A Good Day to be a Canadian

I am proud to be a Canadian. I don't have a Canada tattoo, a pet beaver, I can't skate, and I don't like beer all that much. Despite all that, I love my country, and feel lucky to have all the things we have. I get mad at people who take certain things (waiting at the hospital, complaining about slow moving lineups at the grocery store, why voting is important) for granted. But Friday was an especially good day to be a Canadian, particularly if you teach at a small school out in a rural neighbourhood.

Why you ask? Well our school, North Addington Eduction Centre, happens to lie on a highway between two large military bases. On Friday, 3 bus loads of troops headed off to Afghanistan driving right passed our school. Now you may or may not agree with Canada's foreign affairs policies, but you have to respect the men and women who have signed up to serve in our armed forces. The school decided that we should show our support by going outside and wave as the buses passed by. Good idea. All the kids made signs. Great idea. We waited and waited in the rain, hoping to see them pass. After 35 minutes, they drove passed. But not before stopping, and getting out to talk, take pictures, and shake hands with staff and students. Best idea of the day. It was a really cool moment, and the kids were all respectful and grateful, as were the troop. The local paper was there and I think that the day meant a lot to many people. It was in general, really, really awesome.

And, the god day continued with a call from Best Buy, informing me that my XBOX 360 was fixed... Actually not fixed, they had decided to give me a new one. Couldn't they have decided that 3 weeks ago? The only junky part was that they would not give me the new 60 gigabyte hard drive instead f 20 gigabyte hard drive. Not the best scenario, but not the worst either.

As for rugby, the winning continues, as Queen's is now 12-0-1 after 3 weeks. After defeating Dartmouth and Army 2 weeks ago, they followed that up with a 89-3 victory over the University of Toronto, as well as a pair of victories over Syracuse (2nds won 26-19, 3rds won 36-0). This weekend was a bye for our Varsity team, but as luck would have it, Ulster University RFC, a school team from Northern Ireland, was in town touring and wanted to play us. This was actually the 5th game between the two schools, Queen's having won the previous 4.

It looked to be an enterprising game after Ulster scored a quick try 1 minute into the game off a terrible knock-on by one our locks (pass off his head when he wasn't looking), which was followed by our hooker being carted off the field with a concussion on the ensuing kick-off. But Queen's rallied, played some awesome defence, and was winning 29-5 when the game was called because of a fight. That's right, the team travelled across the Atlantic just to fight. They were getting tired and sloppy, so they were getting frustrated as a result. Nice guys all round, until the punches started raining down. I have never ever played with or against an Irish rugby player who was not a hard, hard player.

All in all it was a pretty good weekend. Back to the grind this week. Parent night on Thursday... should be interesting. It always is.