MELTING POT

“Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us/To see ourselves as others see us.”

-- Robert Burns

For an inkling into how our neighbors in the Great White North see Southern California, a few samples from the “Dictionary of Canadian Quotations”:

“After my first year I thought it was my divine right to have a Rolls-Royce, a tennis court, a Jacuzzi, a pool and a Bel-Air mansion full of servants. It’s easy to lose perspective here.” -- Monica Parker, actress.

“California. I know why they moved here--they all hate hockey.” -- Jack Kent Cooke, former owner of the Los Angeles Kings.

“Nearly everyone at some point must have dreamed of moving to Southern California and owning a kidney-shaped swimming pool. Well, forget it. Most counties and cities in Southern California have now passed, or are in the process of passing, bylaws prohibiting the filling of those legendary swimming pools with water. I don’t know about you, but for me that’s the end of the Hollywood dream.” -- Bob Hunter, ecologist and columnist.

“California and the West Coast, leapfrogging from the 18th to the 20th Century. Never had a 19th Century. That’s why they could have Hollywood. A 19th-Century area like Chicago was too highly structured to accommodate a freewheeling enterprise like Hollywood.” -- Marshall McLuhan, communications theorist.

For reciprocity, there is only one entry. When Encino residents Bill Gough and Anna Sandor asked for postal rates to Canada, the postal clerk declared: “Canada . . . ? That’s another world.”