Lake Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan used to be a big rectangular wheat-covered prairie province sitting right smack dab in the middle of Canada. Those days are ancient history now, as the area that once held those glowing amber fields waving gently in the breeze has disappeared forever. Now it’s a crazy old lake with a bunch of tourists from Ontario paddling around in canoes for weeks, trying to get to Alberta or else bumping into each other with their aluminum canoes and saying, “Excuse me, have you seen a fish and chips shop around here?”

So here’s how it all happened.

One day the fine folks at the McGill University Astronomy Department got wind of a strange celestial movement just outside the orbit of Jupiter.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” said one of the McGill scientists, as he gazed at his vertical plexiglass space-radar screen, after having smoked too much pot.

“Je ne sais pas!” said McGill Scientist Number Two who was all hopped up on caffeine pills. (Astronomers all speak French, to confuse the Russian spy satellites.)

So they whipped out the BAT (Big Ass Telescope) and pointed it towards our solar system’s largest planet.

“Mon Dieu!” said the first scientist.

“Holy shit!” said the second scientist, as normal scientific protocol and nomenclature went straight out the window. “I don’t freakin’ believe this. Carl, c’mere and have a look.”

So Carl, the scientist’s grand-dad, came over and squinted into the eyepiece of the telescope.

“Ahh yes,” he said. “Haven’t seen the likes of this since ‘49. Looks like we got a furniture comet heading this way, sonny.”

Spectral analysis confirmed the observation. It was indeed a comet, shaped like a giant interstellar chest of drawers (an eighteenth-century mahogany dresser to be precise), and it was heading straight towards the planet Mars.

“Oh, well, we can all relax, since it’s only heading towards Mars,” said Prime Minister Paul Martin.

“Screw this,” said the Martians, and they sent Bruce Willis up with a thermonuclear device. Bruce managed to detonate an explosion on the comet, causing it to wobble slightly and veer straight towards the Earth.

“Well isn’t this a kick in the pyjama pants,” said Prime Minister Paul Martin. “Do we have any volunteers to fly up there and land on that dresser and blow it up or send it hurtling towards Venus or something? What’s that? No? No volunteers? Well shit, brace yourselves folks.”

So the furniture comet slammed into the Canadian prairies and tore up a huge crater where Saskatchewan used to be. The explosion devastated the Canadian economy because thousands of pairs of underwear were thrown into the air and the Stanfield’s factory had to close, after all why buy underwear when it’s hanging from every tree and lamppost in the country?

For the next five years, it was sort of like a nuclear winter in Canada, only with underwear.

However, things settled down and Canada managed to corner the world mahogany market with dresser-drawer splinters. And the Saskatchewan crater gradually filled up with water and piss to become what we now know as Lake Saskatchewan. The End.