Kelly's MySpace Blog |

MySpace.com | rss | sign in

Kelly

Last Updated: 11/18/2009

Send Message
Instant Message
Email to a Friend
Subscribe

Gender: Male
Status: Engaged
Age: 34
Sign: Gemini

State: Oklahoma
Country: US
Signup Date: 10/2/2005

Blog Archive

[Older Newer]

/ /

November 24, 2009 - Tuesday

Random Stuff about Canada

1: Canadians have strange-lookin' money: The bills in Canada are multi-colored, and not just with the slight tint tens and twenties have in the States. There's a solid, separate color for each bill; bright blue for the fives, purple for the tens, sharp green for the twenties, etc. Also, there are no one-dollar bills in Canada. Instead, there's a gold one-dollar coin called a Loonie (so named because there's a loon on the coin) and a gold-and-silver two-dollar coin called a Twoonie (because... well, it's worth two bucks, it came along after the Loonie, and it rhymes.).

2: There are maple leaves on all of the McDonald's signs. This probably stands out to me because McDonald's signs are so prevalent everywhere in the world, so you're used to seeing them with a specific, identical look. But on every McDonald's sign and in every McDonald's TV commercial in Canada, there's a small red maple leaf slapped onto the Golden Arches.

3: Everyone recycles: Well, probably not everyone, but certainly more than I'm used to seeing. I confess that I was a lazy, shiftless, no good non-recycler in the States, mostly because doing so would have required me to collect all of my recyclables and take them to a recycling center myself each week. Here, each resident has a Blue Bin they dump recyclable materials in and set on the curb with their garbage at the end of the week. There's also a Green Bin for organic materials (such as our week-old Halloween pumpkins). Maybe there was something similar in residential Tulsa areas (and I also lived in an apartment, where I had no curbside garbage pick-up, only a communal dumpster), but I don't remember seeing any sort of recycling pick up in Claremore.

4: At the risk of bringing up with hot-button political issues, Canadians seem to really love their Evil Socialist Health Care System: The idea of paying for basic, essential health care is completely foreign, and the availability of health care for every citizen seems to be thought of as a fundamental right, possibly even a moral responsibility. I've had a few people ask about the American health care system (which I never had any problems with myself), and even the fact that I was required to pay a 25-dollar co-pay anytime I stepped into my doctors office results in puzzled looks. On the other side of the coin, emergency room visits here can have a certain luck-of-the-draw quality depending on how crowded the waiting room is at the time and the severity of your problem. Our neighbor recently had a workplace accident resulting in a deeply-sliced index finger, and she wound up sitting in the waiting room for almost 5 hours.

5: Canadians have weird Corn Pops: I have no explanation for this, but Corn Pops, instead of having the glossy, sorta-corn-shaped look I'm assuming everyone is familiar with, are instead non-glossy, smaller, and perfectly round. They look exactly like Kix cereal to me. It's like Corn Pops in the Twilight Zone or something.

6: Canadians also have weird potato chip flavors: Popular potato chip flavors in Canada include Ketchup (which taste, well, kinda ketchup-y), Roast Chicken, Sour Cream and Dill, Smokey Bacon, and a few others. Ketchup seems to be the one that usually stands out, though.

7: Tim Hortons restaurants are everywhere in Canada: Tim Hortons is a donut/coffee/tea/sandwich chain, and they're everywhere. It's like McDonald's in the states; wherever you are, you're never far from one. I have a severe weakness for their tea (hot tea, with sugar and milk) and TimBits (assorted donut holes).

Quick tip for simulating Tim Hortons tea while trapped in Oklahoma or some other Tim Hortons-less location: Buy a box of Red Rose tea bags at your local grocery store. It's a black tea, and the actual flavor is Orange Pekoe, or something. English Breakfast Tea is also very close and will do in a pinch. Find the largest coffee/tea mug you can, make the tea, let it steep for 5 minutes or so, add two generous spoonfuls of sugar and a splash of milk. It's delightful.

8: The squirrels in Canada are multi-colored: I'm used to the standard Oklahoma squirrel, sort of a reddish, rusty brown. Here, squirrels come in several colors; brown, gray and, my personal favorite, a deep, dark black.

9: Smarties are not Smarties in Canada: Everyone got Smarties for Halloween when they were kids, right? The small fruity, chalky candy disks in a cellophane wrapper? Those are called Rockets in Canada. Canadians have Smarties, but instead of actually being Smarties, Canadian Smarties are essentially slightly thinner M&Ms.

10: Canadians do say "Eh" quite a bit, but don't really have the stereotypical Canadian accent: I hear people say "Eh" all the time, but there's not really an accent in southern Ontario, aside from a very slight inflection on words like "out" and "about". But definitely not so much that it comes across as "Oot" and "Aboot". I've never heard anyone call someone a Hoser. Even the Eh's aren't all that frequent, they're just the most noticeable. Basically, anytime someone back home would say "huh" or "right", that would be an Eh here. "Great movie, huh?" would be "Great movie, eh?". "I know, right?!?" would be "I know, eh?!?"

11: Canadians are just as rude as Americans, maybe even more so: In the few months I've lived here and the many times I've visited, I've run across plenty of rude clerks, grumpy cashiers, snarky salespeople, angry drivers, and generally unpleasant people. I've run across plenty of polite, pleasant people as well, but the ratio between polite/rude people seems to be about the same as you'd expect to find in the U.S. The impression Americans sometimes have of Canadians being unfailingly polite at all times is a total myth.

12: Canada has actual seasons: The most common question I heard before I moved was how I'd be able to stand the constant cold in Canada. Canada has seasonal weather just like the States. I'm living in Southern Ontario, which is actually further South than some parts of the U.S. I moved here in August, and it was shorts-and-flip-flops weather. It's currently mid-November, it hasn't snowed once, and it's still warm enough to get by with only a light jacket. Granted, next month the switch will flip and I'll be freezing cold and dreading all the snow that's probably on the way over the next few months, but the weather here is usually identical to the weather back home, only the summers are slightly less hot and there's a two or three month stretch in Winter where it's considerably colder. But for now, it's much warmer here at the moment than it is in the Colorado town where I lived for a few years.

13: Milk in Ontario comes in plastic bags: Here's the one that throws most people. Milk here is sold in plastic sleeves, like the one pictured here:

They're sold in sets of three, like the bag pictured here:

Then they're stored in the fridge in a plastic container like the one pictured here:

You pull a sleeve from the bottom of the container, place the sleeve in a sleeve-sized milk pitcher, slam the pitcher on the counter so the sleeve settles snugly, then snip the top corner of the sleeve with a pair of scissors, so the entire thing ends up like this:

     This takes some getting used to, but it's not that bad. I think it would be ideal if you had kids, since you wouldn't have to worry about a 5 or 6 year old wrestling with a full gallon of milk.  Changing the bags out every couple of days can be a little annoying, though. And it really limits your "drinking straight from the jug" options.

     14: The speed limits are slower in Canada: I'm still not used to the speed limits as it is, since everything is in kilometers, but the highest speed limit I've seen seems to be 100 km per hour, which is roughly 60 miles per hour. And that's on a 3 or 4 lane highway, where I'd expect the speed limit to be 65-70 miles per hour, which means I'd more than likely be going 70-75 miles per hour. I foresee at least a couple of speeding tickets in my future. Fortunately, no one seems to actually abide by the set speed limits. So maybe I'm good.

     15: French is on everything. And not in the relatively unobtrusive way Spanish is on lots of stuff in the Southern U.S. All products usually have a French equivelent with equal billing front-and-center. My Froot Loops this morning not only assured me that they had the "same great taste!" but also "meme bon gout!"

     This doesn't bother me at all, except when it comes to DVDs. I'm a low-level movie geek, and I adore my DVDs.  I know it's trivial, but I like a DVD with an eye-grabbing cover that you can tell someone put some real effort into. Something with a little artistic flair to it, instead of a slap-dash photoshop with a bunch of floating heads or something.

     So, given that I'm already a little anal when it comes to DVDs, if I were to buy, say, Ghostbusters on Blu-Ray, you can understand why I'd prefer it not look like this:

Who ya gonna call? S.O.S. Fantomes, apparently.