24 Quotes by Will Ferguson

We have inherited an easy life in Canada. A life of calm. It is freedom of a lazy sort, a freedom so pervasive we barely notice it, and one that we claim by virtue of our citizenship. But it is also worth remembering that people -- in the words of Bulgarian-born Canadian philanthropist Ignat Kaneff -- 'crawl across minefields to get here.

Oh yes, we found out what happened to the Acadians. Apparently they went on a holiday, to Louisiana or someplace, and when they come back the Loyalists had moved in and taken all their land. So the Acadians killed them. Just kidding. The Acadians moved north into upper New Brunswick, where they now make up a third of the population. New Brunswick is, in essence, Canada in miniature.

The secret to having a good time in Ottawa? Move.

The great themes of Canadian history are as follows: Keeping the Americans out, keeping the French in, and trying to get the Natives to somehow disappear.

With or without the Royals, we are not Americans. Nor are we British. Or French. Or Void. We are something else. And the sooner we define this, the better.

You know what made us the biggest, meanest, Big Mac eating, calorie-counting, world-dominating kick-ass powerhouse country in the history of the human race? The pursuit of happiness. Not happiness. The pursuit.

The two most important phrases in the human language are “If only” and “Maybe someday”. Our past mistakes and our unrequited longings. The things we regret and the things we yearn for. That’s what makes us who we are.

As a parent? My fear is that when we die, we’ll have to watch all those moments in our lives when we were short-tempered with our children, all the times they needed our love and and we didn’t give it, all those times we were distracted, or in a bad mood, all the times we were angry or impatient.

The human memory is a salamander; it squiggles from point to point, slaloms its way improbably up walls and across ceilings.