Your two cows of Canada
KYLE LAMOTHE
As long as there have been complex issues, there have been people breaking them down into painfully insufficient analogies. For culture, politics, philosophy, sociology and economics, this means explaining ideas using the most obvious of examples: a cow, and another cow (that’s two cows, in case you lost count).
The “you have two cows . . .” jokes started sometime in the 1960’s as economics professors attempted to break down heavy theories for, no doubt, stoned-out students. The metaphors circulated through humour columns and letters until the advent of the Internet in the 1990s. With the new, international system of junk-sharing in place, people were free to add to the “two cow” snowball until it became an email forward institution — some websites even cite the jokes as an important part of the development of the World Wide Web.
They are translated into many languages and bridge cultural borders, giving satirical outsiders everywhere a simple way to take a stab at places, systems and things, and to share their wit digitally.
The basic examples focus around things like this:
Communism: You have two cows, the government takes both and gives you some milk. Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, breed a bunch of cows, make a whole bunch of money and retire to Florida.
Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to someone else.
Nazism: You have two cows. The government takes both cows and shoots you.
Bureaucracy: You have two cows. The bureaucracy takes both, milks one, pours the milk down the drain then fills out paperwork until they both die.
Eventually, people started using the idea to break down everything from France (You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows), to democracy (You have two cows. A vote is held and you lose), to Monopoly (Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect two cows).
So, in the interest of providing waffly summertime reading, here’s the two cows of the Canadian provinces:
British Columbia: You have two cows only as a cover for your huge marijuana farm. No one seems to care.
Alberta: You have more cows than almost anyone in the world does, and people flock from all over the country to squeeze the utters. But, the Federal government wants you to share some of your milk with all those cowless provinces — you look them straight in the face and say: “blow it out your nose.”
Saskatchewan: You have two cows and are sick of people making jokes about how you can see them from any other place in the province. Besides, the land being as flat as Premier Calvert’s reading on the charisma-o-meter, you realize that there’s not much else to satirize about your province.
Manitoba: You have two cows, but the guy who used to milk them left for Alberta, so you spend $2.1 million to come up with the idea that your cows still have “Spirited Energy.” Ontario: You have two cows and uncover their plot to blow up the chicken coop and decapitate the rooster. You were going to lock them in the barn, put black bags on their heads and electrocute their utters, but you’ve heard of this thing called “justice.” Plus, the damned press would have gotten pictures somehow.
Quebec: Vous avez deux vaches, and because you speak French, some Americans think that your cows hate freedom too. Your freedomhating bovine won’t produce milk, only lait.
Atlantic Provinces: You don’t have any cows, but PM Stephen Harper thinks you do. So when he originally named the Parliamentary Secretary to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, he picked the MP from Calgary East, Deepak Obhrai. Good luck with your cows, Mr. fisherman.
Kyle Lamothe is a fourth-year political studies student and a former Manitoban Features Editor.
