Lifestyle: Canada 2010: Australia Day

Tuesday was a little bit of Australia Day in Whistler. Longhorn’s Saloon and Grill attracts the yellow and green facepaint crowd, the special yellow and green jackets reserved for this one occasion on the mountain; those who fear no fall are in their swimsuits and fly with Australian flags draped around their necks. Most of them are quite drunk by now – the lifts have closed, some take pictures, many pretty girls in the patio chairs talking amongst themselves.

Sunday was America’s day, in my first “expatriate” experience of watching the Vikings play while being a minority caring much about it. Minnesotans (a Target Corporate guy, two CPA-types and another sitting around in Longhorns with their jerseys, believed to be all different, drinking what would normally be cheap beer, expensively. The guys offer me up a spot, I eat some celery, chat about my writing and post college “plan.”

But today is not a good one to mention being an American to these people. Rowdy (one punches another – two Aussies – and the one guy gets escorted away for medical attention with a bloody tooth – “Woman,” Wolfmother’s classic, blares on the P.A system, the security guard kicks two men out sitting on a ledge not far from me, waiting for friends.

The only journalism I attempt is with two girls, I introduce myself, ask if they are Aussies, one acknowledges to be, the other is British, so I ask them what they think of the scene in front of us. They are observers, not drinkers, and tell me that they’re slightly ashamed of it all, not really proud of it – so I ask them about what people in Australia are doing right now back home.

“At the bars, probably the same thing,” meaning causing trouble. “What is Australia Day all about?” I ask one of the girls.

The Aussie cannot really come up with a good answer, she mumbles something about Captain Kirk, feels dumb not knowing what it is all about, their friend arrives to take the focus off of this lack of patriotic knowledge.

But it brings into good question what days like this are for – simply an excuse to get drunk on a Tuesday? A sense of bonding in a place dominated by fellow countrymen, for once, a concentration of likeminded people as a mutual majority while the American journalists scribble away on pieces of scratch paper, trying to get at least one of these cultural events about the things he sees, trying to avoid a confrontation so maybe I’ll live to see another?

It is nice to see things from the outside, to think on them, make poor conjectures; but, at the very least, I’m not the one waking up with the wicked hangover --