The Little Things

Whenever one goes to another country, it is the little things that flip us out. We can take inthe pagodas and the aqueducts, and the rain forests and the sheep... but tell us the Price is Right is on an hour later and we lose it.

Now, Canada is quite similar to the US in many ways... less so in Quebec, moreso in the mid-provinces. Yeah, provinces, what is up with that? Anyway, there are some big things up here. The province thing, the French, the kms and grams and such, and I can accept all of that without any problem. But again, it is the little things that get me and here are some of them.

I cannot seem to find, for the life of me, corn tortillas. They have a "Flatbreads of the World" section in the store, no corn tortillas. This makes the production of enchiladas difficult, so we had a friend import some for us during her trip up here from the States. We mete them out on special occasions.

The store is called "Dominion". I don't know why, but I don't want to shop at a grocery store called Dominion. I feel like my purchase of an apple and a pint...er... I mean a LITRE of milk is going to some evil James Bond-like organization. But, I figure, Bond has to keep his job and Dominion has the cheapest TV dinners.

Obviously, we don't have CBS, ABC, NBC up here. We actually do get those feeds from Buffalo, but the Canadian stations are things like CBC, CityTV, and CH. This I don't mind either, I consider it a "big" thing. BUT... TSN (The Sports Network), the Canadian ESPN also has SportsCenter... but... it is... SportsCentre. Yeah. Two letters. It freaks me the freakity-freak out. I mean, SportsCenter is so low-brow, flipping those little letters around just gives it this weird air of culture. It would be like going for coffee with Sylvester Stallone and finding that he sticks his pinky out when he drinks.

Flashing green for protected turn. Sure, some lights have the arrows that tell you you can turn left, but some don't, they just flash for about five seconds. I have had to explain this to more than one person. Now, I don't have a problem with this, I just wonder why they do it both ways is all. Pick one people, pick one.

The "Loonie". Normally, currency changes fall under "big", and the fact there are well-used one- and two-dollar coins here is big, but it is the fact they call them the "Loonie" and "Toonie" that gets me. Americans would never belittle their Almighty Dollar with a silly epitaph like a "Georgie". Americans are serious about their money. It is a GREEN-BACK, or a BUCK. Lots of aggressive K sounds. No, up here it is a Loonie because it is a gold coin (think Sacagawea dollar here) with the Queen on the obverse and a loon on the reverse. Canadians like their wildlife, they have a caribou on the quarter and a beaver on the nickel. So they put a loon on their dollar, and thus, it is called a Loonie. The newspapers call it a Loonie. "The Loonie gained on the dollar today..." People ask, "Do you have a Loonie?" at store counters. Or "Can I have five Loonies for laundry?" So when the two dollar coin was released, it was called the "Toonie".. the Two-nie. Ha ha. Canadians are funny. The Toonie has a bear on the back, so the joke is "The queen and her bear ass". Yes, that is funny too. The benefit for all of this weird change is that if you keep a piggy bank as I do, you amass quite a bit very quickly. Last year, at the end of the term, I had $148 in my little ol' piggy bank. I was rife with Loonies. Check out the Wikipedia entry on the Loonie.

That is "aboot" all for now, I hope to keep adding to this list as things occur to me.