The Happiness Rankings

 Not Happy
  Folks up here were really unhappy recently when Canada lost both the Olympic Men's and Women's Hockey matches against the U.S. teams and then lost again to the U.S. in the Paralympic gold medal match. The boasting about the "Gold Medal Hat Trick" could be heard far beyond the border. 
   Searching for something about which we could gloat, I remembered that the World Happiness Report has just been released. Surely the citizens south of here have to be sadder than we are. Thinking that we must beat the Yanks at something, I went looking for the rankings.

We Lost Again
   The Americans are higher in the rankings than we are.


   I thought that maybe they are happier because they are warmer. That does not appear to be the reason since Finland, Iceland and Denmark are 1-2 and 3. 

     I hoped that maybe the rankings are American and rigged. But, the World Happiness Report is published by the University of Oxford, in the country where our King lives.

   It helps a little that we used to outrank the Americans and were happier. 

  Now, even the Israelis are much happier than we are. At least we beat Botswana and Zimbabwe, so the American President cannot call us a "shithole country."

   Two of the six names appearing in the Executive Summary are even Canadian, John F. Helliwell at UBC and Lara B. Aknin at Simon Fraser. Perhaps they did not fight hard enough for our team, since they are out in B.C., and may be sadder than the rest of us since they are worried about their property rights.

For a look at the report and rankings see: World Happiness Report.