5

200 Years Of Slavery

Brown University

Picture it: The mid-1800s in America, as devoted men and women help slaves escape their racist tormentors by smuggling them North to Canada via a little something called the Underground Railroad. Why? Because Canada was wall-to-wall beavers, and not a single slave. Except for the part with all the slaves. All the acres -- or as they're known in Canada, hectares -- of slaves. Canada was up to their beavers in 'em.

Throughout the 1700s, before Canada was officially Canada, there was Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Upper Canada was under British rule and is mostly what is Ontario today, while Lower Canada is mostly what is modern-day Quebec and was chock-full of slaves, thanks to the prevailing attitudes at the time. Anyone who was anyone in Quebec had a slave. It was a sign of prestige and social importance. In fact, owning a slave was such an important sign of one's status that families would go into debt to buy the best one they could find.

Most slavery in Canada involved indigenous peoples, but for the social butterflies, a black slave was considered the best of the best, and they were worth double the price of Native slaves.

Quebec Gazette
Bilingual bigotry.

4

Healthcare Wait Times

Planet_Dirt_Project/iStock/Getty Images

If you move to Canada, not only can you avoid the likes of Donald Trump and Jeff Dunham, but you can also benefit from free universal healthcare! Oh man, time to shoot yourself in the foot and burn your genitals on a waffle iron. Or is it?

3

Horse Meat

AnnaElizabethPhotography/iStock/Getty Images

If you're the kind of person who maybe doesn't want to eat a horse, you may also want to rethink coming to Canada. Not that Canadians are popping horse nuggets on every street corner and chowing down on delicious horse jerky while they ride the bus, but the fact remains that Canada sure has a lot of horse meat in it. More than you're probably going to find in the US.

There's actually a very large market for horse meat in Quebec, as well as a smaller market throughout English Canada. Butchers from Toronto to Vancouver can get it for you, but it's huge in Quebec, where it's a roughly $80 million industry. That's right, $80 million in My Little Pony gets scarfed down by voracious French-Canadians every year. Remember how you always wanted a pony? Remember that magical summer at camp when you rode a thoroughbred named Buttercup and it was like she could see into your soul? Some dude named Jean-Jacques ate her with a side of poutine and then listened to some Rush.

Paul Cooper
Use a biscuit to sop up Seabiscuit.

2

Seal Hunt

newrecruit/iStock/Getty Images

Yes, a horse meat market is harrowing and awful, but Canada can do better -- and by "better," I mean so much worse. No matter how adorable a horse is, it will always look like Kanye's recently-fingered butthole compared to something like a baby seal. A baby seal is basically condensed cuteness in little furry form, looking all adorable and huggable and squee-inducing. Now imagine the nearly 500,000 that Canada allowed to be killed for its 2015 annual culling.

According to official Canadian law, those adorable little white furry pups are not allowed to be clubbed to death. Instead, they have to be at least 12 days old before you bash their heads in, once they've started molting and look just barely less cute. The head is the main target because the pelts need to be kept intact for sale, which is mostly why the hunt takes place. Of course, the Humane Society of the US investigated the hunt and determined as many as 40 percent of seals sustained injuries that were not fatal, meaning the seals were probably skinned while they were still alive and responsive to pain. Despite facts like that, Canada continues to conduct the hunt every year, one of only a small handful of countries to do so.

International Fund for Animal Welfare
Here's the nicest picture of this barbarism I could find. Don't search for more unless you hate yourself.

1

Residential Schools

Aboriginal Healing Foundation

Ask any Canadian what the darkest moment in Canadian history is, and you might hear something about Celine Dion. Stop talking to that Canadian, for they are dimwitted. Instead, find a Canadian who can tell you about the absolutely abhorrent history of aboriginal residential schools.

The first residential schools in Canada were opened in 1876. Their purpose was to take Native children from their families so they wouldn't absorb any of that pesky Native culture and tradition, and instead could be raised like the good little white kids the government wanted them to be. Yes, there was in fact a time when white people thought they could just force nonwhite people into whiteness. The schools were often run by Christian churches, usually Roman Catholic, and were basically unfathomable horror shows for the children forced to attend them.

Canadian Press
Your school serves tasteless pizza; theirs committed literal cultural genocide. A toss-up, really.

Over the years -- the last school wasn't closed until 1996 -- over 150,000 First Nations, Metis, and Inuit were forced into these schools. Upwards of 3,000 (and possibly over 6,000) of those children never left. Children at these schools were made to give up their ancestral languages and speak only English. Many underwent forced sterilization and extensive physical and sexual abuse. In addition, forcible enfranchisement was par for the course, which meant any trace of Nativeness was to be scrubbed from the student, body and soul. They would read and speak English and no longer be considered Native, but proper British citizens.

Department of Indian Affairs
Instant soulless husk -- just add tea and torture!

Mortality rates at these schools were as high as 60 percent over five years in some cases, due to healthy children being housed with others who had tuberculosis. Many of those who made it out alive suffered long-lasting effects such as PTSD, anxiety and personality disorders, and depression. It was a massive load of shit that was instituted by the Canadian government. They've since tried to apologize, but Hallmark doesn't really make a card to cover the systemic abuse of an entire culture.

For more reasons to never go to Canada, check out 5 Stories That Prove Police Are Just as Terrifying in Canada. But then again, see why Chris Bucholz swears by Canada in 15 Reasons Canada is better than your country.

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