Canadian Quotes

“All children should be taught to unconditionally accept, approve, admire, appreciate, forgive, trust, and ultimately, love their own person.”
― Asa Don Brown

“Don't tell me you're not beautiful. You're the kind of beautiful the blind would see if we could figure out some way to give them three seconds of sight.”
― Shane Koyczan

“Can I see some ID?"

"WE DON'T HAVE ID," said Jay, loudly. "'CAUSE WE'RE CANADIAN. WE DON'T USE ID...THERE. AND THAT'S WHY WE LOOK SO YOUNG. 'CAUSE WE'RE CANADIAN."

Doug stiffened. Jay sounded crazy. Doug tried looking extra sane to even things out.”
― Adam Rex, Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story

“Novels and gardens," she says. "I like to move from plot to plot.”
― Bill Richardson, Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast

“The lonely, wistful revisionism of memories is as gratingly repetitive as snow and ice in Canada. I avoid them both at all costs - memories and Canada.”
― Brian D'Ambrosio

“As opposition leader, [Stephen Harper] wrote in the Montreal Gazette in the year before he came to power: 'Information is the lifeblood of a democracy. Without adequate access to key information about government policies and programs, citizens and parliamentarians cannot make informed decisions and incompetent or corrupt governments can be hidden under a cloak of secrecy.'

When he became prime minister, his attitude appeared to undergo a shift of considerable proportions. It often took the Conservatives twice as long as previous governments to handle access requests. Sometimes it took six months to a year.”
― Lawrence Martin, Harperland: The Politics Of Control

“The zombies were like Canadians, in that they looked enough like real people at first, to fool you.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“Americans like to make money; Canadians like to audit it. I know no other country where accountants have a higher social and moral status.”
― Northrop Frye

“For [Stephen] Harper, a national daycare plan bordered on being a socialist scheme, a phrase he had once used to describe the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. For [Paul] Martin, whose plan would have transferred to the provinces $5 billion over five years, the national program was what Canadianism was all about. "Think about it this way," [Martin] said. "What if, decades ago, Tommy Douglas and my father and Lester Pearson had considered the idea of medicare and then said, 'Forget it! Let's just give people twenty-five dollars a week.' You want a fundamental difference between Mr. Harper and myself? Well, this is it.”
― Lawrence Martin, Harperland: The Politics Of Control

“I succeeded on my own, why can't you?" is a dispassionate call to the majority of Native people to forsake one another. The end results is each of us digging our own way out of the hole, filling up the path with dirt as we go. Such things as justice and principles prevent the whole people from becoming dispassionate. Until all of us are free, the few who think they are remain tainted with enslavement.”
― Lee Maracle, I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism

“Bill C-9 was supposed to be a budget bill, but it came with innumerable measures that had little or nothing to do with the nation's finances. It was, as critics put it, the advance of the Harper agenda by stealth, yet another abuse of the democratic process. The bill was a behemoth. It was 904 pages, with 23 separate sections and 2,208 individual clauses....

As a Reform MP, [Stephen Harper] .... said of one piece of legislation that 'the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.' The bill he referred to was 21 page long -- or 883 pages shorter than the one he was now putting before Parliament.”
― Lawrence Martin, Harperland: The Politics Of Control

“The result of being colonized is the internalization of the need to remain invisible.”
― Lee Maracle, I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism

“Paul had the impression he often had in the United Kingdom, of having just been subtly insulted in an obscure way that would take too much energy to parse, and as always he couldn't tell if the insult was real or just a typically Canadian case of postcolonial insecurity.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“Yes, we're all overly polite, forage for berries in the summers, and craft simple wooden objects of great beauty around the fire at night.”
― Ben Philippe, The Field Guide to the North American Teenager

“We have built our houses between what is fluid and what is fixed.”
― Helen Humphreys, Wild Dogs

“The nuns were not the only ones to take an interest in French-Canadian cooking that fall. It was a November evening, a little before the first snow. With both her parents out, Madeleine opened the can of maple syrup she had stolen from the Damours grocery store. The maple syrup pie recipe was quite straightforward. Just five ingredients. But Madeleine prepared it with all the care and attention to detail that the Japanese take in making sushi. She worked in religious silence, without making a mess, without spilling flour. The sweet aroma of maple syrup soon floated over the kitchen, then the living room, as the syrup boiled with the heavy cream. A smell delectable enough to wake the dead, to make them wish they were still alive. Madeleine washed the utensils as she went, leaving no trace behind. Once the pie was in the oven, its aroma gained in strength and substance.”
― Éric Dupont, The American Fiancée

“Her light brown hair fell in the way that he liked, in a single braid that snaked down the back of her dress. Her dark-green silk skirt complimented his tunic and set off her deep blue eyes nicely. Such eyes any man in love could easily get lost in.”
― Sydney Williams, Princes and Kings

“Reaching his bedroom door, Llywelyn opened it and went inside. Sitting by the fire was his man-servant Olan, busy cleaning one of his many surcoats. A smallish man, Olan made up for his lack of height with a muscular body. His short black hair, and deep-set lake blue eyes, seemed to see everything, giving him an-other-worldly appearance. This ability to see through any situation had come in handy more than once over the years.”
― Sydney Williams, Princes and Kings

“As the royal party moved through the streets, one of the young street urchins darted up to Lord Owain, the eldest son of Lord Gruffudd, and attempted to slip his hand into his pocket. Owain quickly grabbed the boy and shook him roughly. “Have some respect,” he snapped.

Hearing the altercation, Gruffudd turned his head and smiled at the boy. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin, tossing it to the boy.

“Run along now and remember to have more respect for your superiors in the future,” he said, giving him a cuff to the arm. The boy, red-faced nodded his head in thanks and ran back into the crowd.

“Why did you do that?” Owain asked.

“Because now he will go on his way and not bother us again,” Gruffudd explained.

Owain simply shook his head in disgust, and with a surly look towards the crowd, rubbed his hands on his tunic. The boy’s clothing had been so filthy that he could feel the dirt coating his fingers.”
― Sydney Williams

“Up there, in Daniel’s office, I felt a disconnect, as if someone was performing surgery on my soul—trying to extract any remaining traces of my humanity.”
― Oliver Dean Spencer, The Crossing

“[...] waiting for the shot that would kill him. Everyone said you didn't hear that shot. They said if it got you it was silent. How the hell did anyone alive know that?”
― Timothy Findley, [The Wars] [Author: Findley, Timothy] [August, 2001]

“Much of being a gay man in rural Canada is still the experience of being a stampede of horses in an enclosed cul-de-sac. The horses are invisible and translucent, but the pain of galloping through walls and furniture and fences is acute.”
― Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body

“What might it look like for NDNs to refuse life in the wake of all that's happened to us in a country in which we're social experiments before all else?”
― Billy-Ray Belcourt

“If I try to compose anything but sad poems, I fear it'll be akin to a widower trying to convince others that he has found happiness again by wearing a T-shirt that says HAPPINESS.”
― Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body

“I'm ravenous for the future, but my longings are incompatible with the available versions of it. Bummer.”
― Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body

“Desirous of a beautiful life I get out of bed, but it's Monday and I'm in the throes of a genocide.”
― Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body

“I'm as lonely and as brief as a country.”
― Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body

“Freedom makes breathing easier; it begets an atmosphere governed by joy, not oppression. Freedom is a measure of breathability.”
― Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body

“What determines our lives as NDNs and/or queers are pain and trauma, love and hope. Death looms at all scales, individual to planetary.”
― Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body

“The kindness of Canadians when they see someone with a canoe is really a wonderful thing”
― Adam Shoalts, Where the Falcon Flies: A 3,400 Kilometre Odyssey From My Doorstep to the Arctic