With the World Cup well underway, it’s hard to avoid. TSN and Sportsnet are broadcasting plenty of games. Even if you never watch TV, surf the Web, listen to radio or read newspapers and periodicals, you should still be aware that the World Cup is going on right now. How? Stand on a street corner, that’s how.
At the moment it seems like most cars have a national flag on them. You know those little flags people attach to their car doors. I’m usually accustomed to seeing (ick) Leafs flags, and sometimes (determined by the season) Hockey Canada flags. In Kitchener and Waterloo, the most common flags are Germany’s and England’s. In Cambridge, there’s plenty of Portugal flags – a change of pace from those silouhettes of the province of Newfoundland that are usually commonplace there 😉 I actually saw someone with a full-sized Portugal flag hanging out of their car. A full-sized flag! Not one of those little car flags. Canada came close, but didn’t make the cut for this year’s World Cup. But aren’t the majority of the people with these flags on their cars Canadians; either natural or new? North America is unique in the world in that the ancestry of everybody here is from somewhere else. Case in point, me…
My mom was adopted, so I’m clueless as to any ancestory on that side. But her family were all from Quebec (and possibly France if you go much further down the line). People on that side of the family spoke french; Quebecios-style, mon amie. So the ties to France are pretty loose, at best. It’s safe to say that my mom’s side of the family, is deep-rooted Canadian. On the other hand, everybody on my dad’s side of the family in the generation before his is from Italy. From my dad’s generation onward, we’re natural Canadians. Should I run out an get an Italian flag for my car? I wasn’t born in Italy. I don’t speak Italian, save for the usual expletives that everyone should know. I don’t follow Italian politics and very few customs. I didn’t grow up playing soccer; I played hockey (and to a lesser extent, baseball). I love the food, but I really can’t identify with Italy on any level as close to Canada. I’m not the only one here with this kind of background. Yet every World Cup, people fly the flag of the country that their relatives come from. Since everybody is hooking up with everyone else, the next generations will be 1/8 this and 1/16 that and those slices will continue to become smaller. Who will be the first to fly the mutt flag on their car? I’d rather wait, no matter how long it takes, for Canada to qualify for the World Cup again and cheer for them when they do 😉
