Death of a Groundhog On the last show, which was on Groundhog day, it was pointed out that Canada has it's own Groundhog Day and the various provinces each have their own noteworthy groundhog. The USA kind of settled on the one ground hog in Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney Phil, after a few failed attempts in other states to get traction for a different groundhog. In Canada there are a slew of these predictive animals. which in many cases are not animals at all. For example, Manitoba Mel seems to be a stuffed groundhog that someone puts outside for the prediction. Okanagan (BC) “Okie” is actually a dorky-looking hand puppet. Alberta has Balzac Billy and Ontario has Whiarton Willie which traditionally seems to be an albino making replacement difficult, Willie seems to have died a lot. This past groundhog day, Quebec's Fred LeMarmotte died the day before, apparently during hibernation. That cause quite the stir. “He's dead, Jim!” Then there is the dual threat from Nova Scotia where they have a groundhog named Sam and a lobster named Lucy that provides a second opinion. Lucy comes out of some hideaway, or not, and that predicts the weather. Insofar as the shadows cast around Canada, half the groundhogs saw a shadow and half didn't. So who knows what is up? Read a good breakdown of all this and its origins here. And, yes, it does have roots in Europe. | 
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