Sorry Bill...Canadians do not have Canadian bacon.

...any more than the English have English muffins. Or at least, they are available, but I never heard them called that in the UK.

My friends and I came up with a list of such cultural misnomers:

French fries, French vanilla, French kissing, French braid, French onion dip...oh man, I can't remember the rest! Anyone else got some?

And what belMarduk calls strip bacon I would call side bacon. She's right, normally you don't find back bacon in your run-of-the-mill store. I always got confused about the Canadian bacon thing myself.

and are there vienna sausages in vienna ? vienna sausges are small, (gerkin sized) sausages, usually sold in a can

or danish pastries in Denmark? actually there are, but they are called vienna pastries!

and i suspect no national of Italy, France or Vienna would want to claim as their own what passes for italian, french or vienna bread in most american grocery stores.

i think italan sausages are pretty close to something that can be bought in italy, but no italian could claim creamy italian dressing (salad dressing) as their own.. and the same goes for russian and french!

Canada goose

I've never been goosed by a Canadian. Tell us about it, if you please.

Dear Geoff: we had geese, though not Canadian. My younger son was bending over teasing the goose who was incubating some eggs, when the gander came up behind him, and grabbed his scrotum. You should have heard him yell. That's getting goosed.

Meanwhile, chulm, to address your question:

I have no idea why the modifier is in adjective form in some expressions and in noun form in others.

Is this even a Canadian corporation?

The only form I know it in is Canada Dry Ginger Ale - not any other type of pop. Here's an URL (I didn't read the whole thing yet) http://www.dpsu.com/canada_dry.html It's far, far, far, far, far better than Schweppes. Love the stuff - and it tastes great with a shot of Canadian whisky and some lemon.

Edit: That page mentions about the "dry" bit at the bottom: "What's in a name? When ginger ale was first introduced, it was dark in color and considered by many to be too sweet. John J. McLaughlin wanted to create a ginger ale that was reminiscent of the "dry" and clear sparkling champagnes of France." Also they seem to show Canada Dry club soda, too. Never had it, m'self.

When my family first moved farther north, we laughed when we saw what we thought was the local pop - Temagami Dry. (Temagami is a town in northern Ontario, more famous for trees than for pop). It just seemed like a funny variation on Canada Dry, the Champagne of Ginger Ales. When last I visited, I was dismayed to see that Temagami Dry was made in the States! So much for local colour and/or authenticity.

Oh, dear. Another tangent:

What US brand was marketed as "The Champagne of Bottled Beers"?

I thought I knew, but I was wrong. Turns out it's Miller, not Michelob (meaning it's horse piss, rather than goat piss, IMHO). In looking into it I ended up at the Budweiser (i.e. watered-down horse piss) web site, which requires that visitors be at least 21 to enter. They verify this by asking when you were born (which, obviously, is impossible to lie about on the web...). Specifically, the question they ask is "What is your born on date?" Pathetic.

Well, in this case a gentlemn named Robert? Canada is said to have first identified this goose, so it's named after the naturalist...and so it is always Canada goose or Canada geese...Canadian, in this case, is just lazy incorrectness. I've searched the web for the citation but can't come up with it, perhaps I have the name wrong. The info is contained in many naturalist and birding literature I've seen, though. Boby?...praps you have a clue here?

The Only WO'N!

I fully agree with and support AnnaStrophe's above comment:
"Meanwhile, chulm, to address your question: I have no idea why".

"are there vienna sausages in vienna? or danish pastries in Denmark?"

Do the Germans order "hamburgers" in Hamburg? or "frankfurters" in Frankfurt?

or German chocolate cake?

Dear WO'N: I found a UK site about Canada geese that said they were brought to England in the 1600's, and now in some places are nuisances. I think this suggests they were not named for somebody named Canada.

Dear Dr. Bill,

They are nuisances in some places in Canada, too. A short walk through Stanley Park in Vancouver would make that obvious to anyone who's tried it. Goose poo everywhere! Yucky.

Dear Beam: Canada geese are nuisances in many places in US, but are still protected. Smithsonian magazine had article about company with very large lawn surrounding a pond getting specially trained Border Collie to keep herding them off the grass into the pond. Since there was nothing in the pond they wanted, they stopped oming.
I also marvel that Dulles Airport has a large pond with many geese crossing landing strips to get to the pond. One goose in jet intake = one horrible crash. But the bleeding hearts won't allow the geese to be harassed in any way.

Dear Dr. Bill,

I think they have ways of dealing with them at airports. You might, in the meantime, get some amusement out of this website by the people you call "bleeding hearts": http://www.icu.com/geese/coalition.html

Here's one about how to keep the populations under control: http://www.fw.umn.edu/research/goose/html/airport/inter1.html

There's actually lots and lots and lots of info on this (I googled "Canada geese airports" if you want to try it yourself). I don't have time to look through them all just yet. But you're right, they do seem to be somewhat of a problem at airports.

geese hate (become sickened by!) the acid that gives "grapes" there grapey flavor --(the name begins with an a--- but well, i can't possible remember everything)

okay back to my point.. this acid can be, and is used to make things like "grape flavor" kool aid, and other "grape flavor" stuff (candy, icepops, etc.)

but you can take unsweetened grape kool aid mix, mix it with water, and use it to "water" your grass. (get close to the grass, and it will smell grapey!)

it only last a day or two, but unsweetened kool aid is only about 10cents a envelope, so its cheap enough to do it repeatedly.

and if you do, geese will learn not to land, on your property. no geese, no geese droppings..

there are commercially available products that are basiclly the same thing.. (no purple food color!) and they are somewhat effective. but the good news is, cheap, biodegradable, non toxic to plants and animals.. and effective.

Bean, the first of your two sites also has a lot on goose control. Click on those words, and up poop sepveral more clickable lines, under these headings:

Border Collies
Turf Grass Goose Repellents
Exclusion Methods: Goose D-Fence
Cleaning Equipment: Goose-Poop Buster
Scare Devices, with five separate clicks for High-tech Distress Calls; Cannons/Scare Guns; "RoboGoose" Remote controlled goose robot; "Dissuader" Hand-held Laser; and Gator Guard (floating replica of an alligator head))

The link for robogoose claims, "Equipped with headlight eyes and two-way voice communication. Optional remote video, tear gas and pepper spray, us proud Canadians can flush terrorists from caves, pursue them down corridors and record and observe them as their population decreases. Look at us as affordable and small Canadian tanks."

What US brand was marketed as "The Champagne of Bottled Beers"?

Turns out it's Miller

and more than that, it's "Miller's High Life". Trust me see bio!. My best friend from the sixth grade on called me "High Lights" for thirty years and would not be corrected, so I stopped trying. He came from a staid Long Island conservative Republican Methodist family, could trace his ancestors back to Germany 1591, never drank nor did his parents, knew only the shape of the sound of the words but never saw a label. A forgiveable mondegreen, I would say.

I wish I could say that I was making this up, but here is an article from the National Post (April 29th) on how the Canadian goernment is dealing with the problem of pigeons on Parliament Hill.

Pigeons being shooed off Parliament Hill by a professional 'We've tried it all'

Tim Naumetz
Southam News
OTTAWA - The federal government is paying $4,800 a month for a "pigeon shooer" to keep the messy birds off Parliament Hill.

The Public Works Department turned to the shooing approach after testing a range of other ways to keep pigeons off the statues, ornate stonework and hidden corners of the Hill, an official said.

"We've tried various methods, from putting in electrical wires, spikes, sonic devices -- you name it, we've tried it all," said Louise Proulx, a department spokeswoman. "The shooing is only temporary, it's a tryout and we're doing that maybe for the next couple of months."

The shooer has already been seen scaring away birds with a long yellow pole.

The concern is not with the birds themselves, but the droppings they let loose at random, even in the ceremonial porte-cochere space under the Peace Tower. The statue of the Queen has been bombed.

Until the pigeon shooer came on board this spring, the department spent $1,800 a month for a commercial high-pressure washer to clean the bad spots regularly. The hose-down had its own negative side effects. "It was damaging the stonework," Ms. Proulx said.

Initially, Hill denizens believed a crew of pigeon-shooers had been hired, because more than one was spotted scaring away birds with a long yellow pole, and one of the shooers himself said there were two shooers on duty.

Not so, said Ms. Proulx. The government is not that extravagant.

"One guy was teaching the other guy how to do it," she explained.

The cost may seem high, but Ms. Proulx said the shooing will take place 12 hours a day, seven days a week. She was unable to explain how that would be done with only one shooer.

The department assigned the high-priced shooing work to a local contractor it hired four months ago for other outdoor cleanup jobs on the Hill, such as sweeping up cigarette butts around doorways, picking chewing gum wads from the walls and maintaining the new RCMP security post at a main entrance.

The shooing cost is in addition to $3,700 the department was already paying the cleanup company, although Ms. Proulx said the shooer will also tidy up the grounds, when he's not busy with pigeons.

"To add the extra duty of shooing the pigeons, it adds $4,800 per month," she explained.

Alliance MP Peter Goldring said it looks suspiciously like costly government make-work.

"What if the pigeons attack one monument after he shoos them away from another?" said Mr. Goldring. "Then he'll need a vehicle to jump from monument to monument, and the vehicle will have to be environmentally friendly, and if the pigeons attack his vehicle while he's shooing them away from the monuments, then we'll need those high-pressure washers to clean his vehicle."

Don Boudria, the Public Works Minister, argued the expenditure was unavoidable.

"I don't know about you, but I don't particularly enjoy what the pigeons do around here, including the destruction of the property that their excrement has caused."

Ha! they should try owls-- fake ones work-- but only if they have some moving parts, and, if they get moved once a day or so.. even pigeons figure out the at an owl that never moves is not going to harm them.

several companies sell owls.. the cheap $19 ones don't work to well at all.. the $29 to $49 dollars ones are pretty effective.. and this is on NY pigeons. (commonly referred to as flying rats.) we've also had some success with falcons.. they leave dropping too, but the don't roost on any available edge the way pideons do, and a falcon family eats 2 or 3 pidgeons a day. doesn't seem like much-- but it really good for the building near the falcons nest.. pideons aren't so stupid as to hang around, and wait to become dinner.

one co-op on 5th ave had a falcons nest on a ledge out side its window.. the price of the apartment was higher.(almost 10%)it was a considered an asset!

We have one of those in Denver, but the PETA people became irate when the feathery farrier began to use iron for the pigeon shoes. The shoes (which are so heavy the birds cannot fly, thus making them unable to get up onto the monuments to befoul them)were originally put on with tiny little nails, but now they're trying a cyanoacrilate (Crazy) glue.

PETA has proposed that we provide little purple outhouses which the pigeons would be trained to use instead of crapping on the golden dome of the State Capitol Building. Purple is apparently the only color that pigeons can distinguish. They also want us to provide solar or some other renewable energy form for keeping these things warm during the winter. I imagine that you will be hearing more about these purple pooper heaters in the not-so-distant future.