There is no such city as St. John, New Brunswick, yutz! It’s Saint John! Saint! Five letters! And I should know because I was born there. Ignorant swine!
glump
Ahhhhhh, thank you, doctor. I feel much better now.
Nurse, make a note to increase the lithium to fifty milligrams next time.
now that Matt’s been heavily sedated, we can get back to CFL football.
here’s their web site, in case you’re interested Monty: http://www.cfl.ca
unfortunately, they’ve changed their t-shirt line this year. last year you could get the one that said “Our Balls Are Bigger.” This year the t-shirt is “One Tough Mother.” it’s neat to see all the little old ladies wearing them at the games.
Are you sure? I heard the Riders lost that game.
This could go on all week with the Riders’ jokes…
You heard wrong Mike.
The Riders won handily.
Okay, no more. I promise.
'Dat true? Well I’ll be damned! All of my life I have thought it was Saskatoon, but I just looked it up and you’re right, it’s Regina. Goddamn! I hate it when I think I “know” something and it turns out I’m full of shit.
Ok, so I’m just a dumb yank. At least I generally know where the provinces are, unlike a friend of mine who I had to pull out a map to convince that BC was not “one of the eastern provinces.”
–
peas on earth
One of my colleagues asked me a few years ago if British Columbia was next to New Brunswick. And she was born and raised in Canada!!! I was flabbergasted. I still wonder to this day how I managed to keep a straight face.
I have a vibrator, a computer and pizza delivery…why on earth would I want to leave the house?
bantmof,
if you’re interested in broadening your knowledge of Regina and Saskatchewan, here’s a link to the links page of the Legislative Assembly home page:
http://www.legassembly.sk.ca/legassembly/genlinks.htm
note that it’s got the link to the Queen’s home page - if you check it out, she doesn’t have a “faq” category. Instead, it’s “Your Questions Answered.” I assume if you have a sound card it would be announced in a nice plummy accent.
Keith Richards appeared at a benefit with Madonna in early Sept. and Keith was wearing a Hamilton Tigercats T-shirt. Go Cats! I lost money on the 1976 Grey Cup I bet on the Roughriders.
In Canada, a DWI/DUI is a felony while in most US states it is a misemeanor. You can not take the ferry to Victoria and debark with a DWI/DUI conviction! You either return to the US or pay a $200 Canadian ($130 US) “discretionary” fee. But, you can drive across the border! Go figure? ? ?
“Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”
E A Poe
I had to take a business trip to Montreal a few months ago, and what bugged me was how much French everyone tried to speak to me. I can deal with someone starting a conversation in French, but even after I responded in English (with a pronounced New York accent), they insisted on continuing in French.
Example: When I walked into a McDonald’s for lunch, the counter-person said some words. I took this to be a request for my order, which I gave in English. She then asked a question in French. I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Her response was to repeat the same sentence, still in French, but slower and louder.
Laugh hard; it’s a long way to the bank.
Funny, the same thing happened to me in New York. I kept asking directions in French but the person I was talking to just didn’t get it. Instead, we switched to sign language: he showed me his gun, a raised my hands, he made the ‘hand over’ gesture… 
All I want to say is that when you criticise someone for using their own language in their own country, you’re on shaky grounds.
Only humans commit inhuman acts.
If you speak French in New York, you shouldn’t expect most people to understand you, because they truly won’t. That is a completely different situation than the one I described.
The people who bothered me in Montreal had no trouble understanding me, and they all spoke English quite well. They just refused to speak it to me until I explicitly asked them to do so. (Simply saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French” did not suffice. I had to specifically say, “Please speak to me in English,” as if asking for a favor.)
FTR, of all the people I dealt with on that trip, the ones who behaved this way were relatively few. But it wasn’t just one person or one establishment, so I came away with a less-than-stellar opinion of that city’s residents.
Laugh hard; it’s a long way to the bank.
There is some very serious nationalism in Quebec and very aggressive defense of their distinct language and culture. Canada has a self-image of a very tolerant nation but it’s history up until recent times is not all that wonderful. (read the book “The Great Depression” by the Canadian writer Pierre Berton)
Quebecois were not treated as badly as the aboriginals because (a) they were white, and (b) they had a powerful protector in the Catholic church. Nevertheless, they were treated with a very subliminal racism. I am sure every one of the vast numbers of Quebec separatists were insulted or snubbed in some way by an English Canadian at some point in their lives. The classic French complaint was that, if they went to one of the big department stores in downtown Montreal they had to speak English to be served. Right into the 1960s most of the bosses and management of companies in Quebec tended to be English and the English tended to be a superior more affluent class. Time has changed things a lot but there is still a lot of friction between the two distinct cultures, especially among the lowlifes. For example, in a bar in an English area people speaking French might be told by some asshole to “speak Canadian”. This posting is getting too long, but the point I’m making is that, for many Quebecois, there are deep political reasons for refusing to speak English and, I’m sorry to say, not a little bit of hatred for English Canadians. Combine this with the natural surliness that develops in any poor slob anywhere in the world that has to serve the public for a living and you English speaking American tourists in Quebec are almost certain to encounter people who refuse to understand you. Just yell really loud in English - this seems to work for Americans everywhere else in the world. One more comment - Quebec is a beautiful and wonderful place and the people…they have a reputation, apparently supported by statistics, of drinking more alcohol, smoking more, having sex more, going to restaurants and bars more, marrying less (more than 50% of couples living together are not married), having less children, consuming more illegal drugs, and so on. To some of us these are interesting and attractive qualities, to others…
Auraseer…people in quebec are famous all across canada for their rudeness…so dont take it too personally.
I live in the only officially ‘bilingual’ province…(unless that has changed since high school) and I live in the only bilingual city in that province. As a result, we get english and french tourists.
Most of the french tourists I have encountered (and there has been MANY!) and totally sweet and try very hard to speak english if you cant speak french. We usually end up with them speaking french, and me speaking english, as we both have a good comprehension of the other language, but our spoken skills are less than perfect.
You will on occasion get a french person who rolls thier eyes and speaks french slower as if you were a moron…
shrugs
C’est la vie!
The best thing Canada could do with Quebec is build a 200 foot high wall around the whole province and fill it with water. This would save us millions of dollars a year in seperation referendum’s. Americans, I ask you please, do not form an opinion about Canadians if you’ve only met someone from Quebec. They are hardly an example of us ‘nice’ Canadians.
–Donj
PS. Im from Alberta, Canada and I say pro-cess, am a pothead, and drink milk out of a plastic bag!
Kellibelli
Scoobysnax
Save water drink beer!
regarding the milk in a bag,
I’m sorry to be stupid, but what do you do with the milk bag? Do you pour it into a pitcher? Is there a dispenser or something? My husband and I are pretty intelligent (I think) and we were at a loss when we saw this in Canada…'splian, please
or, if you prefer, sil vous plait…
I’m very lucky. The only time I was ever up shit creek, I just happened to have a paddle with me.
–George Carlin
Steviant: Well put, for a Calgarian 
As for the other Calgarian, well…let’s say his opinions are slightly less nuanced
There are some fine people in Quebec, as well as some jackasses…in both official languages. I would even venture to say, having lived there the first 24 years of my life, that the jackasses - among the French-speaking Quebeckers at least - are truly the exception, not the rule.
Separation from the rest of Canada is not a done deal. Far from it.
The milk bags: there’s a little plastic holder, sort of an oval jug with a handle, that the bags go into.
Dropping a bag of milk from a couple of stories will bring an old-fashioned Lettermanesque thrill!
By the way, I urge all Canadians and Americans to explore the greatest Canadian website I’ve ever seen (just keep reminding yourself it’s a joke):