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January/February 1997 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Feature: Grizzly bears Write to Know Our Home and Native Tongue

"IT’S SO FLAT IN SASKATCHEWAN you can watch your dog run away from home for a week." That entry from Dick Swarbrick of Sylvan Lake, Alta., wins our contest, now closed, for best Canadian folk sayings sent in by Canadian Geographic readers. A copy of Casselman’s Canadian Words goes to him and to the four other winning submissions. Charlie Corkum of Summerside, P.E.I., wins second place with "so tough you couldn’t kill him with a sleigh stake." Third is: "Ça ne me pèse pas une fraise dans le cul d’un ours." That’s the same to me as a strawberry in a bear’s arse — that is, I couldn’t care less. Alison Hackney of Senneville, Que., learned that from a friend who grew up in Les Éboulements on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. Fourth prize goes to Susan Rabbitte of Calgary who offers a lesson in how to order a rare steak out west: "Just wipe its arse; cut off its horns, and lead it to the table." George Fairfield of Toronto wins fifth place with a saying of his Uncle James of Minden, Ont., who had been a teamster in lumber camps at the turn of the century and referred to how strict foremen could be: "You darsn’t spit on a whippletree in them days." A whippletree is the pivoted bar to which the traces of a team of horses are fastened.

Runners-up get honorable mention. Anne Clarke-Webber of Bedford, N.S., recalls a mother’s rebuke when a child didn’t eat up: "You may be chasing a crow for that before spring." From Bury, Que., Sandra Morrison sends this injunction to the tight-fisted: "A shroud has no pockets." John Jarvis of Calgary had a brother who spent five years in the Canadian Navy during World War II, part of it aboard a corvette in the North Atlantic where he heard this one: "I’ve seen fog so dense that a bunch of us matelots could sit on the rail and lean against it!" Colleen Ray of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., remembers: "Her hair looks like a birch broom in a fit." From Penticton, B.C., Dr. Brad Houston recalls that, among railroaders, prunes were called "CPR strawberries."

Are folksayings all pleasant? No, indeed. Consider this one: "Ugly? Got a face like a ripple in a swill bucket." Or this one from Red Deer, Alta.: "Looks like he came last in an axe fight." So why, you may ask, should we collect such pungent chunks of Canadiana and keep them alive? In an age where television threatens to make all of us speak exactly the same, in the pale, bland English of the TV newscast, it is no bad thing to keep in circulation these vivid reminders of what a dynamo English can be. Folk sayings may be off-colour, politically incorrect, or sacrilegious. But we are reporting the way real people talked, and still do talk, and one cannot always gussy up these phrases in Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes, because such editing out of uncouth references robs folk expressions of their power.

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE bits of country jawin’ conclude this roundup.

• On Prince Edward Island, this is said in the face of a violent storm: "It’s a poor day to set a hen."
  
• "Her food is so bad it would hare-lip a dog."
  
• Of a Canuck who’s drunk too much and can’t perform sexually: "He’s got Brewer’s Droop."
  
• Said in rebuke to children who complain of doing chores: "You can’t live on the wind and roost on the clothesline all of the time."
  
• Of childish behaviour in an adult: "That boy never did grow up. One day, he just sorta haired over."

Yes, Canadian folk sayings are full of delight and surprise, as indicated in Aylesford, N.S., by this final saying: "There he stood, winkin’ and blinkin’ like a toad under a spike-toothed harrow."

Bill Casselman is author of Casselmania: More Wacky Canadian Words & Sayings.

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