I Hope That Cost a Digit.

One of the strangest laws in the land is found in Ontario. Here, fireworks are illegal, except for on Victoria Day (the Monday before May 24) and on Canada Day (July 1). Does this make sense? Are we to understand it that folks in Ontario need to light fireworks, and the government is obligated to set aside at least two days a year for their use? The days on which the yokels are most drunk??

I ask again: Does this make sense?

So on these two supposedly festive (but perversely awful) days, all the sad drunks clad in Molson caps and WWF gear crawl out of their woodwork in herds to storm the local 7-11 to stock up on cheerfully-coloured explosives and then, with a beer in one hand, take their kids to whatever quarry, field or backyard they can find, to, once again, play Russian roulette with their children’s future as piano virtuosos. And the rest of us have to sit tight, bear the cracks and snaps, and pray one doesn’t land on the roof. (And I can’t even bear to think what it is like for older folks who may reflect on even less pleasant memories with the bangs!)

There isn't even any test to make sure these folksies know why they're celebrating some dead Queen's birthday in the first place!

What really gets me about all this is that Ontarians DARE to cast Maritimers in the role of the nation’s hicks, and the poor Albertans as the country’s rednecks! Listen, there are just as many roll-bars around here as I have ever seen anywhere else in the country, and there can be no greater density of rube-ism as can be seen in this so-called “Golden Horseshoe.”

I am not usually given to low humour, but these folks certainly put the cracker in firecracker. (And I wouldn’t be all that saddened if the firecrackers put the shrapnel in the crackers.)

And at least hicks out East usually confine themselves to hick counties and hick structures (stadiums, hunting lodges, etc), not my backyard. And at least they aren’t armed with rockets and Roman candles. Somehow, they manage to satisfy their hick self-identity with merely the Molson hats, and without the fire.