From Canada, with Love

One of the features available to me as blog author is the ability to see who is reading me. Not on an individual level; just the countries where page views are coming from. And while over the lifetime of my blog (just over two years now) Canada is still ahead and the U.S. number two, for the last few months the largest share of my readership has been coming from Russia.

This curious situation has me puzzled. What is it that hundreds of Russians (or the same Russians hundreds of times) find so appealing about my blog? After all, I live in a small Canadian town and I generally write on subjects, that if not of interest primarily to Canadians, at least tend in that direction.

So I've been thinking: what is it about my blog that would interest Russian readers?

Of course the first thing that came to mind was hockey. Both Canadians and Russians are passionate about hockey. Every Canadian of my generation still remembers the series of games between our two countries in September 1972 and the 3-3 tie between Central Red Army and the Montréal Canadiens on December 31, 1975 – the greatest hockey game ever played. But I seldom mention hockey in my blog (except to poke fun at Don Cherry) because I find the state of today's game – as represented by the NHL – to be depressing.

So if not hockey, maybe travel? Like Canadians, Russians live in a cold country. I'm betting that, like Canadians, Russians revel in our all-too-brief summers and would like to get away to somewhere warm when the cold winter winds blow. But I've never mentioned Aeroflot and had never heard of its frequent flier plan, Aeroflot Bonus, until now (I just looked it up).

Ahem, beverages? Russians have a reputation for enjoying vodka. Well, why not, they invented the stuff. So maybe my Russian readers are looking for ways to add some variety to their diets. So here's a classic drink from the 1950's, when vodka was first becoming popular in North America, the Moscow Mule. Over ice in a short glass, combine 50 ml. of vodka, 25 ml. of lime juice, and 150 ml. of ginger beer (or use ginger ale for a milder taste). Stir gently.

But I've got an uncomfortable feeling that my Russian friends are not reading me because they're interested in hockey, travel, or cocktails. I suspect, rather, that they're laughing at me.

Now, I sometimes try to be funny, but that's not what I mean. As a university student, I read a lot of Russian literature – Tolstoy, Chekov, Dostoyevsky – and I know that Russians have a great sense of humour, but they're also a people with a long history, a history that has been hard, more often than not. So that sense of humour is sometimes dark, because it has often been needed to sustain them through difficult days and nights.

So when I complain about the greed of our business class, the unfairness of our government's policies; or the autocratic tendencies of Stephen Harper, I imagine Russians shaking their heads and chuckling, "You don't know what hard times are, приятель."

Thanks for reading.

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