150 Little Known Canadian Facts #4

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19. If you mail anything to or from the Canadian government, you don’t have to pay for postage. Both the sender and the receiver of said mail have to have Canadian addresses, and the public can only send mail to these persons: Governor General, Speaker or Clerk of the Senate or House of Commons, Parliamentary or Associate Librarian, Members of the Senate, Members of the House of Commons, Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner or Senate Ethics Officer, and the Director of the Parliamentary Protective Service. Some conditions apply to the people on this list, so visit Canada Post’s website for details.

20. Technically speaking, if you have Batman, Superman, Dick Tracy, Captain America or any other comic or graphic novel that depicts criminal acts, you’re violating Canadian law. Back in the 1940s, comic books were becoming violent in nature, so politicians—at the rising number of concerned parents—successfully lobbied to have comic books that depicted crime banned in Canada. This part of the criminal code is Section 163, and it states that anyone who makes, prints, publishes, distributes, sells or has in his possession for distributing comic books that depicts real or fake crimes is in violation of Crime Comic. This law nowadays is used more to restrict “obscene material” such as pornography.

21. We all know that 24 Sussex Drive is the residence of the prime minister in office. However, did you know it was built by an American immigrant named Joseph Merrill Currier? He came to Ottawa from Vermont in 1837, and when he got married in 1868 he built the house currently standing at 24 Sussex Drive. He named the house Gorffwysfa, which is Welsh for “Place of Peace.” In 1950, the courts decided to make the property the prime minister’s residence, and up until 1971 the residing PM had to pay rent. The PM’s residence is off limits to the public, though you can see a virtual tour of it on-line. The part of the house open to the public belongs to the nation.

22. Canada has one of the lowest population densities in the world with about 3.6 people per square kilometre of land. This low density probably isn’t helped by the fact that Canada has a such a large diaspora rate: Roughly 9% of Canadian citizens permanently live outside of Canada. The most popular destinations for Canadian ex-patriots are the United States, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.

23. Since Canada enjoys peaceful relations with most nations in the world, one of our longest-standing boarder disputes might come as a surprise. Since 1980, Canada and Denmark have been involved in a disagreement over which nation owns Hans Island, a small, uninhabited, resource-barren, one-kilometre stretch of rock that can be found about half-way between Baffin Island and Greenland. Though discussions have been civil, neither country has been willing to give up its claim on the island.

24. The Canadian military might have made a name for itself during World War One in the Battle of Vimy Ridge, but Canada’s first overseas conflict was the South African Boer War of 1899. About 7,000 Canadian soldiers travelled to Cape Town to aid Britain in its conflict with the African colony. As Canada had no formal army at the time, many of the recruits were former cattle ranchers, chosen as soldiers because of their expertise on horseback.