The usual U.S. reaction to Canadian news is "Whut?", but Sunday night's exciting "shot-up Arab villain" story kept the official Real American response to Canada's Historic Election down to a couple of wire stories that leaked into our Google from "the Canadian Press" and maybe a couple of Twitter posts in that weird French. Was it all a conspiracy to hide the surge of socialism up North, as the socialists of the New Democratic Party became Canada's official "opposition party" to Stephen Harper's conservatives? No, just the usual "ignore the parts of North America that are in Canada or Mexico." We don't really follow any of it, either, and we are daily CBC listeners.

(Our favorite CBC programs are "the weather reports for Nova Scotia or Manigotagan or whatever," the show with Jian Ghomeshi that's basically bands and writers, and those soothing hours-long programs with somebody from Miramichi East telling about how they took an ocean liner to South Africa once, to fall in love.)

Anyway! They had an election, very historical. These NDP people won all over the place, especially Quebec -- where they won 58 out of 75 seats. It seems many of the NDP candidates were just vaguely aware they were even running for election!

NDP candidate Ruth Ellen Brosseau, who until the election managed a bar on Carleton University campus in Ottawa, won her race in Berthier-Maskinongé. Brosseau, who doesn't speak French, will represent a riding that's almost 100 per cent Francophone.

She rose to prominence in the election after taking a holiday in Las Vegas in the middle of the campaign. Contacted by the Globe and Mail, her co-worker said he didn't know she was running for Parliament in a riding more than 300 kilometres away.

Other NDP winners included random students from McGill University.

So, the Bloc Québécois party is basically dead, the fake liberal Liberal party is "in collapse," and the Greens actually have an MP now. Stephen Harper still sucks, even though being "conservative" in Canada still means promising (in French) that everybody will get more education and health care and environmentally themed baseball caps. [CBC/Globe and Mail/Canadian Press/Montreal Gazette]