The Easterners' Guide to Western Canada

Beverly Rasporich is a professor in the Faculty of Communication and
Culture at the University of Calgary. She is the author of Dance of the
Sexes: Art and Gender in the Fiction of Alice Munro and Magic Off Main:
The Art of Esther Warkov.

This book is a bargain at $9.95 because it is really two books: “The Easterners’ Guide to Western Canada” is the title of one side of the cover and “The Westerners’ Guide to Eastern Canada” is the title on the other side, and reversed — so that each side seems the legitimate text. The joking format is a wonderful indicator of what’s inside: a series of comic pieces and visuals on Canada East and West by a variety of humorous writers who obviously know, and enjoy mocking, their subjects. Regional identities are the source of the fun in what is an amazing compilation of Canadian attitudes, tastes, and experiences. Easterners are advised on the likes of the depression mythology in the West, the land, the folk heroes of Western Canada, Western cuisine, sports, macho men, and “Driving to Victoria, Rocky Mountain High Ways.” In this piece, we learn “why there are so many old people in Victoria. They didn’t intend to be old people in Victoria. Hale and hearty, they once set out to drive through the mountains; they are too terrified to drive back. So when addressed, they can only murmer, ‘Victoria? Of course, it’s absolute heaven’” (p.62).

Similarly, Westerners are advised on Eastern Canada’s conservative style, Toronto’s most exclusive clubs, the Toronto media, and many aspects of Quebec and the Maritimes, not to mention Florida, Canada’s eleventh province. In this section (book), you’ll learn about the geographic origins of Newfoundland — that “it was once attached to Ireland, but the two countries broke apart after a large shipment of rum blew up in the North Atlantic. This explains the two most important elements of Newfoundland society. They still speak Gaelic and, like the Irish, are too stubborn to give up rum even though it caused the break with the homeland” (p.32). I particularly enjoyed the delineation of the Kraft Revolution begun in the fifties in the Canadian hinterland, a revolution that gained momentum in places like Pelican Portage and Pickle Crow (my birthplace and a sentimental favourite) when the Kraft company decided to reward housewives from these places for such resourceful and creative recipes as the following, submitted by Mrs. Agatha Whelk of Departure Lake, Ontario:

The differences between East and West are also carefully presented. In “East Is East but West Is Best, The CFL and the NHL,” Don Gillmor explains that eastern teams are a little less threatening and that this “is evidenced by the banter that goes on between linemen when the ball is snapped”:

“I’m going to take your head off and spit down your neck, dickbrain.”

This is a very funny book; buy it and discover that Canadians do have a life after Dallas.