Who are the losers?

In case you hadn't noticed, Canada had a federal election yesterday. Not much changed. The Atlantic provinces voted against the tide like we usually do, and ended up mostly Liberal, while the rest of the country swayed a little more to the right re-electing the conservatives to power with a slightly more major minority government. 

What gets me, is that it was the worst voter turn out in history. Fewest ever! Crazy! The last worst was 2004, so we're not seeing super positive trends at the moment. 

I don't think it's because people feel there is no real choice. Like in most things, Canadians tend to drool over all things American, and I think it's really going to hurt us. America's a nice place and all, I've even lived there once upon a time. They're also really, really hard to ignore. Canadians are convinced we don't have a clear identity. We do, and always have. But it's not as neat and nicely packaged as that of our neighbour's, so we get confused. 

We demean Canadian culture because it's Canadian. We laugh at our history because it's not important enough. We can't compute a strong dollar (that statement might be a bit outdated by now...). We don't applaud our athletes because they didn't win as much. Our unofficial national sport is played in a forgein country. Our weather is "worse" (I happen to like winter). We label ourselves as bland, boring and ordinary because we don't get noticed by our American friends that much, if at all. 

We get excited when David Letterman mentions Nova Scotia when interviewing Ellen Page and when Regis talks about his trip.

We don't even vote for our own government. 

I'm flabbergasted. Canada is superfantastic and it's no wonder no one else knows it, because we don't seem to even know it ourselves.