Senator Nicole Eaton wants Canada to dethrone our national symbol– the proud and noble beaver, replacing it with the polar bear.
Beavers paved the way for the colonial foundations of Canada. We hunted them down and hacked them up to near extinction so that vain Europeans could wear them on their heads. In honour of their once fashionable skins, we decided to award beavers the great honour of being our national emblem.
Senator Eaton has sullied the name of the chivalrous beaver by referring to it as a “dentally defective rat.”
These remarks are a crass attack on the noble creature and only illustrate the senator’s taxonomic ignorance. While both beavers and rat herald from the order Rodentia, they are not closely related. It would be like saying humans and tarsiers are pretty much the same thing. The only feature that rats and beavers have in common is that they must continue chewing to wear down their teeth or they will die– hardly a dental defect.
The most legitimate reason to find a replacement for the beaver is because it is widely used as slang for female genitalia. While there is nothing wrong with sex organs or sex acts, being directly associated with them makes it hard for people to take you seriously– just ask former American Senator Rick Santorum.
Until Eaton’s recent aversion, the beaver has served as an appropriate symbol for Canada, as Canadians are known internationally as being huge pussies. However, the Harper government has spent much time and effort trying to reverse this image by re-branding Canada. To help man-up our country in the eyes of the international community, we have invested $9 billion on jet planes and have continued slashing budgets to sissy-socialist-hippie programs like Veteran Affairs.
That being said, polar bears are probably not a good choice as a substitute. While they are formidable and macho beasts, there are a couple of problems. First of all, we’re likely to see them soon go extinct. Recent cuts to Environment Canada have, in part, helped to secure this fate for them. Second, polar bears are not more pristine than beavers in the sexual slang arena. The term ‘polar bear’ can be used to refer to giving a blow job with an ice cube in your mouth as well as very old chubby gay men.
What we need is a tough, rugged and yet enigmatic Canadian creature to represent us, one that is not already representing dirty deeds.
Let us, the Gauntlet, be the first to suggest Wolverine.
Not the animal, but the man– the legend.
Who cares if we’re the only country that has a comic book character as our national emblem? No one really gives a fuck, and at least we’ll get some recognition in the record books as being a nation of man children. After all, it’s our actions the world judges us by, not our fucking emblems.