Pillow Blog: Assorted Pieces of Canadian Culture That Almost Make Me Patriotic

In the tradition of the Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, here's a Pillow Blog: an observational list on some subject or another. 

1. Léolo: This movie is everything Canadian cinema should be, but rarely is: big, bold, a little grotesque. Instead we usually get reel after reel of earnestness. With each year that passes since Jean-Claude Lauzon's untimely death, I worry a little more about Léolo's legacy - give it a viewing and save me from this anxiety.
2. Beautiful Losers: Leonard Cohen, as walking, croaking, bagel-buying myth can rub me the wrong way, probably because the fact of his talent is so evident. It's annoying. Anyway, I read Beautiful Losers decades after it was published, when I was still only 19, and still knew it was cooler than I could ever hope to be.
3. Pas de Deux: Perhaps some of Norman McLaren's other work is more groundbreaking, but Pas de Deux is arresting in its beauty. Somehow through the repetition of ballet dancers and their bodies do you find their form and purity.
4. "Raven and the First Men," Bill Reid: There's something about including a piece of indigenous art on a list that includes both "Canadian" and "patriotic" in the title that makes me stop; it makes those words sound hollow. As they should, I think. Perhaps what I'm listing here are the things, made within the borders that set out a concept called Canada, that make me feel honoured to share that space with them.
5. Canadian Heritage Minutes: Here's a tonal shift from my last entry. And let's talk about earnestness! Still, as commercials for Canadian history, CHMs have taught the subject as well as most middle school teachers can manage, or at least those I encountered at the Upper Grand District School Board. The Sam Steele one is indisputably the best.
6. Joni Mitchell: I listen to "Both Sides Now" and open one can of beer. Then "River" and I'm drinking two. If I make it to "A Case of You," I'll be finished all six that night, so don't disturb me before 11am tomorrow.