Canadian content laws are still in effect.
And yeah, beer is expensive in Ontario: lots of tax.
haha. I once asked in a NYC restaurant where are the washrooms and got a strange look like “what do you want to wash?”
You were on the 401 in Ontario. Technically the term is not “drivers” but “lunatics”
These are “Passing Lanes”. There is signage and I am sure they are in the States too.
Another thing unique to Ontario is the usage of the word “hydro” to mean electricity. So when people say their hydro was out for 4 hours, what they actually mean is that they had no electricity.
The monopoly electricity provider in Ontario used to be called Ontario Hydro back when pretty much all our electricity was water-powered. For over 40 years we’ve been getting most of our electricity from nuclear, but the terminology remains.
Oh, and 110 KPH is what everyone drives at on highway 17. The police won’t even blink at you for going 110 in a 90 zone. That’s just the way it is.
I’ve never seen a sign saying “passing lane” in the US. Only a handful of states even have the concept of passing lanes, that is, a lane that is reserved for passing only. Most states just have fast lanes and slow lanes and middle lanes.
Actually the more surprising thing about Canada for me was the relative *lack *of surprises. Pretty darn seamless in the Anglophone area (save for getting loonies and twoonies in the change, then I remember, yeah, I’ll have to make a point to spend these before leaving). Then again I’ve never really gone that deep in-country, I’ve stuck to the Toronto-Niagara corridor, Québec and Halifax where my outsiderness is nicely accommodated.
I’ve had similar experiences in a few US roads, especially in the less populated areas. Only that in the US case what often happens with the widenings is one direction goes to 2 lanes while the other remains one lane and it alternates. Rather than marking it as passing area there may be a “slow traffic stay right” sign.
That’s the way it is here too.
Yeah, that’s been my experience too. The differences are quite subtle. Driving up into Quebec, my first visit to Canada, was interesting because it essentially had that same rural United States feel (old Chevy pickup trucks in the driveway, same sort of rural route houses, etc.) but everything was in French. A little bit of a disconnect with the stereotypes of France floating around in my head at the same time.
Other small things I’ve noticed are the lack of police cars in Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria. I’m not sure if there are actually less police or they patrol in a less conspicuous fashion, but it felt like there were a lot less around then what I’m used to in American cities. Even here in Seattle, and I’ve had folks who moved here from the Northeast U.S. comment that it seems low here too!
Everywhere accepting RFID (in my case Apple Pay, but I think most locals had RFID credit/debit cards like they do in Australia?) was a nice touch. As was the bringing out of the credit card machines, but that’s largely a U.S. versus the world thing rather than a Canada specific thing.
Oh, and the out-of-service transit buses with “Sorry!” as their display in Vancouver was a nice lean into the stereotype. 
Yeah, even the buses apologize.
You will only see them in the mountains and hills. They are needed because the roads are nothing but endless curves - no straight sections to pass safely. And yeah, you could always build a four lane road but the road hugs the mountain with a rock face on one side and a cliff on the other. And they are usually uphill - this will separate the campers and trucks from vehicles that can accelerate up the hill.
No. You see passing lanes all along two lane highways, just like in the US.
Coming from europe, to Montreal, and having been to different parts of the US a few times… for a tourist there really isn’t that much difference between the two.
And the people doing checks at the border or in the airport, are definitely the same in their dickish and unreasonable questions (I wonder if we do the same to visitors to the EU)
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ETA outside of the cities, people drive equally badly.
As a ten-year-old child, Mom was surprised that they didn’t speak English. And the fact that the street signs were in both languages. And, as someone who grew up in Virginia, she was surprised they didn’t drink iced tea.
How white it is is surprising, even Toronto is only half minority, and that’s strange. Also, how much less white it has become in an extremely short amount of time. Toronto in the 90s was about as diverse as a Trump rally. Now, it’s way more diverse-still not US city diverse, but much more so than in the day. Once you get out of the city though, Canada is still as pale as snow white in a blizzard. And except for Afro-Caribbeans in Toronto and Haitians in Montreal, it’s all Asian minorities as well which is strange. (Well, First Nations in the Prairie Provinces, but I never get out there.) Traveling through Canada is like going to a Harvard alum dinner.
How fucking drunk are you?
Poor areas seem even poorer and more dreary than poor areas in the U.S.
And Mackintosh Toffee is fucking awesome. You can usually buy it in the poor areas.
Quebec’s geography surprised me. In October, Mrs. SMV and I met friends in western Massachusetts and drove up to Montreal.
Which meant going through Vermont and the Green Mountains, which seemed to comprise the whole state.
But when we got to Quebec, it was as if the Canadians had closed the border to any landmass taller than a hillock. Got through the checkpoint (where the guard was cool and efficient, but by no means rude) and bam! Suddenly, we’re in eastern North Carolina, but with grain silos.
We frequently vacation in the Outer Banks, which means driving through rural N.C., and that’s exactly what southeastern Quebec reminded me of: small towns, gently rolling fields, two-lane highways.
Montreal seemed like a fairly generic North American city. It was nice, but I feel no need to go back. We loved Quebec City, though. Reading back through this thread, I see I wasn’t the only one to be surprised at the number of monoglot francophones in QC; I figured that in a tourist city, most citizens would have at least enough English to, for example, sell me a pain au chocolat. And I also noticed how strongly accented English-speaking Quebecois were.
We got along pretty well, though - even the nonanglophones were cheerful and gave me a “bonne journee”. Not wanting to be a stereotypical American, I tried to use as much of my execrable French as I could, which usually got a response in English; but a postal clerk told me he appreciated tourists who acknowledged that they were in a French-speaking country.
Mrs. SMV is fluent in French, but she was surprised at the trouble she had with the language; she learned her French in Strasbourg, and it’s apparently significantly different from Quebecois.
People who work in tourism have to speak it. Aside from that, it’s mainly a question of age, education and curiosity.
What did you like about it?
Hah–this reminded me of my biggest surprise on visiting Montreal. I took 6 years of French in school and was able to manage when visiting Paris and Geneva. But when sitting in the backyard in my friends’ multiethnic Montreal neighborhood I heard people shouting in a completely unintelligible language so I asked “What language are they speaking?” They laughed and told me that it was the local version of French, Joual
The chocolate and tea were vastly better than I was used to. Really! If you want either and live anywhere near the border, it’s worth the trip…
I was a college student in Quebec and refused to try poutine!!!
The 401 is not part of the Trans-Canada Highway system. It is true that 401 drivers are indeed lunatics (and I ought to know, since I drove that highway through Toronto for years). However, Crafter_Man said he was up near Sault Ste. Marie. That would place him on Highway 17–the Trans-Canada Highway in northern Ontario. (The TCH in southern Ontario is signed as “the southern Ontario route,” on Highways 7 and 12, running east-west, north/south; some ways north of the 401.)
East of Sault Ste. Marie, the Highway 17 road is double-tracked for a bit, but not Interstate-standard, as it has level crossings with other roads. Then, it’s back to two lanes, with a 90 km/h limit. West of Sudbury, it again becomes double-tracked, four lanes into Sudbury.
Note that “Trans-Canada Highway” should not imply anything approaching an Interstate. It is a series of roads that lead from one coast to the other (BC 1/5, AB1, SK 1, MB 1, ON 17/417, QC A40/A20/85. Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland revert to Highway 1 as a designation for the TCH, but New Brunswick and Nova Scotia do not; and my apologies–though I have driven the TCH in them, I cannot remember the highway numbers.