O Canada!

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Things I didn't know about Canada before this week.

1. I had no freaking clue what "poutine" was. It's not very appetizing to look at, nor does it get much better when you try it. It's basically french fries smothered in cheese curds and gravy.

2. Most Canadians do NOT, in fact, say "eh". I think I heard it twice all week. Although they do have an accent of sorts. They don't talk like people from the US.

3. According to the border guard, 60% of Canada's population lives in, or within 100km of Toronto. I find this difficult to believe. It's not like Toronto is the only population center of the nation, even if it is the most populous. There have to be other cities with well over 1 million people - like Montreal and Vancouver. And I imagine all the other NHL cities have to have populations in and around the city of at least several hundred thousand to support the teams. So I'd think Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, et. al. would have to be pretty big. Quebec too. I mean, 100km isn't all that big. Although I guess it would include the Niagara Falls region.

4. Canadian news is US news. I knew most Americans consider Canada to be their little brother, but I was unaware that Canadians apparently feel this way too.

5. Canada has a $2 coin. The weird thing is I've been here before, granted close to 20 years ago. However, if I was asked going in, I would have sworn that Canada had a $1 coin, and a $2 bill. Nope. Both coins, and no bills smaller than a $5 denomination.

EDIT:

6. Canadians are even crazier about hockey than I thought. It's all you can find on sports news. (They don't have ESPN by the way, which I find strange, as they have a bunch of other US channels.) I mean the Leafs didn't even make the playoffs and that's still all you see. I don't think I've seen a single highlight of the Blue Jays, although presumably they've played a few games in the last few days.

 

1. poutine is delicious ! Bt you're right the basic poutine is fries, gravy and cheese. There's a restaurant in Montréal with 60+ different recipes.

2. no comments...

3. It's not that hard to believe really, Canada is 9,984,670 km2 (that's 3,854,085 sq mi if you're still using the archaic and barbaric imperial system) with an estimated population of 34,794,000.

4. That's a gross simplification of the situation and mostly true for the anglo-canadian side.

5. The 2$ coin was introduced in 1996 to replace the 2$ bill, so yeah 20 years ago it would not have been around.

6. Sadly true.

 

There's more than one accent in Canada, just like there are many different accents in USA. Surely you weren't surprised to learn that the accents are different there than from where you live?

I live on the ther side of the world and can still easily tell someone from Canada talking compared to someone from Texas, or Brooklyn, or California.

 

A thread about Canada?! Count me in! I'll do the same thing Ofelix did, seems to have worked.

1. Some people may disagree with this, but I'm pretty sure that it's more of a French-Canadian thing. Don't get me wrong, it's all over Canada but it's predominantly a Quebec thing. Myself, not a big fan. It's not the kind of thing you want to be eating if your plans for the near future involve any kind of physical activity.

2. I say it allllll the time, to the point where a few years ago a friend challenged me to see how long I could go without saying it, and I said "eh" in the sentence I used to accept the challenge. On a side note, one of the girls I met in university was from Barbados and through her four years here she never did figure out how to properly make use of the term. She made such a valiant effort but for whatever reason she never could grasp the nuances of it.

3. Wasn't sure what to think, so I pulled the metro populations from Wikipedia of the major places you said as well as a few others outside of the 100 km radius of Toronto.

Calgary: 1,214,839
Edmonton: 1,159,869
Vancouver: 2,313,328
Ottawa: 1,236,324
Winnipeg: 730,018
Montreal: 3,824,221
Quebec City: 765,706
Halifax: 403,200

Then, a few of the larger places within 100 km of Toronto

Toronto: 5,583,064
Hamilton: 721,053
Kitchener-Waterloo: 477,160
St. Catherine's: 392,184
Markham: 301,709
Oshawa: 149,607
Peterborough: 118,975
Barrie: 187,013
Guelph: 141,097

Between just these places it's actually a fairly close race. Toronto alone just about covers the first four on the other list. Doesn't look to actually be 60% but it's not that far off...

4. I think it's more because there really isn't all that much going on in Canada compared to the US most of the time. That coupled with the fact that our economies are so closely tied together really do tend to dominate the news

5. I still remember the day the toonies were first available to the public. My mom worked at a bank at the time, and I had just lost a tooth that day. I put the tooth under my pillow and was so surprised to find this crazy coin I'd never seen before so I brought it to school for show-and-tell (this was grade two). That and all the stories (possibly urban legends) I heard of people who had the centres fall out of their coins. For those of you who don't know what they look like, maybe this will help the previous sentence make sense: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d2/Toonie_-_front.png/220px-Toonie_-_front.png

6. I presume you're in Southern Ontario, then. Everything south of Ottawa, the news is basically all Leafs all the time (much to my delight!) I remember last year when I went down to Nashville with some friends for the playoff game where they got eliminated by Vancouver. One of my friends has a family friend who works for the Preds so he was able to get us some discounts and such. That coupled with our hatred of the Canucks made it even more disappointing when they lost. Still, the next morning we were watching SportsCenter (it feels wrong to write it this way) and I swear, they had baseball highlights, basketball highlights, golf highlights, talk of the goings-on in the NFL off season, and then after all that was the first mention of a team based out of Tennessee being eliminated from the playoffs. Couldn't believe that; the order they showed everything was pretty much the opposite of how it plays out on SportsCentre in Toronto.


As a side note, I was on a school trip to Chicago back in high school and I purposely thickened my accent as much as I could. I went the whole nine yards, saying 'aboot' and stuff like that. It got so bad that it actually took some serious effort on my part to get back to talking normally

 

1. Poutine - Pretty fatty but it tastes good on occasion if you get the craving. I'm still more of a salad person.

2. What do you mean we don't use that phrase very often, eh? Also, I've been told I have an accent but I'm pretty sure he wasn't listening properly.

3. The population thing seems to be a little off, but I'm not about to go looking up any numbers right now eh, - doesn't really appeal to me.

4. As much as Stephen Harper wants to be buddy-buddy with the states, there are a lot of Canadians who don't. (I never voted for him either and he looks like a fake plastic person with plastic ken-doll hair) I generally watch Canadian news BTW, unless the States vote in a new president or something.

5. I have a paper $2 hidden away in my jewellery box. I used to have about 4 of them but I think somebody spent them on me a while back.

6. I have brothers and childhood memories of said brothers yelling at the TV a lot during hockey season. Personally I can give or take hockey. I've watched a total of about three games in complete my whole life.

 

There was one day a few weeks ago when they had four games in one day with staggered start times. That day I watched one game at noon, one at 3 PM, one at 7:30 PM, and one at 10:30 PM.

Have I mentioned I like hockey?

 

You like hockey eh? Do you like it with beer?

 

Speaking of the canadian english accent Wiki has a pretty extensive article on the subject. -- I've read a bit of it, but to be honest some of it will be hard to grasp for non linguist. Fortunately for me that's my major. One last thing concerning the subject; to all Americans, the letter "z" is pronounced zed no zee...

There's a saying around here that says the best poutine is eaten at 3AM after the bars closes. I've never tested it myself though.

 

USA is insane for having so many silly small demonination coins and notes. It's infuriating when there to battle with a wallet full of $1 notes. We got rid of $1 notes here last century.

 

You keep your coins in your wallet ? Mine hasn't got any compartment for those, I usually keep coins in my pocket. Then I empty my coins in a huge bowl. About a month ago I realised I've collected over 35$ in 5, 10, and 25 cents coins that was a pleasant discovery.

 

Speaking of twoonies and loonies I was watching the news this morning and realized that pennies are going out of circulation and becoming obsolete. I actually find that kind of ironic
for personal reason. I guess I had better roll up what we have lying around in piggy banks and whatnot.

 

Yep, as of a couple of weeks ago pennies are no longer being minted. Not sure how I feel about it, I mean they are pretty annoying considering that four out of every five transactions paid for with cash leave you with at least one. And how often do you actually end up digging them out when it comes time to pay?

 

Twoonie ? really ? first time I heard that. Btw, what's ironic about finally getting rid of those useless pennies ? I say it's about time. Hell I say get rid of everything below the quarter. The purchasing power of the dollar isn't what it's used to be, you can hardly buy anything for a single buck anymore.

 

I don't think pennies will ever go out of vogue here in the states.

You don't carry your bills in a wallet; put your 'bankroll' in your pocket, secured with a money clip if it becomes unwieldy.

I hate change ... it would suck if I had to add ones to the already too-many coins jangling around in my pocket.

 

Toonies - I spelled it wrong. Well Flix we call them that here all the time. Maybe you haven't heard the term because you are from the other province. As for why I find it ironic, about the pennies, I did say it was for PERSONAL reasons.
Meaning that no explanation will follow.

 

When I think of bankrolls, I think of sandals and dusty pants. Like Indian merchants or shady, Egyptian landlords. I'm sure you got smart cards in northern America?

 

You're also insane for still having 1c, 2c, and 5c coins at all, because, yes, they are a pain. The lowest demonination coin we have now is 10c, which is very sensible.

Although having said that, I almost never carry cash anyway, because a debit card and credit card are infinitely more convenient.

 

?? Thanks for your two-cents worth HB but we haven't had a 2 cent coin in over a century.