There was a time when you could hear Canada laughing. And since it’s Thanksgiving, we should ask where that Canada went. It used to be woven into the ordinary fabric of life – spilling out of a curling club after the bonspiel, the hockey dressing room, the restaurant table, or the service club weekly gathering. We didn’t have to arrange to be happy. We simply happened upon one another.

Canadians still laugh, of course. We have wonderful comedians. We have television, movies, podcasts, and an almost infinite supply of things designed to amuse us. But much of our laughter now arrives through a screen. We consume it alone. We forward it. We scroll past it.

And increasingly, we laugh at people rather than with them. The old Canadian laughter was often communal. It came from the strange, beautiful absurdity of living among other human beings. Nobody needed to record, post it, or turn it into content. We just laughed.

Perhaps the reason this seems harder today is Canadians have become more anxious about life.

We feel the pressure everywhere. The house our parents bought for what now seems like an impossible price. The grocery bill that quietly climbs every month. The young........

© The London Free Press