OTTAWA (Reuters) - Foreign countries are seeking to manipulate Canada's large immigrant populations to obtain intelligence and technological secrets, according to the latest annual report by Canada's spy service.
When Karl Rove asked me to move to Canada to be a spy for the U.S., I must admit I was skeptical. "But Turd Blossom (me and W. came up with that little nickname for him, hee hee), how could our peace-loving, beaver-emblemed neighbors to the North present a threat to the good ole U.S. of A?"

How indeed. I am older now, and wiser, and the owner of more maple-related products, and I'm here to tell you the Polar Menace is real. Now that my cover is in danger of being blown (darn you, nosy Reuters reporter and your free beer!) I feel I must warn a slumbering nation. Unless you want to see neighbour spelled with a U -- do you??!!!??! -- read and learn from the chilling tales of my espionage.

July, 2005 -- Arrive in Toronto, known as "New York without the garbage, London with better teeth." As I'm meandering down a crowded sidewalk, a man in a motorized wheelchair passes me, and I ever-so-slightly brush against him. "Oh, I'm sorry," he says. Reflexive apologizing -- the ultimate Canadian weapon.

August, 2005 -- It's hot here! Canadians clearly lying about harsh, polar climate to keep Americans from invading Alberta and seizing oil reserves. Lying -- that's evil, isn't it? Sort of like the axis of evil, eh? Watch out, crafty Canucks.

September, 2005 -- Am still struggling to locate the cells of the Canadian anti-American militant movement. I fear they are located in lingerie shops, which average three to a city block. In a country where long underwear is an acceptable fashion statement nine months out of the year, who is buying all these lacy underthings? Suggest we deploy army of Victoria's Secret catalogues to neutralize the threat. Operation: Panty Raid.

October, 2005 -- Beneath their friendly exteriors, Canadians are a deeply suspicious people. Exhibit A: Every grocery store requires a 25-cent deposit on carts. And plastic bags are not free. Perhaps this is a sign of flinty Scottish roots? Yet they'll let you check out your own groceries -- go figure.

November-March, 2005 -- Too ... cold ... must ... focus ... on ... tv ... remote ... (Note: the enemy is hardy. As opposed to other cities this operative has occupied, such as Seattle and Baltimore, in Toronto four inches of snow is apparently not good reason to totally freak out, stay home from work, burn furniture to stay warm, and pray for deliverance in the form of sweet, blessed rain. I sure felt silly in the grocery store checkout line with my cart full of toilet paper and milk.)

April, 2006 -- I visit Montreal. My god, what have they done to the Colonel? KFC here is called PFK -- Poulet Frit Kentucky. Is nothing sacred, mes amis quebecois? Aieee, now they've got me doing it. I shall avenge you, my white-bearded, trans-fat-laden friend. The south shall rise again! (Actually, would not best revenge be for sleek, fashionable Quebecois youth to succumb to lure of extra-crispy recipe, thus assuming shape of their rotund southern neighbors? Ah Colonel, you know what you're doing, don't you?)

May, 2006 -- An alleged terrorism ring is broken up by the police. Muslim extremists planning to bomb CBC, behead prime minister (like a president, W., only more quaintly British). And yet I still have civil liberties. So confused by this strange land...

June, 2006 -- The Carolina Hurricanes win the Stanley Cup, defeating the Edmonton Oilers. (Note -- Several players on "Carolina" team seem suspiciously Canadian. Perhaps we are not the only ones with a clever spy plan? Recommended investigation of NHL fifth column.) A reader named "Mr. Motoc" posts the following comment on the Globe and Mail web site: "The members of the Conservative Republican Annexation Party must be VERY happy that a US team won."
Why yes, we are-- wait! COVER HAS BEEN COMPROMISED!!! Operative's secret plan for world domination in danger. Forgive me W. and T.B., I failed you. Abort the mission, I repeat, ABORT THE MISSION!!!

My first Toronto byline! Woo-hoo!

I had a dream last night that I bought the paper and the story had been totally changed, and the ending had been taken out. I was quite disturbed. Luckily it was not a prophetic dream. My subconscious is not very subtle when it comes to these things. Shortly after starting my copy editing job, I had quite a vivid dream in which the slot editor (the top copy editor, fond of referring to himself as The Slotweiller) screamed at me to hurry up as I struggled to finish five stories on deadline. Luckily, that one hasn't come to pass either -- the Slotweiller has been nothing but kind to me. Of course, neither dream can compete in terms of sheer horror and persistence to my recurring wire service dreams, in which I would go to call in a story only to find that the phone was broken or had been disassembled in some way, and I would have to put it together again to call in the story.

How come I never dream about winning the Pulitzer or something nice like that?

No joy in Canuckville today, as the Oilers have struck out. A sad, sad day ... of course, now that they lost, now the Canadians engage in a little nationalistic hating on the U.S. -- too little, too late, my northern friends. If you want to get my freelance love you have to work up the rabid anti-American lather before the big game, when people actually care.

But try as they might, I don't think Edmonton's loss can be blamed on Bush. (Although Edmonton is an oil town [hence the name], and Bush likes oil, and the whole Iraq war ... ok, I don't have a conspiracy theory yet, but I'll work on it.) I'm no hockey expert, but I'm pretty sure that to win games you have to occasionally take some shots on the frickin' goal. Although if there was a Stanley Cup for passing the puck like a million times, I'm sure the Oilers would have won that one. Jeez, that was a frustrating game to watch. Ah well, back to the World Cup.

Toronto is totally mad for the World Cup. Everywhere you go, people have country flags flying from their car antennas. If you're driving downtown, you have to know the World Cup schedule -- because you definitely don't want to get caught in Little Italy or Little Portugal after a game. Not that there'd be any violence, you'd just be stuck in a really, really happy traffic jam with a few thousand jubilant Portuguese. Even the elderly, bedridden woman I visit with Wonder Dog at the nursing home has a Germany flag at the end of her bed -- I also saw a wheelchair sporting a flag of England in the nursing home parking lot. The CBC and other networks devote hours of coverage to it, which is pretty impressive considering Canada doesn't even have a team in the World Cup -- can you imagine a U.S. network devoting time to a championship they're not even in? But Canada, as I now know, is different.

I thought that the World Cup was stealing away some of hockey's thunder, but Saturday night convinced me otherwise. We went to a street festival in Little Italy, and ended up eating dinner on the patio of a lovely Italian restaurant. From our seats we listened to the music from the street festival (which started out as traditional Italian and then switched to covers of the hits of the '60s and '70s, for reasons that are unclear to me, but it seemed to please the crowd, especially two elderly Italian women who tangoed all night. Or maybe they were in town for Gay Pride week -- I'm not sure). Like all the other restaurants with patios, this one had a big screen TV playing Game Six of the Stanley Cup, so we were able to watch the Edmonton Oilers completely thrash the Carolina Hurricanes 4-0 while drinking red wine, eating pasta and listening to a vaguely Italian-looking woman sing "We are Family" by Sly and the Family Stone. Which is how all hockey should be experienced, in my opinion. At the end of the game, the whole patio counted down the last ten seconds like it was New Year's Eve. As I shouted "three ... two ... one!" with the rest of them and raised my glass of Sangiovese to toast the Oilers, I realized that I actually, for the first time, was starting to feel like a Canadian.

GO OILERS GO!

We have figured out the difference between the media in the U.S. and Canada, and it can be summed up in one phrase: feed the goat.

In the U.S., the daily task of producing news copy to fill the gaping maw of the newspaper, the web site or the broadcast is referred to as "feeding the beast." An apt metaphor, conjuring up an image of a huge, slavering monster terrorizing the countryside with his insatiable hunger for news.

In Canada, they call it "feeding the goat." Quite a different image, isn't it? I picture a white, long-haired goat standing out in a sunny field, contentedly chewing on whatever's been given to him to eat that day. Maybe bleating a bit from time to time, chasing a few butterflies if he's in a particularly feisty mood. Yup, time to feed the goat.

On a semi-but-not-really related note, some of the 17 suspects in the Toronto terrorism case have complained (or rather their lawyers have complained) that they are being "tortured." What sort of dastardly deeds have their Canadian captors made them suffer? Well, there's this:

Mr. Kolinsky also alleges that his client has faced at least some sort of physical abuse from guards: "As he was being searched, the guard touched his ribs and he's ticklish. He giggled a bit. And the guard drilled his finger in to his cheek and said, 'Is this funny?'"

Take heed, potential terrorists -- get arrested in Toronto and we will not hesitate to TICKLE YOU MERCILESSLY! Only in Canada...

I have a confession ... I think I like being a copy editor. I had my doubts going into this job, having been warned (with good intent) that a shift of straight copy editing would make the boringest state government committee hearing look as thrilling as sudden-death overtime in Game Five of the Stanley Cup Finals. (See how I slip those hockey references in all natural-like, eh?) In other words, I feared I'd be bored to tears.

But actually, I find it quite ... refreshing. It's true that I've been started out slowly, so I'm able to dedicate a bit more time to each story than is probably normal, but there's something almost meditative about scouring a story for stray commas and missing verbs. I think I appreciate it in part because I am still doing reporting. After a hectic weekend spent chasing down the terrorism arrests story, it was almost soothing to come in to work on Monday and focus all my attention on one paragraph, sentence or word at a time.

The interesting (to me) part is that not one story has crossed my desk without an error. And the stories that I'm editing are written by what I consider to be probably the top reporters in Canada, and I'm totally not being biased because I work there, they really are at the top of their game. Yet even the best-written, best-reported stories will have a misspelled word, a missing quotation mark, a mixed metaphor. And sure, it wouldn't be the end of the world if some of those mistakes got through, but for those of us who love and believe in newspapers (a group whose membership I'm keenly interested in maintaining), it does make a difference.

Of course, having learned that every story has at least some minor error leads me to the realization that it is possible, of the thousands of stories I've written over the years, that a few of them may have had errors in them too! I know, I was shocked. And so all those picky copy editor questions that I've rolled my eyes at over the years were asked by people who saved me from making an ass of myself in print on a daily basis. To my former, much-maligned copy editors, I offer you my humble thanks. There won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So you got that going for you, which is nice.

Now that I live in Canada, I have to watch the Stanley cup finals -- it's the law -- and I must admit tonight was a particularly exciting game. The winning goal was scored in the last 30 seconds, which was great, except that the winning goal was scored by Carolina and not Edmonton. If you were wondering, Canada has totally not gotten over the fact that most hockey teams and hockey money are now in the States, and thus their precious national sport has basically been reduced to pandering to people in places where ice does not naturally occur. As a new resident of Canada and former resident of North Carolina I wholeheartedly embrace this grudge and feel it would be an abomination for Carolina to win the Stanley Cup. Go Oilers!

I'm a bit disappointed that the whole Carolina-vs-Edmonton thing hasn't stirred up more nationalistic fervor. I would love to freelance a story about how all of Canada is pinning its hopes on Edmonton to reclaim their national pride and repudiate the Bush-loving, softwood-lumber-taxing, non-ice-having, conservative red state values of North Carolina. (Apologies to my progressive N.C. friends and family out there, but I can't let facts get in the way of a good story.) Alas that storyline is just not showing any traction here, despite my hopes to incite nationalistic hockey riots. The World Cup gets all the good riots -- it's just not fair. One problem is that Edmonton is in Alberta, which is like the Texas of Canada -- hence the name the Oilers. Another problem is that most of the players on both of the teams are Canadian, so it's sort of hard to get into the whole hating on the other country's team thing when they all probably played pee-wee hockey together in Ottawa. It's just a wild guess, but I'm thinking Carolina Captain Rod Brind'Amour isn't a Tarheel. Or as they used to say to me in good ole Rock Hill, "Y'all ain't from around here, are ya?"