The Moose Question.

I was reading the Tyee, and came across this article by Michael Fellman about what the election of the US president means to Canadians, which he calls “The Moose Question”.

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2008/07/25/ObamaCan/

 

This is an interesting article, to Canadians, but not what I want to talk about.

 

What I noticed is that the first paragraph of the piece contains a phrase that makes me slightly uncomfortable.  And, I note, it seems to have made the editorial team at the Tyee uncomfortable as well because they used the second paragraph as the teaser for the article on their home page.

 

This may be simply because the second paragraph contains the word “moose” – which is always more funny than “elephant” – or because “elephant” has a different connotation North and South of the border.[1]  Or it may be because it contains the phrase that makes me uncomfortable.

( Please note: this essay is about my perceptions and my phobias – and not about Mr. Fellman and what he should/shouldn’t could/couldn’t would/wouldn’t have done. )

[1] – South of the Border, one of the two political parties is represented by an elephant (I can’t remember which one without looking it up, so that tells you how much it means to me (a Canadian) in that context.  North of the Border, use of the word reminds us of Trudeau’s speech.  ‘ “Living next to you,” Trudeau told an American audience in a speech to the National Press Club in 1969, “is like sleeping with an elephant; no matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” ’

http://www.international.gc.ca/department/history-histoire/canada9-en.asp  This has become encapsulated in various forms of the phrase “mouse sleeping with the elephant” in popular discussions here.  Perhaps, then, Fellman really meant “The Mouse Question” except that “moose” is always funnier than either mouse or elephant – which may really be why the Tyee teased with the second paragraph.