Because it’s CANADA DAY! By JIM BEARD When I saw “Canada Day” on Dan Greenfield’s list of possibilities for July articles, at first it went right past me. That’s probably because I’ve lived within an hour’s drive of Canada my entire life and—Canadians, please forgive me—I’ve always sort of taken it for granted. I have fond memories, though, of taking daytrips into Windsor, Ontario, as a kid with my dad to look for British paperbacks, and I spent my honeymoon in Toronto, but in general it’s always been ”that country that’s just like the U.S.” to me, no disrespect. But then I remembered something in the dim recesses of my brain: Captain Canuck. I had exactly three issues of Captain Canuck when I was a kid, no more and no less. Don’t ask me how I got them, because I honestly don’t know. Oh, I mean, I know my dad gave them to me; he got all my comics back then. What I mean is I have no idea where he got them. There are two theories: One, that the regular newsstand/bookstore he frequented here in my hometown had them, probably something the newsdealer was trying out. Two, he picked them up on one of our trips to Windsor. I lean toward Theory One because I might’ve remembered getting them on a trip, but I don’t. All I really remember is that they came out of nowhere. In fact, just like Captain Canuck himself. Just the other day, I found those three copies and looked through them for the first time in decades. The first one, Captain Canuck #3, is loose from its covers, which might mean that I read it a lot. The other two, Issues #7 and 8, are intact, but oddly different from that #3 I got. Paging through Issue #3 brought back so many memories. It was unlike any of the American comics I had. Everything about it was strange, and if I’m being honest, crude compared to what I was used to. The art is of a just-about-professional level, and the writing is dense. Panels are packed with word balloons and the lettering is spotty. The strangeness continued with weird ads for other books from the same publisher, and one spot where the action is interrupted by a commercial and an explanation of who...