There's no border crossing to get into Niagara Falls, Ont., but there might as well be. It's as neon as Vegas, and the rows of motels named Uncle Sam's or President Motor Inn, mixed with fast food food chains from corporate America, make it look like some greedy, soulless city off the Florida interstate.

In the old Niagara Wire Weaving factory on Robinson Street, now Pyramid Place, it looks no different. There's Oscars Cafe, with huge likenesses of Paul Newman, Clark Gable and Groucho Marx overlooking the atrium, and the Elvis Presley Museum is upstairs. Down the hall from Elvis, though, is something peculiar, an invasion of sorts - something Canadian.

Oh Canada Eh?! is a dinner show which bills itself as a "musical feast of food, fun and folklore." A cynic might say it's a Canadian equivalent of the Movieland Wax Museum genre, but better Sir John Eh than Harry Houdini.

As it turns out the dinner show has the heart and music to make the skin tingle and the chest expand, especially on this Canada Day weekend.

The idea comes from two St. Catharines travel agents, Ross Robinson and Jim Cooper.

"Ross had been to Australia and saw something called The Jolly Swagman Show - skits making fun of Australia," said Cooper, a tenor, past-president and producer with Garden

City Productions. "We did some research and thought, 'Let's start flying the flag.' "

 Robinson said the idea of the cabaret was to poke fun at Canadian stereotypes but Cooper and Ross Inglis "found so much music, it became a musical about Canada."

The show begins with the discovery of Trivial

Pursuit, which allows the cast of nine to deal with categories such as Canadian history, geography, sports and arts and entertainment. On stage is a log cabin, a backdrop of Lake Louise, a lumberjack on an electric piano and a native brave on bass.

When not on stage performing, the cast serves dinner to guests sitting at picnic tables covered with red-and-white tablecloths. Looming above are large moose and buffalo heads, and on the walls hang a Toronto Maple Leaf sweater, Howie Meeker hockey stick, lobster cages, an oar, provincial flags and pictures of a solitary canoe on a lake, wheat-filled prairies and Rocky Mountain vistas.

Some of Niagara's top talent put the show together - Inglis, of St. Catharines, arranged the music and actor/writer J. Sean Elliott wrote most of the dialogue.

There's still room for poking fun at stereotypes, including an American who arrives at the border in June expecting to ski. But Cooper welcomes our neighbors to the south by saying: "We have the largest unguarded border in the world - whoever said that never met a Canada Customs agent." It prompted all the Niagara smugglers in the crowd to laugh.

0h Canada becomes a sports song with lyrics like "God help the Leafs," and during the geography quiz, our newest province is a target.

"The capital of Newfoundland is 'N'," said Larry Hurst, an accomplished fiddler and Niagara Falls busker looking like he just arrived from St. John's.

During appropriate interludes, "haddock from Nova Scotia, roast beef from Alberta and chicken from Manitoba" (not really) are served.

But it is the songs which enchant and get the Canada goose bumps rising. Folk songs like Chevalier de la Table Ronde, Farewell to Nova Scotia and I's the B'y That Builds the Boat, and little-known Montreal connections to famous songs (Alex Kramer wrote the music for Far Away Places and Gait McDermot wrote the music for Hair). More common tunes come from Buffy Sainte-Marie, lan Tyson, Paul Anka and Gordon Lightfoot.

The cast, using a tilting canoe, has some fun with the Mounties Song and When I'm Calling You from the musical Rose Marie. Then the backdrop switches from Lake Louise to an eastern scene for Anne of Green Gables.

The resounding finish, in front of Parliament Hill, includes Something to Sing About (the crowd joined in for the refrain "From Vancouver Island to the Alberta highlands..."), an 1842 gem, Un Canadien Errant and the finale, They Call it Canada. The Canadian flag, which had earlier been seen on cummerbunds and aprons, was now waved back and forth behind the full-throated cast.

The crowd has responded with tears and comments like "Get that Lucien Bouchard down here to see this" or "Ask the schoolchildren in here." Robinson said former Costa Rican president Rafael Angel Calderon attended and said: "I didn't know you Canadians were so patriotic."

"I said, 'We are, we're sort of shy, we never talk about it.' Then again, the UN says we're one of the greatest countries in the world, and we still say 'Oh sure!' "

Whether you're cynical about Canada or not, the show is enough to make you want to breathe the fresh air of the Rockies and feel the breeze blowing the prairie wheat, buy a tent and go camping or paddle a canoe in solitude - somewhere north of the border.