Sunday 8 February 2015

The Interrogatory

My wife and I went to the birthday of the daughter of one of her friends yesterday. One of the guests, a friend of my wife's friend and the mother of one of the children at the celebration, was wondering where I was from because of my accent. I say wondering, but as it often happens she assumed I was American. Her partner thought I was Italian. When I told them I was Quebecker, first she didn't know what it meant (it happens) and when I told her I was (French) Canadian, she said joking that she did not believe me. She said: "No, I am really not sure you are from Canada, I think you must be one of those spies passing as some other national when they come here." Just for the bizarre, out of the blue assumption, I think it deserves to be a great unknown line.

So she decided to give me an interrogatory, basically ask me trivial questions about Canada she got from a questionnaire online. They were stupid trivial questions, like for all these online questionnaires. There was one question about New Brunswick ("what is the only official bilingual province of Canada?"), about Quebec City ("what is the oldest city in North America?"), one about the number of oceans surrounding Canada (three), a few abut sports (tricked question: what is the national sport of Canada? No, it's not what you think. I knew the answer, by the way). I knew them all, except one about Wayne Gretzky (because I don't care how many points he made in his long career). Moral of the story: apparently I am not a sleeper agent from a criminal organization and it was a rather convoluted way to demonstrate it.

2 comments:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

I was rather hoping you were a CSIS agent keeping an eye on those Brits.

Guillaume said...

I don't think the CSIS would dare to spy on the UK.