Leading up to Canada Day, the Huffington Post blog team asked prominent Canadians what they would change about one aspect of our country. We are publishing their answers in our series "What I'd Change About Canada" leading up to July 1. You can find the full series here.
As this Huffington Post column can attest, I have a penchant for complaining. I complain to room-cleaning degrees, mostly about the trivial minutiae directly in front of me. When I'm finally able to take a step back, I realize the insignificance of my rambling. It's in these rare lucid moments when I recognize just how good it is in Canada. There are always problems to fix, scandals to break and injustice to equalize but all-in-all, we as Canadians are very fortunate earthlings.
So, when I was asked to write about what I would change in Canada, I hemmed and hawed and scratched my head in total bemusement. Growing tired of resisting my natural inclinations, I finally knee-jerked to my nugatory predilections and hyper-focussed on the fact that, although Canada boasts the longest coastline as the second largest country with ninth highest standard of living in the world, it also contains the highest amount of shitty drivers. You could use "terrible," "dreadful," "scatterbrained," or "asinine" to describe these people but I always find "shitty" encapsulates both their driving incompetence and the road rage it provokes in me.
Sure there are always gonna be people who don't signal when changing lanes; who don't make a complete stop at a stop sign; who try to beat the orange light etc. etc. But my main beef, the one thing I can't stand, is people who can't make left turns. In this country we have a prodigious amount of these numbskulls. In fact, if I had a Canadian penny for every person I've seen who cannot make a proper left-turn in this country I'd have close to a thousand bucks. And just like we did away with the Canadian penny, so should these people have their driver's licences stripped from their persons permanently.
These are the people that turn what is referred to as "defensive driving" into nothing short of a video game. They make me feel like the chicken who tried to cross the road. When I'm in my car actually driving alongside these fools, with eyes bulging not wanting to blink, I find myself unable to enjoy my in-car music selections or pay attention to any passengers along for the ride, so much does their driving ineptitude demand my attention. I have raised countless middle fingers in their direction but like their lack of driving prowess, they fail to understand they're the creators of this havoc.
In life, the left-handed path has been viewed as the least travelled, marked with darkness, lasciviousness and abomination. It also happens to be my preferred route in all aspects of life. I encourage everyone to take it. Most don't have the balls to choose it but the majority quietly wish to. And as unfitting as the left-hand path may seem to be, you still need to know how to properly steer if travelling amongst it. The first step in taking the left-hand path is knowing how to make a left turn. A properly performed left turn might just be what Canada needs right now.
