The great thing about including Canada in anything, including the G-7 (or even the northern hemisphere), is the assurance of a punchline at the end of a story. John Williamson sent me yesterday’s WSJ page-one item, “Seal Heart, Anyone? Canada Preps Arctic Outpost to Host G-7 Event,” written exquisitely by Phred Dvorak.

It’s about the clever Canadian decision to do its G-7 hosting chores in Iqaluit, on “pristine” Baffin Island, where Canadian politicians go to eat raw seal heart with the natives to show their solidarity with the indigenous seal-whackers.

This has all the makings of a folk fair. The greatly inconvenienced G-7 tribespeople will wear their quaint pinstriped costumes and be served seal innards — a lot less cute than seal outards — by the local Inuit.

The story’s last lines:

As for France’s delegation, they don’t mind. The French “eat anything that moves,” says an official close to Finance Minister Christine Lagarde.
The minister, a vegetarian, has to leave before the dinner, the official adds.

This put me in a coughing fit, so I took the suppressant my local French doc prescribed, something made from snail slime. I am not kidding.