Being From the Eastern Townships + archival disasters + grudging Olympics

May I recommend

Being from Quebec’s Eastern Townships.

Look, I know this is going to be tricky for a lot of you to pull off, but you should at least try. You can go to school there (like Andrew did) or marry into it (like Andrew also did - really, his keenness is commendable) or move there in later life (like Andrew might do one day, ha ha, little does he know the master plan) but the best way to succeed at being a Townshipper is to just, well, be from here.

Who cares about being from this place, you might be thinking. It’s a tiny wedge of rural landscape smacked up next to the Vermont border with a weird name that is not even on official maps any more. Yes Donald Sutherland has a house here and true, the world’s finest maple syrup is produced here (suck it, Vermont) but apart from that, what’s the big wup?

Well, there are a bunch of reasons to try to be from here, so I’ll run through a few of the most important ones.

Firstly, it’s very very beautiful. I have gotten into arguments with p…