I don’t know whether or not Canadians owned all of the local stores, but this Michigander grew up with homo milk advertised everywhere in my town across the river.
Another regionalism I thought of (Thanks Poysyn!) is Nips and Chips. If you’re from Manitoba you know exactly what we’re going to do when I say the following, "Hey Poysyn, you up for going to Sal’s for some nips and chips before we go to the social? After we can hit the Village for dainties!
I’m as Canadian as Bob and Doug McKenzie, but I’d like to know who the demented individual was who first took a sip of tomato juice, which is vile stuff to begin with, and said, “You know what this really needs? Some clam juice.” Ugh.
It gets better, Clamato juice when introduced to the American market didn’t exactly take off. Sales were flat, they were considering discontinuing it. But there were curious spikes in sales, in areas close to the Alberta border as the drink took off in Canada. The company sent people out to see what was up. They discovered it was exploding in Canada and we all got Clamato juice, effectively keeping the product profitable long enough for it to make inroads into the US market. Something of a reversal to how it usually plays out!
Well, yes and no. Although Caesars and Clamato are synonymous now, they were developed independently of each other from completely different influences.
From Wiki:
I think he means that it’s better to have a Bloody Mary, hold the Bloody Mary mix.
I recently paid money for a Bloody Mary for the first time in my life. It was a microdistillery mix which actually tasted pretty good; normally I can’t abide the stuff.
There are 36,000,000 people in Canada and not one of them says “Bi and bi” to mean this. It would be meaningless to a Canadian today, since the country doesn’t call itself “bicultural” and hasn’t for two generations.
The most Canadian Canadianism I can think of is the already-cited “Hydro.” Only Canadians refer to electricity as water, even in Ontario, where most electricity is, in fact, generated by nuclear power.
Also, Canadians usually call things like Kit Kats and Mars bars “chocolate bars.” Americans tend to call it them “candy bars.”
