freeform goodness

I spent 3 days earlier this week shuttling back and forth between Strathroy and London, Ontario, doing work stuff.

As a kid, I spent several weekends every summer in southeastern Ontario — our family camped quite often at Kettle Point Campground, and some of my fondest childhood memories are of these summer camping trips.

As an adult, I quite frequently visited Windsor, as it is chock full of excellent restaurants and really quite close, geographically, to my home. Before 9/11/2001, the US/Canada border was quite open, and it wasn’t uncommon for people working in downtown Detroit to actually cross the Ambassador Bridge or the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel (“the only vehicular international subaqueous border crossing in the world”) and eat lunch in another country. Sadly, the extra long border checks and unpredictable traffic that followed the terrorist attacks have made that sort of crossing impractical.

It was interesting to note the differences between what I remember from the frequent Canadian visits of my youth to the way things seem to me now, 20+ years on. It’s fascinating to see how much difference 100 miles of geography can make . While things are still fresh in my mind, a bullet list of fun/curious/befuddling things I noticed while visiting our neighbor to the south :)

• Canadians are really friendly people. I already knew this, of course, but the national character really is remarkably easygoing.
• Canadians are really weird about french fries. At every meal, I had to stop people from putting gravy on my french fries. Don’t even get me started on poutine… Heart attack on a plate.
• Things are moderately more expensive there, but not ridiculous, except for gasoline and cigarettes, and I don’t smoke, so…
• Globalization means that WalMart, McDonalds, and a few other oppressively familiar brands are just as inescapable in Canada as in the USA. They’ve returned the favor, though, as there seems to be a Tim Horton’s on every block in the USA now, as well.
• Yes, the ordinary Ontarian on the street really does say “eh”, a lot. :) The folks working the hotels and chain restaurants and reading news on TV seem to be trying to suppress their regional dialects as much as possible, though. The pace of speech reminds me a bit of that of American southerners, actually… very relaxed, quite often in no particular hurry to get to the point. :)
• Great beer. Obviously.
• I really do like back bacon.
• Canada has about 1/9 as many people in roughly the same surface area as the USA. The difference isn’t in the size of the cities, it’s that the area between the cities is so much more rural, proportionally.

:: Dave Walker 12:05 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/misc]
:: tags: misc

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