I have to say I’m a fan of Canada and Canadians.  Growing up in Seattle, Canada was only a 3 hour drive away, so I’ve crossed the border many times.  On the other hand, the Canadians keep sending me back … I don’t know what that’s about …

When I was 20, I had an opportunity to work in the San Juan Islands for a couple years, at the north part of San Juan Island itself at Roche Harbor (map).  Many Canadians boated over to enjoy Roche’s hospitality, perhaps as many as half the tourists were Canadian.  Because I had friends with boats, I had the opportunity to boat across Haro Strait and visit Victoria, BC, Canada.

There are four things I know about Victoria from personal experience:  1) The Royal BC Museum was a great place to visit; 2) There used to be a great knife store downtown that gave good discounts to chefs (I still have a couple of those knives); 3) There are places to drink in Victoria (which for a newly minted 21 year old was pretty fun); and 4) There were some very nice strips clubs downtown (which for a newly minted 21 year old … well, you get the picture).

I’ve also spent time in Vancouver.  During one memorable, well mostly memorable, experience, I attended the 1986 World Expo (and it turns out countries still hold world expos — the 2010 Expo is in Shanghai, China), which took place at the downtown facilities which held the recent Winter Olympic Games.  Me and 2 of my friends trekked up to the ’86 expo, without hotel reservations of course; instead, we spent two nights camped out in Vancouver.  The first night was on some land being developed right near downtown.  We just set up the tent, and jumped in (and a whole lot of traffic woke us up early the next morning).  The second night we found a walking trail a little farther out of downtown and jumped in the tent.  Oh, to be young again ….

With these thoughts in mind, I decided to do a search of flatties and Canada and happened across the antiquewillys.com website. After some looking around, I found a photo gallery, where I came across this image, posted by “waggone”.  I personally love to see those desert dogs reaching for the sky!