Could You Pass As a Canadian? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Parka

In wintertime we wear parkas, thigh-length jackets consisting of an outer shell (nowadays that's usually nylon or some other manmade fabric), and an inner lining of wool or another manmade fabric. In between the inner and outer shell is down or polyester wadding for warmth. The Inuit people, who invented the parka, made theirs of sealskin, worn with the hair side in.

Tuktu is the Inuit word for caribou - nice to look at, photograph, and, I'm told, in stew, but hard to wear. Similarly, ookpik is the Inuit word for the snowy owl. Nunavut (which means 'our land' in Inuktituk, the Inuit language) is the northern territory lying west and north of the Hudson Bay. It was carved out of the Northwest Territory in 1993 and officially became a separate territory in 1999. It is the fifth largest country sub-division in the world.

Answer: Poutine

Poutine is a highly indigestible (for me, anyway) fast food offering that became popular at roadside chip stands in 1960s Quebec. It consists of chips (or french fries to Americans), smothered in gravy and topped with cheese curds. Its popularity has spread beyond the borders of Quebec and it is now on the menu of most fast food restaurants across Canada. Tourtiere doesn't come in bowls.

It is a meat pie which originated in Quebec as a mainstay of the feast following Christmas Eve mass. It, too, has become popular across Canada. Laine is the French word for wool and if you want to eat a bowl of wool, be my guest. Brewis is not a Quebec dish. You'd have to travel to Newfoundland and Labrador for a bowl of brewis, which consists of bread, potatoes and fish with crunchy fried pork bits on top.

Answer: Newfoundland

Newfoundland, which joined the Canadian confederation in 1949, is affectionately known as The Rock, both to its inhabitants and to the rest of Canada.

I doubt if Sylvester Stallone comes up much in conversation in Canada, Roch Voisine, a popular Quebecois singer, is not known as The Rock but as Le Beau Roch (because he's very easy on the eyes, ladies, as well as on the ear), and Allan Rock is the former Minister of Industry and Commerce in the Chretien government, now serving as the Chancellor of the University of Ottawa. He comes up in conversation about as often as Sylvester Stallone.

Answer: Coffee with two shots of cream and two sugars

A double-double is coffee with two hits of cream and two sugars and it's a standard order at the Canada-wide Tim Horton's coffee shops. Tim's is so popular in Canada that, when asked what they missed most about home, Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan said "Tim's", so Tim's obligingly opened a Tim Horton's to serve the troops in Kandahar province. Canadian sailors also get supplies of Tim Horton's special roast coffee aboard ship.

I'm told that a double or even a triple shot of rye warms the insides on a cold night, but since I'm not partial to imbibing spirits I've never tested that theory for myself. Beer, next to Tim Horton's coffee, is the preferred potable of most Canadians (I'm not one of them because I can't stand the taste), and anyone who orders two servings of poutine at one go deserves to get indigestion!

Answer: Assiniboine River, Winnipeg, Manitoba

In the battle of the skating rinks, Winnipeg's Assiniboine River Skating Trail wins hands down over Ottawa's Rideau Canal skateway at 9.34 km over 7.8 km. to win the title of the longest skating rink in the world. Neither the Bow nor the Yukon, both fast-flowing rivers, freeze solidly enough to create ice skating venues.

Answer: Under the hood of a car

Block heaters are necessary equipment in Canadian cars - they prevent the engine from freezing when the mercury dips below minus 25 degrees Celsius. Indeed, it is illegal in my province to sell a car that does not have a block heater installed. We plug in our cars during the winter months and public and private parking lots have outlets for that purpose (tourists from warmer climes can never figure out why there are electrical outlets in parking lots. One visitor from Texas thought they were there for tourists to plug in their electric shavers!) When Canadians drive their cars south to the US they usually tuck the block heater cord inside the hood to prevent having to answer questions about why it's there in the first place.

Ice fishing shacks always have a heater of some kind, but not block heaters. Ice fishing is popular in the Great White North. We wear two or three pairs of warm socks in our winter boots, not block heaters, and it's the furnace, not a block heater, that one finds in the basement of every Canadian home.

Answer: All of these

Canadians often get mistaken for Americans abroad (the rest of the world doesn't have ears fine-tuned enough to detect our North American regional accents) so every Canadian heading away from Canada makes sure that there's a maple leaf somewhere on their luggage or person. Yes, we say 'eh?' frequently, and that applies equally to the well- and poorly-educated Canadians. And we have an international reputation for being polite and laid back.

It's only when we're at home that we are rude.

Answer: Puppets on a TV show for kids

Casey and Finnegan were puppets - Casey was a little boy and Finnegan was a dog and they appeared on 'Mr. Dress-Up', a popular CBC-TV children's program for 29 years.

While Canada abounds with Celtic singers and musicians, none of them is a duo named Casey and Finnegan, and our hockey commentators are Ron Maclean and Don Cherry (they succeeded the late great Foster 'He shoots, he scores" Hewitt).
The National News anchor on CTV is Lloyd Robertson who has been on that job for longer than many Canadians have been alive.

Answer: Canadian Tire

Canadian Tire is Canada's go-to store for all things automotive and do-it-yourself home improvement tools and materials. It was founded in 1922 and eventually spread across Canada. There are now 1100 Canadian Tire stores across the country. The Hudson Bay Company, which started business as a fur trading company in 1670, is now a department store chain and its major symbol is the red, green, yellow and blue stripes that appear on its world-famous blankets, while Eaton's, a Canadian institution in retail founded in 1869, bit the dust in 1999 (to the great sadness of former Eaton employees like me).

Its symbol was the Diamond E, an E enclosed in a diamond shape. Birks, Canada's premier jeweller, was founded in 1879, and its symbol, apart from its distinctive blue boxes, is a mirror image of the letter B.

Answer: A one-dollar coin

If you said 'a one-dollar coin', you're right. We call it the loonie because it has a loon (that's the bird with the distinctive call) on the reverse. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth is on the obverse of the coin, of course, and she appears on all our money, both coins and bills. Canada is, after all, a constitutional monarchy and a member of the British Commonwealth.

The two-dollar coin is called the toonie - go figure. To refer to someone as a loonie is, despite its seeming political incorrectness, merely a reference to his or her quirky character. Canada abounds in quirky characters.