I’m certain we’d all agree that continued Canadian independence and territorial integrity is pretty darn awesome. It certainly appears to be no small achievement when held up to the fractious light of Europe’s second millennium AD, as illustrated in the amazing animation above (dig the Nazi finger that tickles Moscow’s nipple at 4:51 before being deservedly lopped off).

As you can see, things change…a lot, or at least they did, and often. Thanks to the coming of the Atomic Age and the end of the Colonial Era, the world map isn’t being rewritten as quickly as it once was. Thank goodness for that (though I could still do without nukes). Still, considering how weak the glue is that holds Canada together (Tim Hortons, hockey, an appreciation of rye whiskey, benign antipathy towards the United States, etc), it remains (in my opinion) nothing short of an unlikely miracle that we’ve lasted this long without voluntarily Balkanizing our lands into divided oblivion.