Looks like I have returned to this place. It's the land of big skies and angry farmers. The place where Mini-Wheats (sans sugar topping) come from. The French Indians called it Lac du Merde in the years before the vile terrorist, Louis Riel, was hanged at Moose Jaw.
Good history, here. I'm all the way full of it.Yesterday, my wife, Bunny, and I couldn't figure out if people from this awful place, Saskatchewan, were called
Saskatchewanites, Saskatchewaners,
Saskatchewanians, Saskatchewanooniens, or
Saskatchewananas. Somebody came along and suggested Cousin-fuckers, and we all had a little chuckle.
We are Manitobans by birth, Bunny and I.
There was a time when I thought that Manitoba had more Ukrainians than the Ukraine, but then I relocated to Saskatchewan and... Holy crow! Most Saskatchewaneggers are Ukrainian or part Ukrainian, and the ones who are left over, and some of their cousins, are from Scandinavia. Every meal is lefse and pirogies. But I look at the words Scandinavia and The Ukraine and wonder if those were combined to make the word Saskatchewan. (Somebody says it's actually a Cree word meaning, "to mince fish with one's toes," but I don't believe it for even an instant.)
People in Saskatchewan, those pesky Scandiukrainian varmints, like to eat dinner at lunch-time. This is a pretty big deal for them--some will come right out and scold you for referring to supper as dinner. "Dinner is lunch, you imbecile." Maybe the word Chutzpah comes from Saskatchewan, too. Naturally, one would wonder if the dinner date, dinner and a movie, or dinner theater happen to take place around high noon in Saskatchewan.
Make a single bestiality joke in the presence of five middle-aged men and notice that--while there is some healthy, polite laughter taking place--there's a whole lot of secret winks and nudging one another in the ribs. I'm only pointing it out.
Why can't everyone be Saskatchewanese? All the Asians get to use the suffix -ese. Chinese, Taiwanese, Polygonese, Samoan, etc. Are they better than us just because they're clever with hotels and real estate?
What a wacky province! Living here is like being bonked on the head and waking up in a German submarine. They despise trees and have spent the last hundred years trying to eradicate them. When they come across a stagnant, filthy slough in the middle of the prairie, they get together and build cottages around it. And Jezus, last I checked, is still hailed as the chief rain-god and master of the world.
It is illegal, allegedly, to pray using the hand you last wiped your ass with. (Perhaps I'm thinking of Newfoundland or Saudi Arabia.) But the last time they had a lynching was 1992, when the last of Riel's band of criminals was finally rounded up at Valparaiso, so one doesn't need to be too careful.
Oh, now comes the answer: Saskatchewanian. Apparently that's the official term.
Wait until I discuss British Columbiers.
