-ites, -ers and -gonians

I was just browsing the Geist new, shiny website, and came upon a review for a book by Katherine Barber called Only in Canada. In some respects I don't care about keeping a written record of Canadian catchphrases, because they change all the time and what was in common use when I was a kid (jambusters and canned drinks) may not be in use to any great extent now. Geist keeps a Canadian Phrasebook going (although I can't locate it on the website right now) and it's cute, being made up of things "we used to say".

What I thought of though, was what often is said to me when I tell people I'm from Winnipeg. I don't go around proclaiming that I'm from Winnipeg, don't get me wrong, but if asked, I indicate. "Oh! Winterpeg! I've been there!" it's always Winterpeg. You know, I would like to take the person who first coined that little moniker and slap them upside the head (it might have been Don Percy (scroll down a bit to find him) but I suspect it didn't really happen in my lifetime.) because after 10,000 times it's just not funny any more. It wasn't funny in the first place. Yes, it's cold there in the winter, but it's Winter! the temperature drops that time of year, sometimes to -40C, but not for the entire season. It's not like it's winter all the time, and it's not even as cold as Edmonton or Regina, but still, the pun is the play on words, and whenever I hear someone say, "Winterpeg!" my first thought is that they are particularly stupid and uninventive. Next thing I expect is, "And the mosquitoes in the summer....!!" and they can be particularly nasty, I'll admit, but at least there isn't a special way of saying "Winnipeg!" when people say, "The provincial bird is the mosquito, right?"

That wasn't my rant for today though. I was looking at the Geist site, like I said, and glancing at the book review, when it was pointed out near the end of the review that people from various locales indicate their home base via different suffixes. People from Winnipeg are Winnipeggers (whatever connotation that brings to mind) and when I've told those who've asked me that, they're usually, thankfully, stumped for a snappy comeback. Those from Halifax are Haligonians. Those from Guelph are Guelphites. I don't know why Haweaters live on Manitoulin Island, but I expect that is explained somewhere here.

It's not like this suffix business is a special Canadian thing, it's just that the one sentence in the review caught my eye, and I was reminded of a former colleague who used to go around saying "Winterpeg!" as though it was the funniest thing ever heard or said, ever. Then again, he used to refer to me as an "Upper Canadian" or say that I had no idea how poor (as in monetarily poor) some of our students would be, seeing as I'd never been around poverty. Two things come into play here, the first is that I am the furthest thing from Upper Canadian as one can be, and that it is almost a direct insult to refer to someone from The West as being from Southern Ontario. I take the liberty here of defining Winnipeg as The Gateway to the West, although Albertans don't consider Manitoba to be The West. It's a tricky clique. Like a fool, I take the bait on these issues and will attempt to correct the misinformed (Oh, you're all the same to us, anyone not from here is an Upper Canadian), even when they are just trying to rile me up. Sadly, I am easily riled, but equally sadly, while my former colleague used to eventually break down and say that he was just pulling my chain, I knew full well that he was ignorant of the differences between The West and "Down East", which is the Toronto/Southern Ontario area, and not to be confused with The Maritimes, which to most people from The West might as well be another planet. Even there I'm being inaccurate, because the of the recent -- last 15 years -- of migration from The Rock to Fort MacMurray, so The East Coast is not so much another planet as just not Down East.

My second issue was of course that I'd never seen poverty before. Without going into details, I'd say that Southern Ontario isn't devoid of poverty, and that I'm otherwise pretty familiar with it.