If you’re from Europe, Canada isn’t one of these countries where an intriguing and potentially pleasant feeling of disorientation hits right off the plane. In fact, the environment may feel strangely familiar at first, because anyone who has ever watched a Hollywood movie knows what North America looks like—cookie-cutter neighbourhoods with strip malls and fast-food joints, wide streets, yellow school buses, and cars big enough to haul a house. Hollywood lies about many things but not mundane scenery.

Canada’s “exoticism” doesn’t hit you—it creeps up on you. It may take a snowstorm or two, a few social interactions and many everyday life moments to start wondering which planet you landed on.

Keep digging for more subtle cultural differences. Now, it’s getting interesting, from the lack of sidewalks to this uncanny ability to have meaningless conversations with perfect strangers, through the way they sell milk around here.

See, it pays off to linger, if you find cultural differences as endlessly entertaining as I do.

I’ve been digging into Canadian culture for twenty years and I still find myself smiling at these “only in Canada” moments.

For instance, these signs I collected last week.

Winter planning… in September

Yard signs are a cheap, popular and ubiquitous marketing tool peppering most Canadian residential neighbourhoods. When cardboard signs don’t endorse a candidate to upcoming elections or celebrate a family member’s graduation, they most likely advertise “lawn & snow” businesses.

Lawn and snow businesses offer lawn care services in spring and summer, and snow removal services in winter. If lawn aeration isn’t a priority in my neighbourhood, signing up for snow removal is often at the top of the list because shovelling a driveway covered with wet snow is not fun at all.

Mind you, reading the snow removal services fine print isn’t fun either—a “snowfall” means 5 centimetres of snow or more, snowdrifts aren’t covered, the contract is valid for up to 250 centimetres of snow from December to April, etc.

And of course, the company you signed a contract with in September may not show up in December. It happens a lot. Yes, snowplow scams are a thing in Canada.

Snowplow road signs

Don’t plow the sidewalk when it’s too narrow!

Yes, we needed a permanent road sign reminder.

Additional winter tips

Canada spends half of the year trying to get rid of snow—it’s plowed, cleared, shovelled, and carried to a snow dump because yes, snow dumps are a thing in Canada.

There are days when “winter operations” are the main activity throughout the city. Check the weather, don’t park outside when snow is forecast because there are winter weather parking bans. It makes sense. First, good luck clearing snow and ice off it. Second, parking lots and streets are plowed, so your car gets in the way.

Land acknowledgements

Land acknowledgements are a formal statement to insert an awareness of Indigenous presence and land rights in many situations. It’s a way to acknowledge the First Nations, Métis and Inuit both in the past and the present, and to show respect.

As you probably know, other humans lived in North America before European colonization—an estimate of around 50 million before decades of massacres, exploitation, displacement and forced removal of their land. Once you’ve learned about colonialism in Canada, you just can’t unsee it and pretend it never happened or that “it was how things worked back then.”

There are no words to describe the colonial genocide of Indigenous people. These days, “the Government of Canada is committed to achieving reconciliation with Indigenous peoples through a renewed, nation-to-nation, government-to-government, and Inuit-Crown relationship based on recognition of rights, respect, co-operation, and partnership as the foundation for transformative change.”

Yeah, let’s hope. I suspect it’s going to take more than press releases and land acknowledgements…

Local “delicacies”

No, I’ve never felt the need to try poutine. And no, I probably won’t try a poutine with deep-fried pickles, diced pickles, and garlic dill pickles. I don’t mind pickles, I don’t mind fries but the mix just sounds weird to me.

Don’t worry about coyotes

I live close to the Experimental Farm and these signs are everywhere. We do have a few coyotes in the neighbourhood—I saw one crossing the street late at night just last week—but they don’t seem to feast on the many rabbits, raccoons or squirrels.

Maybe they go for poutine instead.

(Legal) cannabis store ads

Mark recently admitted that before the possibly informative and slightly puzzling “drugs and your health” unit in Grade 6, he thought it meant “spring rolls,” but misspelled.

Now I can’t help picturing the city of Ottawa smoking spring rolls and I’m laughing as if I was high (I’m not).

Any culturally entertaining signs where you live?