Are your "aboriginies" (sp?) what we call Native Americans... ? It was all pretty interesting. I'm embarrassed to say I don't know enough about your country & culture. It was very interesting. Good job Canada! Now get rid of that rain (poor Wayne Gretzky) and bring on the snow !
The aboriginal peoples of Canada are the Canadian equivalent of your Native Americans. They were individual nations before the white people settled the continent, but now have banded together to collectively resolve treaty claims with the Government of Canada.
Those natives looked all cute and cuddly on TV last night, but there has been an awful lot of bad blood between the white and native peoples in Canada. A few years back, the native people in some Ontario reserves blocked a major highway into Toronto so that people had to drive many miles out of their way to get to and from work. In one town in British Columbia, a town had been built on native land that was under a 100 year lease from the natives. At the end of the lease, the natives demanded their land back, including everything the whites had built on that land, and that would mean that thousands of people would simply loose their homes and businesses. I don't know how that dispute ended. Here in Canada, natives living on reserves don't pay income tax, get all their medical and dental needs taken care of free of charge, don't have to pay for glasses or hearing aids or prescription druge, and are given houses to live in on the reserves. Still, alcoholism, drug abuse, family violence and child abuse runs rampant on those reserves. My nephew flies an airplane up to many of the reserves in Manitoba, and they call those flights "Coke and potato chip runs" because that's half of the cargo the plane takes up to the reserves. The native people in Canada put some of the money they were given toward building their own University in Saskatchewan where both native and white kids could attend university. That University has since been shut down and funding stopped because the money that was earmarked for legitimate expenses ended up in the pockets of the Board of Directors of that University. Here in Manitoba, one drug and alcohol treatment center run by natives in Manitoba was shut down because the manager of the center saw fit to take the entire staff on a Caribean Cruise which supposedly had someone giving a class at one point on the cruise about treating drug and alcohol addiction. Basically, they used the money they were given for running the treatment center to go on a cruise.
No, they didn't show a drunk native passed out on the sidewalk in the winter during the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics. They portrayed our natives as being well dressed responsible citizens. Many of them are, but there are enough that aren't that there's generally widespread prejudice against natives in Canada. Joke: "What do you call a native in a $99 suit?" Answer: "The accused."
The weather on the east coast of Canada, just like the east coast of the USA is heavily influenced by the Pacific Ocean. It almost never snows along the coast because of the moderating influence of the ocean. Instead, Vancouver and Victoria get lots and lots and lots of rain. Just like Seattle.