Friday, April 05, 2013

1959 Colours of Canadia

I was in Canada recently and it was awesome with a capital... eh? It's always nice to have a light cross-cultural experience. Canadians are wonderful people to share it with and Canadia is a nice place to go.
But it's definitely a different culture. In little ways. It's not just that they say proe-ject for prah-ject, and proe-gress for prah-gress. Or a-boat instead of about. It's that they say certain things at all.
Like I was sitting in a breakfast place and these two elderly ladies came in who had just been out for their morning walk. The waitress asked how they were. One of the ladies said, "We're just fine, but it's a little chilly out this morning."
The other said, "Yes… it's 2!!"
Which, in fact, it was, by the Celsius scale. But it sounded so odd to hear it that way. Around here we are comfortable saying, "It's 45" or "It's 27" without adding the word "degrees." But 2 seems to need that added emphasis. Just saying "it's 2" is incomplete somehow.
Another minor thing I noticed was the way they are so honest with products. Or at least their color. Maybe it's because they spell colour with a U.
At that same breakfast, when it came time for my waitress to take my order and ask about my selection of toast she listed the choices thusly: "Would you like rye, raisin, white, or brown?"
Brown presumably being what we call wheat. But more honest since what we call wheat is often caramel-colored white.
Then, when I went through the coffee condiments on the table, there was one packet that said, "coffee whitener". Not creamer, not powdered non-dairy creamer. But whitener.
For when you just want your coffee to look lighter.
Eh?
America, ya gotta love it.

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