Canadian Sayings 3 by Bill Casselman sample page one

ISBN: 1-55278-425-8

published by McArthur & Company

"Bill Casselman is one of Canada's foremost lexicographers and word hounds. In addition to a career as a broadcaster and producer for CBC, he is the author of eight books on Canadian language."

Jennifer Maclennan, Inside Language: A Canadian Language Reader. Prentice Hall Allyn and Bacon Canada, 2002.

“Bill, I bought Canadian Sayings because, when I glanced through it in Coles, I found myself standing in a bookstore aisle with tears of laughter running down my face.”

Elizabeth Creith, Thessalon, Ontario 2004

RAVE REVIEW from the Montréal newspaper site www. ledevovir.com

C’est la vie! - Aussi Canadienne qu’une vache folle

Comment devenir Canadienne en chantant Bye bye, mon cow-boy

Josée Blanchette
Le Devoir Édition du vendredi 28 janvier 2005

Acheté : le livre d’expressions canadiennes Canadian Sayings 3, de Bill Casselman. J’ai raté les nos 1 et 2, j’imagine qu’ils sont encore meilleurs. Plus d’une vingtaine d’expressions colorées sur le mariage, plus de 200 sur la masturbation... les hivers sont encore plus longs que le mariage ! Tiens, en voici une à ressortir quand il fait janvier sous zéro : «Tits up and smiling at the moon.» Pour rester dans le thème de la frigidité : «She’s an ice cube with a hole in it.» Et pour illustrer la stupidité : «He’s skating on the wrong surface of the ice», ou encore : «She’s taking a surfing vacation in Saskatchewan .» Mon ex, the one and only anglo, disait : «Do bears shit in the woods ?» pour répondre à une évidence. Ils gagnent à être connus.

"Bill Casselman is a veteran writer, editor and broadcaster who says of himself, "the curriculum of my vitae zigzags in a most uncool pattern." Whatever pattern he's zigged in, he's managed to pick up a story or two along the way, and he's collected the best aphorisms in the country in the new, third edition of his book, Canadian Sayings 3."

Fanny Kiefer, Studio 4, Shaw Cable, B.C.

Bill Casselman, Canada's master-gatherer of funny folk sayings, returns with fresh bounty: hundreds and hundreds of new folk sayings not collected in his previous two volumes of knee-slappers and girdle-splitters. Here are Canadian maxims galore, snappy saws and breezy national adages-enough to fill the barn of delight many times over.

As always I have divided these hilarious one-liners into dozens of categories redolent of human nature, categories like Stupidity, Sex, Canadiana, Weather, and Work. And I add my own footnotes and explanations to those sayings whose meaning may be lost in time.

Here's one of my favourites sent in by a prairie high school class:

Why is it so windy in Saskatchewan? Because Alberta blows and Manitoba sucks.

Hey, it's simple high school geophysics with a touch of chauvinism.

Put-downs are as plentiful as ever:

If his I.Q. were any lower, we'd have to water him.

She'd try to sneak sunrise past a rooster.

Question: What's the difference between a Canadian and a canoe?

Answer: Sometimes a canoe tips.

She's from so far out in the boonies, she thinks a seven-course meal is roadkill racoon and a six-pack.

There are newly collected Canadian threats too.

You're lookin' to spit Chiclets, Dude.

This is mock goon talk from a junior hockey arena. Chiclets are little white pieces of chewing gum vaguely toothlike in shape. So the implication is: I'm going to knock your teeth out.

Keep it up, fellah, and I'll give you a haircut with a Weed-Eater.

But this collection, like the best-selling previous two books, has praise to offer also:

That dude could stickhandle through a box of matches.

Consider this expression of affection by a Chicoutimi mother to her daughter:

Je te connais comme si je t'avais tricoté. 'I know you as if I had knitted you.'

How about this apt squelch for a deeply annoying store clerk?

"Miss, by standing behind that counter, you are depriving a village of their idiot."

CANADIAN DIRECTIONS

She'll be up the line a tad.

Usually this Ottawa Valley locution means some place is located farther west or northwest of Ottawa, well into the Ottawa Valley. It might refer to a survey line, concession line, rail line, but most probably is a direct reference to the fabled Opeongo line, a modest roadway, a settlement road that begins at Farrell's Landing on the Ottawa River. It was planned to end at Opeongo Lake in Algonquin Park, but never stretched that far. The road, today no more than a pleasant country lane, fades away near Whitney, Ontario. In the middle of the nineteenth century, such roads were built to lure pioneers to settle the remoter parts of Ontario. Like so many Victorian lures to Canadian immigrants, exaggeration was involved. For instance, "free land for magnificent farms" was promised to newcomers. How this farming bounty was to occur on the thin rocky soil of the Opeongo Hills remains a mystery. The many ghost towns now drooping sadly beside the Opeongo Road attest to these false promises and to the fact that gung-ho folks tried to farm or provide services for lumbermen but failed, packed up, and moved away forever. Yes, a few Ottawa Valley lumber merchants found valuable stands of white pine in the forested hills of Opeongo. But after the pine was harvested, nothing much remained to keep people tied to this hardscrabble stretch of Ontario.

Canadian Sayings 2 was on the National Post Top-Ten Paperback List for 61 weeks. There are many authors purporting to offer Canadian humour. This book guarantees to make most Canadians laugh out loud, at the real humour of real Canadians talking without the Thought Police hovering nearby.

Canadian Sayings 3 has been on the Best Sellers list through most of the summer and fall of 2004. It hit # 4 in mid-August on the CBA list and is # 10 in the September issue of Quill and Quire.

Do you know some Canadian sayings you'd like to appear in my next collection? Send them to me now.