A mother and her son were flying Air Canada from Toronto to Vancouver. The son (who had been looking out the window) turned to his mother and asked, “If dogs have baby dogs and cats have baby cats, why don’t planes have baby planes?”

The mother (who couldn’t think of an answer) told her son to ask the flight attendant. So the boy asked the flight attendant, “If dogs have baby dogs and cats have baby cats, why don’t planes have baby planes?

The flight attendant responded, “Did your mother tell you to ask me?”

The boy admitted that this was the case.

“Well, then, tell your mother that there are no baby planes because Air Canada always pulls out on time. Your mother can explain it to you.

Tired of squeezing into cattle class and looking for somewhere to stretch out? Pay just 12 dollars more to sleep in the overhead luggage compartments of Canada’s Westjet … on April Fool’s Day.
 
“The overhead compartment has traditionally been a place where guests have placed their carry-on baggage,” Westjet vice president Bob Cummings said in a joke statement.

“Given that the overhead bins on our fleet are among the most spacious of any airline, we made the decision to offer sleeper cabins in that space,” he said of their fleet of 73 Boeing 737s.

“By offering our existing overhead bins as sleeper cabins, guests will now have the opportunity to lie down for a period of time and arrive at their destination refreshed, rested and ready to go.”

The statement was accompanied with a picture of a traveler comfortably nestled in an overhead bin bed with a pillow and a blanket.  I have seen hotel rooms in Asia that looks similar to those overheads, so I guess a lots of folks fell for this one.

In some parts of the U.S. the word “Canadian” has ugly connotations and it is not because we refused to join the war in Iraq.  In the south, “Canadian” is a racial slur referring to African-Americans. The term has its roots in the word Canuck, says an expert.

“Canuck, that very same term of endearment Canadians use now,” was used by racist southern Americans to insult French Canadians with dark skins, said Stefan Dollinger, editor in chief of Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. Over time, we gave the word Canuck a totally different spin and it now refers to any Canadian, he said.

“In the U.S. some people still use Canuck as a slur,” said Dollinger, who is also the director of the University of British Columbia’s Canadian English lab.

Internet message-board posters have been discussing the issue of southern Americans using the word Canadian to replace racial epithets for black people.

A Texas district attorney got into trouble and have left others wondering what exactly it means when he used the word “Canadians” to describe blacks on a jury.

In an e-mail to a junior prosecutor, district attorney Mike Trent wrote: “He overcame a subversively good defence by Matt Hennessey that has some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing.”

Reports indicated there were no Canadians, but a number of black people.

“Never heard of that here in Edmonton,” said Michael Broodhagen, local chapter president of the National Black Coalition of Canada Society.   There goes the US being dumb again, it must be an effect of George W. Bush.

Wearing speedos at the beach is wrong, right?  But they crazy Canadians are showing off their speedos in sub-zero weather…that is wrong, very wrong!!  But it was all for a Sick Kids Foundation fundraiser, so that is ok, eh?

Those crazy, nutty Canadians sure have good hearts, check these guys out, they have no shame!

Talk about a party platform.  The Rhinos are back and they’re hoping to lure voters with the tantalizing promise of weekly orgasms - and marijuana in every pot. The Neorhino party promises to declare Spanish as Canada’s official language and pass legislation forcing Prime Minister Stephen Harper to go on a diet.

They’re proud of smoking pot, they draw their political inspiration from cigar-chomping comics and rock legends, and they want to get elected so they can stick it to “The Man.”  The new party - officially called neorhino.ca - is one of at least two groups claiming to be a reincarnation of the defunct Rhinocerous party that specialized in political satire.

Like the old Rhinos, the party has no clear political ideology except for two deep beliefs: something’s seriously wrong with the state of modern politics, and Canadian public discourse could use a lot more fun.  “We are a Marxist-Lennonist party - based on the philosophy of Groucho Marx and John Lennon,” said party president Francois Gourd.

He calls himself “Yo” Gourd, which in French sounds just like “yogurt.” He strode to the podium in the news-conference room near the House of Commons on Thursday sporting a cloth rhinoceros horn on his head.  The original Rhinos were founded in 1963 by Quebec author Jacques Ferron, and reached the pinnacle of their success in the 1980 election where they received 110,000 votes - or 1.01 per cent of the popular vote.

They never won a seat and stopped running election candidates in 1993 after an election reform law that stripped the party of its registered party status.  Gourd recently ran in Quebec’s Outremont byelection and finished sixth with just 145 votes.  The party claims to have 600 members in 30 ridings - 20 of them in Quebec.  Among its other campaign planks: Replace soldiers’ weapons with paintball guns; Create a national gas-barbecue registry; and replace the Defence Department with a Ministry of Laughter.

Beneath the thick veneer of gags, the party raises a serious point: people are so disenchanted with politics that almost 40 per cent of Canadians no longer bother voting in federal elections.  That, for the Neorhinos, produces a tantalizing bit of electoral math. If every single one of those non-voters were to cast a ballot for them, they could statistically hope to win a majority government.

The Neorhinos admit some respect for the established political parties - including the NDP and the Greens. They say it’s hard to like Liberals, and dismiss Conservatives as proponents of the politics of fear.  For example, they are no fan of the Tories’ war on drugs.  “We are for the Marijuana party of Canada - and we inhale. And we enjoy it,” Gourd said. “I am an illegal person. I have been smoking dope for 30 years.”

They poked fun at the prime minister for saying recently that he struggles to explain the drug references in Beatles lyrics to his son, Ben. To them, it offers further proof of how dull politicians are.  “We’re just joining the herd of the stupid, the idiots and the nuts,” Gourd said. “When you have to explain Beatles songs to your children, something is strange.”  I am not a big fan of politics but these folks seem to be heading in the right direction.

So everyone always thinks of Canadians as those too nice, docile folks to the North, but what they don’t know is that under the facade of sweetness lies the cold heart of a cheater. According to a Sun Media-Leger Marketing sex poll, though, almost 30% of Canadians admit to illicit trysts and cheating on their partner.

While Atlantic Canada boasted the most faithful partners, with only 16% admitting to cheating, that number doubles in the Prairie provinces, where 35% say they’ve been unfaithful. Gender differences are marginal among the 1,524 poll respondents, with 30% of men cheating, compared to 25% of women.

“Cheaters follow the same patterns,” Gruschynski, a private investigator said, and signs of infidelity are predictable. But sometimes the victims of betrayal can also fall into dangerous patterns, he added, and call back to bust subsequent unfaithful partners.

The bust-a-cheat business has been brisk in Edmonton, growing proportionally to the population boom. Summer is particularly busy, he said, when long summer days and more exposed skin heat up dormant libidos. Though it’s said it takes two to tango, most couples counsellors agreed that cheaters who do the horizontal mambo are ultimately accountable for their actions.

“The victim of betrayal should never be blamed,” said Montreal psychotherapist Jason Phelps. But infidelity is often the result of growing distance in the relationship, he said. When Sun Media dangled a carrot in front of respondents in the form of secret sex, three-quarters of Canadians said they would never cheat even if no one could ever find out. But a gender breakdown reveals that double the percentage of men — 26% — would cheat if given the chance. Meanwhile, the refrain “look but don’t touch” may apply to casual glances of admiration on the street, but intimacy at any level — including online — is considered a betrayal among the majority of Canadians.

Is kissing cheating? While 67% of Canadians consider kissing cheating, online intimacy is close behind at 63%, followed by “loving someone else but no sex” at 56%. “Many partners will feel betrayed by online chatting,” Phelps said. “They’re sharing their inner-most thoughts, feelings and fantasies with someone outside the relationship; the partner will feel betrayed.”

But while online intimacy is seen as emotional betrayal among 72% of women, only 54% of men consider cybersex and online chats cheating. “When one’s doing it secretively, it doesn’t involve the other person and it becomes an ongoing thing, it’s going to cause problems,” Phelps said. Having been the victim of a cheating wife I can tell you something you don’t always see in the above statistics and that is the broken homes and kids that have to grow up without an intact family. It seems wedding vows don’t mean much these days….