It's hotter up north
By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist | June 3, 2004
My family and I were sorting through books the other day, creating piles to send off to a yard sale. About every 10th book or so, I exclaimed: "You can't give that away! It's the best book ever written." I even proposed labeling a shelf "Best Books Ever Written," to accommodate such tomes as Christine Sutherland's "The Princess of Siberia," Rick Fields's "How the Swans Came to the Lake," or Carl Hiaasen's magnificent debut novel, "Tourist Season."
Here is another book for the shelf: humorist Chris Gudgeon's "The Naked Truth: The Untold Story of Sex in Canada," just out in paperback.
Canadians and sex -- who knew?
It's unclear how much there is to say about the sex lives of 31 million residents of a relatively new country, although Gudgeon confidently asserts that "lots of people north of the border were having sex before 1969," when the first Canadian sex surveys started to appear. That gives him several decades of history to work with, and he teases his account of Canadian women's rights, homosexuality, frozen lap dancing, predatory female "cougars" (older women), censorship, and oddball sexual practices ("jigging the squid") out for 218 pages.
All told, Canada is much stranger than we had previously been led to believe. In the 2001 census, when questioned about their religion, an appreciable number of our Northern neighbors responded that they were Jedi, or followers of Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported, helpfully, that "Canada's Jedis are concentrated in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario."
So that's where the light swordsmen are. Sexual swordplay, counterintuitively, is most intense in Newfoundland, the fish-stinking, fogbound setting for many a dull novel (with the exception of Wayne Johnston's "Colony of Unrequited Dreams," the best book ever written).
According to Gudgeon, 20 years of polling by the Canadian newsmagazine Maclean's put Newfies "at the top of the sex lists, with 69 percent of the population describing themselves as sexually active in 1999," 10 points above the national average. Fifty-three percent of Newfoundlanders said they were "very satisfied" with their sex lives, far better than the gloomy countrywide response of 40 percent.
In 2002, there was perhaps an inevitable passing of the torch, with Quebec displacing Newfoundland as "Canada's Sexiest Province." What about the frozen northlands of Nunavit or, for that matter, the craggy coasts of New Brunswick? This must be a tightly contested title.
Last month, Maclean's, which seems almost fetishistically obsessed with Canadian sexuality, profiled homegirl sex maven Sue Johanson. Su-Jo, as her fans call her, is a Canadian grandmother of indeterminate age whose show on the Oxygen network, "Talk Sex With Sue Johanson," has been something of a hit.
The magazine assures its readers that Ms. Johanson "has become a household name" in the United States, although it is unclear to which households it refers. I would call native Canadians such as Bobby Orr and Peter Jennings household names. When it comes to names such as Sue Johanson and Paul Martin, I would be more circumspect in my claims.
Paul Martin is the prime minister of Canada.
It seems odd that we have had to "offshore" our comedy needs to Canada, by importing such talent as Jim Carrey and Mike Myers. Likewise we are quickly becoming addicted to cheap drugs flowing southwards from Canadian pharmacies. But now we have to outsource sex advice, from a nation where the birth rate is almost one-third lower than ours! Maybe it's time for some protectionist legislation.
Even though Canada falls short in the procreation game, that doesn't prevent the garrulous, Ontario-born grandma from opining that "Americans are a decade behind Canada when it comes to sex education and understanding their bodies." According to the Toronto Sun, Su-Jo "suggested that Canadians are more open and natural about their [sexual desires]" than Americans, attributing her compatriots' lack of inhibitions to "snuggle power" -- "it's cold up there."
It's true that we Americans have our well-documented, and much-exploited, hang-ups. But here's my comeback to the cuddly sexual libertines of Canada: At least we're not jigging the squid. Whatever that is.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His
e-dress is beam@globe.com.
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