Maple Syrup Cans

Oh Canada! Since com­ing from France a few years ago, I expe­ri­enced Canada in many dif­fer­ent ways, some good, some bad…

The great out­doors: Canada is a huge coun­try (9,984,670 km² !) with a pop­u­la­tion of only about 32 mil­lions. Con­clu­sion : a few cities here and there and a lot of empty land every­where.
Cities are very spread out and it’s not rare to end up dri­ving in the mid­dle of nowhere to get to the shop­ping mall across the city. There are parks every­where, the biggest being Major Hill’s park… and of course the Gatineau Park, across the bor­der in Que­bec. I also live close to the Cen­tral Exper­i­men­tal Farm, close to down­town Ottawa (!) … first time of my life I see a city which can afford “wast­ing” valu­able res­i­den­tial or com­mer­cial space !

A snow storm & shov­el­ing snow: you may have heard that Canada was fairly cold dur­ing win­ter time. Let me rephrase that : it’s fuck­ing freez­ing !
Some days, you go to sleep and it’s + 10C. Next thing you know, you wake up the next day and there’s 30 cm of snow in front of your door. Half-sleepy, you then open the garage door (from the inside of the house, we’re not sui­ci­dal) and get your shovel. Cana­di­ans always have a shovel handy. We have shov­els at home, in the car, at work… as well as huge bags of salt (not for food — to melt the snow !).
Snow removal is an issue in Canada : snow clear­ing expenses are an impor­tant part of pub­lic work bud­get ! A snow­storm imme­di­ately pro­voke a major logis­ti­cal oper­a­tion : first, the grit­terssalt the road, then load­ers push the snow to the side of the road. If a snow emer­gency is declared, streets must be cleared of all auto­mo­biles, so that snow­plows can clear snow from the streets. Wow.
Do I need to men­tion that I had never seen snow in my life before I came to Canada ?

The Indian Sum­mer : our last period of sunny and warm weather before the win­ter… It’s a beau­ti­ful time in Canada. Trees leaves turn red, orange and yel­low. It’s tran­si­tion period, one of a truly nice weather. I used to hate Sep­tem­ber — Novem­ber back when I lived in France (back to school, exams etc.) but I learned to enjoy it in Canada. Besides, Thanks­giv­ing is in early Octo­ber and I love this holiday.

Dri­ving : as I men­tioned before (cf. I am a Pas­sen­ger), I’m a pretty bad dri­ver. Or let’s say I have a love & hate rela­tion­ship with cars. Nonethe­less, I found dri­ving in Canada a real plea­sure.
First of all, almost all cars have an auto­matic trans­mis­sion. I almost had an orgasm the day I found the cruise con­trol but­ton — I still can’t believe I both­ered to learn how to drive on a man­ual car. Gosh I hated shift­ing gear !
Okay, roads in Canada are quite bumpy (the salt dam­ages them pretty badly) but dri­ving on a long straight stretch of free­way is a bliss. I never got sick of it and my dri­ving even improved (slightly, but it did !).

Going to a hockey game : hockey night in Canada is some­thing to expe­ri­ence ! I’m not a big sports fan. I hate soc­cer, US foot­ball, I fell asleep count­less time dur­ing base­ball games but I’m always up for hockey.
Hockey is fun because it’s quick. Even when I didn’t under­stand the rule, just watch­ing these huge guys ice skat­ing was a lot of fun. And the fights ! Oh, I love them…!
The Stan­ley Cup is a national event and when last year, the Ottawa Sen­a­tors almost won the cup, the city was buzzing with excite­ment. Big screen TV every­where, fans, a game almost every night — a great experience !

Eat­ing beaver tails and maple syrup : when I first came to Canada, I thought beaver tails were actu­ally beavers’ tail — well, Cana­di­ans are bar­bar­ian, right ? It’s in fact just fried dough, on top of which you can put choco­late, but­ter, cream etc.
Maple syrup can be enjoyed with pretty much any­thing : pan­cakes, waf­fles, toast… My favorite is maple taffee : boiled maple sap poured on snow. Yummy !
Walk­ing along the Rideau Canada in win­ter and stop­ping along the way for these treats is priceless.

Enjoy­ing the sum­mer : after a few long months of win­ter, the snow finally melts and it’s sum­mer. There’s almost no spring in Canada : one day you’re freez­ing and the next one you go buy san­dals cause it’s too hot out­side !
Sum­mer is gen­er­ally pretty hot and humid in Ontario, and quite stormy as well. Yet, it’s a breeze after the long win­ter. No more win­ter jack­ets, win­ter boots, sweaters, gloves, scarfs… just a skirt and a tee-shirt. Bars set up tables out­side and peo­ple eat lunch in the parks. Every­body is relaxed and in a good mood. I never got to appre­ci­ate sum­mer as much before…!

Cal­cu­lat­ing the GST and the PST men­tally : I think almost every coun­try has some kind of sale taxes. In France, for exam­ple, there’s the TVA (VAT : value-added tax): if you eat at a restau­rant, a 19.6% tax will be included in your bill — most peo­ple don’t even notice it.
The key word is “included”. Yep. In Canada, the two taxes in Ontario (and in most provinces) are not included on the price tag. It’s only added when you pay. For exam­ple, don’t even think of buy­ing a $1.25 Coke because you just hap­pen to have $1.25 left in your pocket. Because even if the Coke is labeled at $1.25, you’ll actu­ally end up pay­ing $1.44 (7% GST and 8%PST added).
I’m now able to cal­cu­late men­tally how much I’ll pay after taxes, but it’s some­how tricky !

Spot­ting wild ani­mals in the city : the wildest ani­mal I ever saw in France was a pigeons. Well, a mil­lion pigeons to be hon­est. And my neighbor’s dog… quite nasty. But here, I get to see a bunch of funny ani­mals, run­ning wild in the city :

• Squir­rels
• Rac­coons
• Skunks
• Beavers
• Geese
• Deer

It’s quite funny the first time you’re smok­ing out­side and you spot beavers, rab­bits etc. run­ning wild around you — even though I live really close to downtown !

Cana­dian pol­i­tics : Canada’s polit­i­cal bat­tles are quite dif­fer­ent than European’s. Of course, the is the sub­ject of the wars (Afghanistan, Irak…), immi­gra­tion etc. But Canada is also truly unique in term of pol­i­tics.
First, the lan­guage issue. Que­bec has a sep­a­ratist party and they used to be quite strong before the last ref­er­en­dum, where they lost sov­er­eignty. Nonethe­less, there’s always an argu­ment going on between Que­bec and the other province : are the signs sup­posed to be bilin­gual, French, Eng­lish only ? Is is okay to send your kids to an Eng­lish school in Que­bec ? Should peo­ple be bilin­gual ? Quite funny when you first come to Canada.
The sec­ond bat­tle, my favorite, is the US-Canada soft­wood lum­ber dis­pute. Please, don’t ask me to explain. Ever.

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For this home­made meme, I’d like to tag my friends from all over the world (yeah, I’m brag­ging). Feel free to describe the best expe­ri­ence in your coun­try, your region, your state, your province, your city… I can’t wait to read you guys !
If you’re not on the list (silly me), add your­self and have fun !

For the USA :

• Sir Jorge and his Video Store Blues
• Sil­verneu­rotic and her Post Col­lege Year Part II
• Web­miztris at Tiny Voices In My Head
• Dan’s Blah Blah Blog
• Spy­der at My Spy­der­web (although she could do Que­bec too !)
• The Cowboy’s Wife at My Cowboy’s Life (and I’m expect some cool country’s sto­ries chica !)
• Tracy and Car­los and their Curi­ous Vil­lager (Carlos’s point of view should be really cool !)
• Para­dox Giant at Truth, Jus­tice and he Amer­i­can Way?
• Angela at Self Delu­sion Of Angela May
• T.D New­ton and his Ini­tial Draft
• Diesel at Mat­tress Police — Anti­so­cial Commentary
• Ran­dom Mus­ings by Eric
• Jes­sica at Vividly Painted

For Por­tu­gal : Max

For the UK : Gra­ham at One Man’s Travel Blog

For Greece : My favorite Merc at Deadpool’s Laugh­ing Den (please, you’re my only Greek around !)

For Aus­tralia :

• Shan at A New Perspective
• Keshi at Viva For­ever…

For Mex­ico : Sebastian’s Soap Box

For Malaysia : Zun­nur and his A Lit­tle Time

For India : A great pho­to­graph at Perzpec­tive… more than just words! (you can answer with pictures !)

For Sin­ga­pore :

• So Shiock…! (and I’d be curi­ous to know more about Singapore !)
• La Bel­lina Mam­mina and her (mad) House­hold

For France :

• My lit­tle Princesse Écos­saise and her La Belle Saison
• Lis Of The North at Atten­tion All Shipping

The Cana­dian Team :

• The Prairie Road family
• British expat Wapen­take
• Dinah Says Noth­ing in Toronto
• Pink Danielle at Pink Inter­net Mar­ket­ing (I know you’re from Canada girl !)
• Paper Fan Club in Winterpeg

Related arti­cles:

1. Seven (Cana­dian Win­ter) Facts
2. Do You Speak Canadian…Eh?
3. 10 Clues I Became Canadian
4. Pic­ture of the Week: Snow Melting
5. The Weather (1÷10)