Canadians Have Their Party Today!
As many Americans get ready to celebrate their 4th of July on Tuesday, they know little of the Canadian anniversary celebration that is today, July 1. And like Thanksgiving, Canadians again beat the Americans to the punch.

On June 20, 1868, a proclamation signed by the Governor General, Lord Monck, called upon all Her Majesty's loving subjects throughout Canada to join in the celebration of the anniversary of the formation of the union of the British North America provinces in a federation under the name of Canada on July 1st.

The July 1 holiday was established by statute in 1879, under the name Dominion Day. On October 27, 1982, July 1st which was known as "Dominion Day" became "Canada Day".

In Costa Rica, the Canada Day celebrations have grown each year from a small gathering of a few Canadians to the expected 1,000 or more today.

The party is open to anyone - one need not be a Canadian or even know a Canadian or know where Canada is (that big piece of real estate north of the United States with all kinds of natural resources, just in case you were wondering).

On hand will be Canada's ambassador to Costa Rica, Mario Mario Laguë and representative of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in full dress uniform. This year, like the others, Sargent Preston just couldn't leave his official duties to come down to the tropics.  Aha, so Americans do know about Canada!

The party begins this morning at 10 and is being held at the Cerveceria Costa Rica (aptly to reinforce the Canadian stereotype of beer drinkers or hosers. The festivities begin a 10am and the Cerveceria is located on the General Cañas east of the airport, across from the Intel plant.


What is a Hoser?
Hoser is both a slang term and a stereotype, originating from and used primarily in Canada.

Like the very similar but less well-known term hosehead, it originally referred to farmers of the Canadian prairies, who would siphon gas from farming vehicles with a hose during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Today, the word hoser evokes - sometimes sympathetically, with gentle ribbing, and sometimes negatively - a stereotypical Canadian male, typically lower to middle class, white and English Canadian.

He is especially concerned with drinking beer and watching hockey.

The hoser is understood as a product more of rural, suburban or smaller city Canada than of the cosmopolitan larger cities. He's often imagined wearing heavy winter clothing, usually a flannel lumberjack shirt, Kodiak boots and a tuque. He is generally a young adult to middle age, and may be somewhat aggressive given the beer and hockey, but may conversely be passive and amiable, given the beer. In musical culture, he is correlated with classic and mainstream rock music, particularly with Rush and the earlier, rowdier works of The Tragically Hip.

A hoser's flannel shirt may also be referred to as a "Kenora dinner jacket". (Some regional variations of this term also exist, usually substituting a hoser-stereotyped local community's name in place of Kenora.)

Perhaps the iconic representations of this definition of hoser in Canadian culture are Bob & Doug McKenzie of SCTV and Strange Brew.

This model also profoundly informs The Red Green Show, Trailer Park Boys and some sketch characters on Royal Canadian Air Farce (e.g. "Mike from Canmore", "A Canadian Moment") and This Hour Has 22 Minutes (e.g. Connie Bloor, the Quinlan Quints). Although set in the United States, Wayne's World — which was created by a Canadian, Mike Myers — also shares some common elements with the hoser archetype.

The term hoser has even made it into the Simpsons in episode Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo  where two Canadians are on a Japanese game show, and Homer says, "Take that, hosers!"

Bob & Doug McKenzie defined the term as "What you call your little brother when your mother isn't in the room."