Image Credit: Mel Rothenburger

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: You and I know less about Canada than we think

Jun 28, 2019 | 11:59 PM

I CONSIDER MYSELF a good Canadian but, apparently, I’m not as good as I thought.

The annual Historica.ca extreme trivia quiz is out. I barely passed it.

Then I thought I’d try the real one, the one you have to take if you want to become a citizen. I barely passed it.

Just as well that, if you’re born here, you don’t have to pass a test.

Anyway, I got 22 out of 30 on the True-or-False Historica quiz, good for a B. I can take consolation, I suppose, in the fact 67 per cent of the 1,002 people who were surveyed between June 11 and 14 flunked. Anything less than 16 was a failing grade.

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I had no problem with some of the questions. I knew the Jolly Jumper was invented in Canada. I included that one in a column and Canada Day speech a dozen years ago when I bragged about Canadian inventions (the baseball glove, duct tape, the paint roller and so on).

And Winnie the Pooh being named after a real bear in Winnipeg didn’t fool me. I knew a “bunny hug” is a hooded sweatshirt, because I once accused the CBC’s Josh Page of wearing a babushka — he’s from Saskatchewan, where they call it a bunny hug.

Does Canada have a national horse? Nailed it – the “Canadian horse” is a very old and regal breed. And everybody knows lacrosse was invented by Indigenous warriors.

I did not, however, know the world’s largest beaver dam is 850 metres long, is in Alberta and can be seen from space. I thought that one was a trick question.

It’s also true that the residents of Berlin, Ontario voted to change the city’s name to Kitchener during the Second World War. Kitchener beat out five other options including Adanac, or Canada backwards. I should have known they wouldn’t make that up.

I thought the actual citizenship test would be easier, but they have a sense of humour at the citizenship office, too. I went online and took a test that is said to mirror the real one. You have up to 30 minutes to answer 20 multiple-choice questions. I finished in 5.7 minutes, quite pleased with myself. But then I got my results — 16 correct, only one more than the minimum of 15 to pass.

I forgive myself for not knowing that the most Canadians work in the service industry, not in resource jobs. I was horrified to find that my answer to “which country borders Canada on the south” was Mexico. Lose your focus, a slip of the pen, and you look like an imbecile.

One option for a question about the head tax was “a tax on beer.” One of the answers for rights covered in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was “the right to ski anywhere in Canada.” I didn’t fall for those ones.

Since no Canada Day weekend trivia quiz would be complete without a few true-or-false Kamloops questions, here are a half dozen. Don’t peek at the answers until you’ve tried to answer on your own.

Q: True or false, the world-famous Kamloops Fighting Trout is actually just a rainbow trout. The name ‘Kamloops Trout’ was created by tourism marketers.

FALSE: The Kamloops trout is a strain of the rainbow trout that has physical differences from your everyday rainbow trout. However, the differences are believed to be caused by environmental conditions, not genetic ones.

Q: Explorer Alexander Mackenzie and his expedition used rafts made of pine to come down the North Thompson River on their way to the Coast in 1793, stopping briefly in Kamloops.

FALSE: You might be thinking of the Overlanders, who arrived in Kamloops by rafting down the North Thompson in 1862. (The Overlanders statue in front of City Hall, and the bridge, honor their journey.) Alexander Mackenzie never visited Kamloops; he arrived at Bella Coola where he inscribed his famous line on the Mackenzie rock: “Alex. Mackenzie from Canada by land 22nd July 1793.”

Q: When the “instant town” of Logan Lake was established in 1970 to serve the Lornex mine, new residents discovered they had no place to get gas for their cars.

TRUE: Residents of the new town had to fill up in Ashcroft or Kamloops for the first year.

Q: Lytton has the highest summer temperatures in Canada, averaging 28.8C.

FALSE: At least not all the time. Lots of cities try to claim they’re the hottest. One source says Kamloops has the hottest summers in Canada, with an average temperature of 26.94C, probably for more days than Lytton. Kelowna has the most days with temperatures of 30C or above, with 24 days. Windsor is close. Prince Rupert, Victoria, Squamish and others are sometimes cited as the hottest city, but usually only for a day.

Q: One-time Kamloops MLA Rafe Mair once got so angry while golfing at Quilchena that he threw his clubs into a pond.

TRUE: The story goes that as Rafe got in his car after throwing the clubs, he discovered he’d left his keys in his golf bag, so he took off his shoes and socks and waded into the pond to fish out his bag, retrieved the keys, then threw the bag back in the pond before driving away.

Q: Before he became famous, Spencer Tracy spent six nights in Kamloops in 1939 as part of a travelling theatre production of Bad Day at Black Rock.

FALSE: But I did see him in the movie Bad Day at Black Rock at the Oliver Theatre after skipping my guitar lesson when I was 11. As everyone knows, however, Boris Karloff (who changed his name from William Pratt) was in Kamloops to play a role in a play called The Devil in 1911. Western Canada Theatre produced a play called Boris Karloff Slept Here in 1985.

You now know everything you need to know to have a happy, and proud, Canada Day. Enjoy.