French And English (3/10)

The province of Quebec’s offi­cial lan­guage is French, and the province of New-Brunswick is offi­cially bilin­gual. For the other provinces and ter­ri­to­ries, it’s a bit of a grey area… Eng­lish is most widely spo­ken but there are French com­mu­ni­ties almost every­where: in Ontario (the Franco-Ontariens), in Man­i­toba, in Alberta…

Supper's Ready

Do you know why I’m not a per­fect woman? No, it’s not — only — because I like muffins (a lot). It’s a much deeper secret. Still don’t know?

Let me put in sim­ply. I’m French. And I’m a lousy cook.

Hockey (2/10)

One of the rea­son we can stand the cold weather and long win­ters is… hockey, Canada’s national sport. Think soc­cer for Brazil, NFL foot­ball for the US or cricket for India. That pop­u­lar.
Hockey is a really fun sport to watch. The game usu­ally lasts 60 min­utes (plus over­time if needed) and it’s a speedy game. A famous rivalry in Canada opposes Toronto’s Maple Leaf to basi­cally the rest of the coun­try. But Canada also love play­ing Rus­sia, Swe­den, Fin­land, and of course the USA.

The Tipping Dilemma

So, 15% of $30… is…

No, I’m not cal­cu­lat­ing my Adsense rev­enues (that would be easy: $1 + 0.50¢ = $1.50… last time I checked!). I’m expe­ri­enc­ing tipping-related stress. Don’t laugh: it’s common.

The Weather (1/10)

Obvi­ous Canada #1 icon: the weather. When you think of Canada, you have the men­tal pic­ture of a frozen tun­dra. Can’t blame you, because it’s pretty accu­rate! Weather changes are often dras­tic and we can go from +40C in the sum­mer to –40C in the winter.

Top Ten Reasons I Love Canada

I would have relaxed myself (trans­la­tion: drink Diet Coke while smok­ing cig­a­rettes and read forums), but as the new year is about to begin, I wanted to end 2007 on a pos­i­tive note. So here are the top ten rea­sons I love Canada.

Seven (Canadian Winter) Facts

Cana­di­ans love to brag about how cold it is, and how win­ters are get­ting warmer, and how they sur­vived what­ever storm ten years ago, and how they went to school even though there were over two meters of the white stuff (white stuff = snow for us — not cocaine).

The Culture Of Fear

I grew up with the tra­di­tional French dae­mons: fas­cism and glob­al­iza­tion. They were easy enough tar­gets, and fight­ing against them included chant­ing social­ist songs in demon­stra­tions, keep­ing an eye on the Front National — the French Nazi party — and watch­ing old French movies to thwart Hollywood’s plans to take on the world.