Drove from Duluth Minnesota to Thunder Bay along Lake Superior. The Minnesota drive is beautiful: vast lake views, heavily forested, amazing granite cliffs.
Then you cross in to Canada, and suddenly it’s farms, cleared land and small towns with lots of shops and stores. Then I realized that the most northern part of the US is seen as a cold untamed wilderness, but the southernmost part of Canada (at least in that region) is their best, warmest, most desirable area.
I had an Australian friend visit me here in Montreal a couple of years ago, and he was telling me how much he liked Montreal. I asked him if there was anything he didn’t like about Montreal, and he said it was sad how many homeless people there were.
I’ve been to Montreal and Toronto, but the biggest surprise was New Brunswick. I was in Fredericton, the provincial capital, yet the traffic was like that in a small town.
I also made a side trip to the Hopewell Rocks on the Bay of Fundy, which I had never heard of before. I was amazed that you could actually see the tide go out; each wave receded about a half inch from the previous one. You could walk on a couple of rocks to keep dry when you visited a certain part of the shore, stay for less than five minutes, and be able to walk back on sand that was underwater before. I had to explain to a couple of locals that, no, tides didn’t work that way anywhere else.
One thing I noticed one time in Toronto. I was visiting for a couple of days and I had been out late and was driving back to my hotel. I was thirsty and wanted to buy a soda. And I found that there was nothing open. No 24 hour supermarkets. No convenience stores. No gas stations. Nothing. Every business had closed at midnight. I finally saw a soda machine outside a closed gas station.
It amazed me that a major city could just close down for the night. (I’ll also note this was over twenty years ago. Things may have changed since then.)
I tried my best not to use the term “American” to refer to people from the USA since it might be offensive (implying Canadians aren’t “Americans”,) but nobody seemed to mind “American” at all.
As I said, I was a dumb teenager, and I probably projected my irritation at one rude waitress on the entire city.
It was still interesting to me how many unilingual francophones there were in Quebec City.
I found that Canadian road signs and signals were much less wordy than in the US. Canadian signs are mostly pictographic, most likely because of the language strife. If you don’t put any words on your sign, nobody is going to complain about the sign not being translated into their language. By contrast, many US road signs have almost a master’s thesis worth of regulatory legalese printed in such small type that it’s dangerous to try to read it all while driving. Also, the different shapes of traffic lights (apparently for the sake of colorblind people) were an interesting touch.
Perhaps surprisingly enough, I was able to master the use of $1 and $2 coins almost instantly, and was using them without a thought within 24 hours of crossing the border.
I know exactly what you mean. Whenever I am driving in the states the highways just feel different. I think it’s because you guys have concrete slabs and we have asphalt. So on your highways you get a bump-bump as you drive over the cracks.
ETA: this post is in reply to Velocity’s post # 25.
No, we don’t get our knickers in a knot over that. I’ve only seen that issue being discussed in past threads on this board, and it seems to be an issue with folks from Central and South America, as far as I can tell.
In English usage, “American” means a citizen of the USA. May not be particularly logical, but it’s got strong historical roots and who really cares?
This is true in many parts of the world. In many parts of Latin America, locals really appreciate it when a gringo tries to speak Spanish and will then gladly offer to switch to English if they know it. It’s still important to know some Spanish if traveling there because not everyone is going to speak English well. Hotel clerks generally yes, restaurant servers/clerks sometimes, shop clerks sometimes, cops rarely. If you get on the good side of a Spanish-speaking clerk or server, they may be able to go and find an English speaking colleague to take over.
Charlottetown, PEI is like that too. Quite small and compact, but people weren’t rushing everywhere at all hours of the day. For the east-coast Americans here, Charlottetown feels very similar to Cape May, NJ - nice locals, seashore vista, small town atmosphere, lots of neat shops, horse-drawn carriage tours available.
Different tasting soda? Though that might’ve been a bad batch at the place I had lunch in Vancouver…
I’ve been to Canada many times. Some observations:
The public campgrounds are nicely maintained, and they used to provide free firewood, which was surprising.
Even the secondary roads are maintained. Having driven both the Dempster and Dalton Highways (Canada and Alaska, straight north to the Arctic Ocean, very remote), I can say that there is no comparison. When you cross the border from Canada to Alaska on the Top of the World Highway, it’s like going from driving on a city street to driving on a road made of speed bumps placed 8" apart.
Quebec City is possibly the whitest place on earth, with the possibly exception of Salt Lake City.
British Columbia and the NWT are two of the earth’s treasures.
Vancouver has incredible Indian cuisine.
We once had a speaker from Minnesota at a conference here. He was originally from a small town in northern Minnesota.
The moderator introduced him as bring from a small town due south of Winnipeg.
When the speaker began his remarks, he said it was the first time he’d ever heard his home town referred to as being south of anything.
The corn industry here doesn’t get the same amount of subsidies as in the US, so corn sugar is not as widely used here as in the US. I’ve heard that accounts for the difference in taste in pop and soft drinks (not soda, at least around here).
Yes, I agree that driving on a Canadian highway is much smoother and less noisy.
The biggest thing that shocked me about Montreal was the number of “vacancy available” signs on commercial buildings in the central part of the city. The city really looked like it was suffering economically.
Ah, here’s another one—the Café Dépôt coffee chain looks like a run-of-the-mill Starbucks-type coffee chain, but its coffee is miles ahead of Starbucks’s.
For me, it was the ketchup. It was some restaurant we went to for lunch in Montreal, and I put Heinz ketchup on my fries and took a bite and “WTF! What’s wrong with this ketchup?” It had an unexpected, very noticeable bite to it, to the point that I started examining the bottle for a sell-by date to see if it had spoiled. Then I looked at the ingredients and realized it didn’t have HFCS. I like soft drinks with cane sugar, though we can usually only get it here during Passover, but I prefer my corn lobbyist Heinz ketchup.
When I visited Montreal, I didn’t notice any anti-anglophone bias, but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. When we would enter an establishment, someone would greet us with “Hello bonjour,” wait to see which language we responded in, and go from there. We did know enough French that reading signs, menus, metro ticket machines, etc. was not a problem, so maybe we avoided some of it.
Traveled many times to British Columbia on my motorcycle. I always felt that the folks there were very friendly and liked to joke. They seem happier than Americans. I asked myself “why?” All I could come up with was they don’t need to worry about health care. What a relief, eh?
We do have Starbucks too, but I don’t usually go there. I like Café Dépôt and other coffee places better.
Poutine.
“Well it looks like vomit so I’m not poutine it in my mouth”
Is this really a popular dish? Any first time visitors that have tried it? Not trying to poop in your thread, EmG. I’ve never been to Canada but sure do hope to some day.