Canadian Secrets Revealed!

This month I have the pleasure of intoducing you to a few of my favorite Canadian bloggers :) Here to explain all the unexplainable differences between the US and Canada is Lisa from "Drinks Like Fish." Lisa is one of my favorite people, she's smart, funny, has an adorable son - well, you'll see! A big "thank you" to Lisa for helping introduce everyone to all things Canadian.

When my friend Meghan asked me to write a post for while she visits Canada, I was a little nervous. I have a small blog but between my little guy (same age as Meghan’s A), finishing my masters degree, trying to find a new house, plus work and just life, I haven’t really kept up with it. But then I saw this as a great way to get back into blogging so there you are.

Meghan is from the US – which is right next-door – but has only been to Canada once before! I tried to think of how many times I’ve visited the US and lost count somewhere in the middle of high-school band trips. My brother and his wife lived in Florida for a while and my sister-in-law and her family now live in California. Lots of nice warm places to go visit in the wintertime that’s for sure. BUT it’s not always cold up here despite what you might think. The US and Canada are pretty similar actually; but pretty different too….

I live in Toronto – Canada’s largest city. Toronto has a population of about 2.6 million people. Of a total population in Canada of about 33.5 million according to the 2011 census. According to Wikipedia there are an estimated 314 million in the US. Or almost 10 times our population. Your largest city? New York with over 8 million people! All of those people mean that you all have a huge impact on us whether you mean to or not – we get all your ads on TV for example (except during the Super Bowl! How moronic is that?) so while you all bask in your southern climate we get to drool over Target and Sonic and Trader Joes.

Other differences:

• Our fondness for the letter U. Which of course causes us to hate Microsoft and it’s automatic spell-checker: labour, honour, colour, flavour, behaviour, neighbour are all spelled with a U!

• Just to get the other spelling issues out of the way: centre vs. center; grey vs. gray; cancelled vs. canceled – you can have fun and figure out which is the Canadian and which is the US way ;) And all this time you thought people were misspelling grey – maybe they are closet Canadians.

• Having all these toys that sing the alphabet for Q is also a bit of a pain – you try to
remember to sing “zed” over the “zee” all the time. I LOVE that kidsTV123 now has “British”
versions of their songs on youtube. Play another spot the difference game:
Colors vs Colours.

• We measure things differently – although this is also generational. I was born in the early 1970s and it was about this time that the government introduced the metric system. Distances would be posted on signs in kilometres instead of miles, gas would be sold in litres instead of imperial gallons (which are different than US gallons anyway). So my online running friends usually run 10 milers where up here we have 10Ks. We both run half and full marathons but a Canadian would run 21.1 km rather than 13.1 miles. Unless it’s the Olympics, then you guys have no problems running in metres. In fact you’re damn good at it!

• I mentioned the signposts that state distance in terms of kilometres instead of miles; but the way to know if someone is truly Canadian? Ask them how far away two places are. Toronto and Montreal? A Canadian is far more likely to respond with “5 to 6 hours” as opposed to “550 km.” Two places in the same city are often described as “well, it depends on traffic…” because that somehow changes our concept of how far away something is.

• All those ads that we see? Some of them can make us rather jealous. We have two kinds of Girl Scout cookies: vanilla sandwich and chocolate sandwich. We hate you, just a little bit for that alone.

• But then again we have poutine. Google it. I’ll wait. Add to that: beaver tails, Quebec maple syrup (ya, I’ve heard of Vermont and Maine ;), Nanaimo bars, rye whisky and chocolate Smarties. Apparently the bloody ceasar is a quintessential Canadian cocktail but I’ve just found out that you guys don’t have milk in bags!

But how much more Canadian can you get than a patriotic beer ad? 

So come visit, I may not know your friend Sally from Vancouver (about 5-6 days by car if you stop overnight and stay in Canada. About 3-4 if you cut through the US) but I’m sure she's nice!

--Lisa