I am sitting in the same place for breakfast, in the same chair, even, and just killing time until I have to catch my bus back to Paris, then the plane back to Canada.

I'm already wearing my travelling clothes, even my lucky underpants (those are important).

Forty-eight hours from now I will be in Canada. No canals, no good cheese, no crazy history and beautiful buildings.

Don't get me wrong. I love Canada. But I often feel that the cities are built more for efficiency than love or pride.

I've been thinking over my travels. What makes me proud to be Canadian?

Anything?

The whole mess with the oil pipeline that's going on right now. What are we viewed as? Just another source? Another country sacrificing pride for profit?

What happened to our peace keeping missions? I looked up a list of missions. Between 1990 and 2000, we were involved in approximately sixteen different peace keeping missions.

Since 2000, approximately nine, with two of those continuing on to today.

What happened to Canada as a peace keeping nation?

I have been talking a bit to other folks, and I more often than not get rounds of: "Oh, Canadian! That's just like American!"

Sometimes it's just to get a rise out of me, I know, but it's kind of true.

Someone leaned over to me after one of those encounters and said: "But really. I don't see a lot of difference."

I don't really, either.

I can rail against being called American, but really, is there any difference?

We get shittier winters and a lizard-man for a prime minister, instead of a nubian god. We have a Queen that hardly ever comes to visit, and more land than we know what to do with. We can't very well fill it up with civilization, because let's be honest, who really wants to live in northern Saskatchewan? Seriously.

Amsterdam has a population of a million(ish) people, and about 1.2 million bicycles. I have watched the traffic with great interest. Most people drive bicycles or motorcycles, with only a few driving cars. Nobody wears helmets on bicycles.

I was terrified at first, and I asked my buddy Cipri about it, and he just laughed.

So I watched some more.

People in cars watch out for bicycles. They actually treat them like vehicles on the road (unlike Calgary, where people get really twitchy near bicycles and/or try to nudge them off the road). They also appear to trust each other to be paying attention, and move around the road carefully but with purpose.

I wish drivers/bicyclists in Calgary could see how the traffic moves here. I am downright embarassed at the city's treatment of bicyclists, and I wish Calgary would install about a thousand more miles of bike paths.

Mind, Amsterdam has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of development on Calgary, and even Canada. There are houses that were built before Canada officially became a country.

In conclusion, I guess I should point out that I know all countries have their problems. This is really just whining about a first world problem. Some countries have more problems than others, and certainly, Canada is not NEARLY as bad as most.

I just wish it were easier to be proud of my country.