Years after years, I take the pulse of the population and I can’t help comparing France to Canada. While the former is still a great country on many aspects, there are many reasons why I won’t come back to live in France anytime soon. On the other side, I recently realized that Canada taught me a lot more than I expected.

It’s not that I didn’t try to keep in touch with French culture. At first, my mind stretched itself to join the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean – it was exhausting. I listened to French talk shows but I grew frustrated because they seemed to have little relevance to my current life. I tried to translate jokes but failed miserably. I threw the odd cultural reference in that no one here got.

You won’t find any nutritional information on products in France. I guess it doesn’t matter that much because most people follow a commonsense diet, or at least try to: eat more veggies than Nutella, nibble on bread but go easy on the mayonnaise, enjoy some dessert but a small portion of it. But in North America, a lot of restaurants offer super-fatty dishes.

As a French, I have being taught that bathroom humour is a low form of humour. But I cannot hold it any longer (pun intended) – I’m Canadian now, and if I want to write an article about bathrooms, well so be it.
So, are Canadian and French bathrooms different? You bet they are. And it is definitely part of the funny cultural differences you discover when you travel or live in a foreign country.

As the saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intention”. But for Canadians, the saying takes a very deep and literal meaning in the spring.
A popular Canadian joke claims that there are only two seasons in Canada: winter and construction. Indeed, after our long and harsh winters, crews of construction workers are dispatched all over Canada to tackle new projects, fix the roads and repair the many cracks in the pavement.