also...I acknowledge that my French is absolutely atrocious.  Per the requirements of my major, I have two years of college-level French under my proverbial belt, but I am in no way fluent or skilled in speaking French.  I do, however, kind of love speaking French in my own limited way so I'm sorry if my shoddy use of it offends.

And thus begins my blog.  Hello!

*If this comment does not make it obvious to you, perhaps I should explain at this point that I read a lot of Donald Duck and Archie comics in my formative years. 

**Campfire is, I suppose, comparable to Girl Scouts (Girl Guides, in Canada) but WAY BETTER, MAN.  Don't make me explain this.