Writing in The Spectator this week Victoria Lane had nothing but praise for her recent skiing holiday at Whistler, British Columbia:

…Now this is all very nice, but a distraction from the main point of Whistler. This is not the skiing or the snowboarding, but the service. The service! You are bombarded with attention. In the ski-hire shops there are more assistants than customers, and they treat you with incredible solicitude, inquiring lovingly after your toes.

All the attention, combined with the upbeat demeanour of Whistler’s workers, was too much for one of Victoria’s friends:

Another of my companions was having a struggle. Everyone was too cheerful, and it was putting him in bad humour. “They tax everything here,” he observed at one point. “They should tax happiness — that would sort them out.” He reminisced fondly about a skiing holiday in a small town in Spain, which was run by a family or company called Crap. There was the Crap restaurant, the Crap bar, the Crap ski-hire. Oh for something Crap!

Her friend is right. In terms of happiness, most Canadians are incredibly rich.