Vancouver Canucks, New York Yankees, Washington Redskins

[Joseph McCollum]

On Wed, 4 Aug 1999 20:46:03 PDT "D. Ezra Johnson" <ezra_50 at HOTMAIL.COM>
writes:
>I shouldn't have sounded so skeptical about the "kanaka" story. I was
>just hoping someone would contribute some of the evidence for such a
>hypothesis.  By the way, the dictionary didn't say it came into English
through a
>French form "canaque". Without that piece of information, I was having
>trouble understanding just who in the Pacific Northwest was calling
French fur
>traders by the Hawaiian word for 'person', and why. If the word comes
>through French, as Jim Rader implies, then it's more like the French
>fur traders got friendly with the Pacific Islander fur traders, and
picked
>up the word as slang...
>
>But does anyone know if "Canaque" has (or ever had) currency in
>Canadian French?
>
Back in elementary school (Pittsburgh area), we learned a folk song about
"John Canuck."  I want to say that he was a railway worker, but maybe he
was a fur trader
or something else.  Does anyone know the song?

Oh -- The History Channel does rerun its "Official Network of Every
Millenium" snippets, so maybe they will rerun the "hot dog" one some day.
 I'll try to have my VCR ready.