The really great thing about embarking on a career (travel-writing) that you are supremely underqualified for (untravelled, misanthropic, irreverent view on the world, fear of flying, fear of knowledge etc.) is that every Foreign Person is truly an adventure to know.
Not only are they a new person to learn all about, which is always fun – they’re Foreign as well. This is like your birthday occuring on Christmas Day, except in a world where instead of lumping your presents together and ignoring your disappointment, your friends and loved ones decide to have two parties.
Foreign People are just like two parties – two rounds of gifts, and two enormous piles of cake.
This goes some way to explaining the amount of food I ate this weekend, when a Canadian friend came to visit.
So – here’s some stuff I’ve learned about Canadians this weekend…
1) Canada is a country at least as large as England. Its capital is the city of Degrassi, famous for its popular education system, and its Poet Laureate is Bryan Adams. (Disbelievers: all of these facts are readily verifiable in just a few seconds of Googling, and for this reason I found it unnecessary to double-check them).
2) Canada makes some of the most interesting confectionarial food-objects in the world, affixed with familiar brand-names but sporting wildly different experiences to those that can be had elsewhere. I refer you to the Nestle Coffee Crisp, which isn’t crispy and tastes nothing like coffee. (I therefore submit the more accurate name “Nestle Not-Coffee Non-Crisp”). The Cadbury Crispy Crunch, on the other hand, is a chocolate bar that in sheer OMG-foodgasmic terms exceeds even the lofty heights attained by Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (which it resembles, in a slightly more satisfyingly tactile, mouth-robust manner). For this reason it is banned outside Canada on grounds of public safety. Canadians prevent Crispy Crunch addiction by remaining perpetually semi-filled by a substance distributed by the government called Kraft Dinner Original, something analogous to dried macaroni and cheese.
Again, I’m going by personal experience and word of mouth (my words, my mouth) rather than any pointlessly empirical “facts”. True art needs this kind of leeway. Deal with it.
3) According to writer Will Ferguson (author of the magnificent Hokkaido Highway Blues), Canadians have at least twelve ways of saying “I’m Sorry” just by changing the intonation. Twelve. Think about that for a minute. And that’s without even changing any of the words. In terms of conversational subtleties of expression, Canadians make highbrow Japanese literature sound like it’s being written by George Lucas. It’s a minefield, except one where all the mines explode when you breathe. Or think.
Having said all that, my Canadian friend seemed to contradict everything Ferguson was telling me by being amiable, easy-going and effortlessly engaging. From this I can only conclude that Canadians are also highly inconsistent. (So make that a hair-trigger minefield that might not actually be there).
4) Contrary to what you might have been led to believe by narrow-minded stereotyping of Canadian culture, Canada is *not* full of red-uniformed Mounties striding manfully or perhaps even womanfully across snow laden hillsides in pursuit of their Man (or Woman), or skiing between cascading avalanches to apprehend wrongdoers with a shout “That’s aboot enough of your chippy antics, you little shit disturber!”.
This is ludicrous, insulting and untrue, and Canadians are tired of correcting it. There are no Mounties striding or skiing. It’s all a colossal myth.
Nowadays they use snowmobiles.
Images: imuttoo (1) ; (2)
I love this. As a Canadian, I am glad that you cleared up the last little bit… of course we use snowmobiles, skies are so 1999. Keep up the good work!
By “we”, I’m presuming you are a Mountie, like most Canadians?
It gives me a warm glow to know that a Mountie / Canadian has taken the time out from catching ruffians to come in here and testify that I’m telling the truth about all of this. I’d hate to mislead anyone.
No, of *course* the Mounties aren’t out on the hillsides, because they’re on the streets of Chicago kicking bad guys hinies. Tsk.
Yes – Canada’s most eminent documentary series.
I’ve learned so much from it that I hardly feel the urge to actually visit the place in person. Now *that* is the sign of a good documentary, I say.
Did you know that both Steven Segal and Chuck Norris were originally trained by the Mounties?
It’s the other way round, dude.
Another myth busted. BAM. I’m not knocking the Mounties, but nobody’s tougher than the Lawman and the Texas Ranger.
The progression is like this, in receding orders of toughness:
Chuck Norris
Steven Seagal
Diamond
Mounties
Maximus Decimus Meridius
Na’vi warriors
‘Maverick’ out of Top Gun
The final 20 minutes of Half Life 2: Episode Two
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Gurkas
Rasputin
Stormin’ Norman Schwartzkopf
Darth Vader
John Prescott
I hope this clears things up for you, Rich. Mounties are at no. 4 and can be proud of it.
The Mountie thing was my comeuppance. I met these nice Canadians in Haiti and they invited me to “the land of fried potatoes with cheese curd and gravy” and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, RCMP for short. While I saw those initials everywhere, I never saw anyone resembling Nelson Eddy ever, anywhere in that red coat, with or without horse or snowmobile. Over 12 years I visited and looked. Not one ever. So I moved to Italy not realizing that Marcello Mastroianni was dead and so was the delicious star of “Il Postino”.
I never was served those fried potatoes, either.
Tch. Isn’t that just stereotypical of stereotypes?
I mean, I went to Paris reeking of cologne, secure in the knowledge that Parisian women in their ultra-permissive ways would grab me and whisk me off to a life of hedonistic abandon.
Instead, the French people avoided me. (I’m presuming they were French, anyway, I couldn’t see any berets, striped tops or strings of onions hanging round their necks). Shops closed before I could reach them, and opened when I backed off. Conductors refused to let me on trains. And so on.
I mean, this is *Paris*. This is the cologne capital of the world! (Apart from, like, Cologne).
Well, that’s the last time I lay full-clothed in a full bath of Hai Karate & Old Spice for 24 hours before I go travelling, let me tell you. Tch.
But I digress.
After some careful investigative journalism (by which I mean I’ve written some ideas in my journal and then read back through them), it seems clear to me that the RCMP has gone underground. I mean, you hear about criminals going underground when the police double their efforts, I read this in the papers all the time. Most police wouldn’t follow them, because it’s horrid down there, rats and garbage and stuff. But the Mounties are a different breed of law enforcers. So they’ve felt compelled to chase them underground as well.
They’re all underground. Subways, city drains, you name it. So they’re still out there, Judith. Hope that’s reassured you.
I’ve gone right off the idea now. I don’t find Carabinieri tempting so I guess I shall become a cop-free zone.
rofl
“Nestle Not-Coffee Non-Crisp” – I thought it was only me who thought that.
Far from, I think. My Canadian friend also commented as much.
But the question is – what the hell is it?
I think we need to know.
This might help clarify Coffee Crisp:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_Crisp
…and the ad (which was recently resurrected and replayed on TV):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXTyLAymlVE
-Need some more candy Mike? Happy to send more!
That is funny. We do say sorry all the time. I also miss Cadbury chocolate, here in Mexico most of the brands are yucky Hershey.
I’m sorry to hear that. < --- We British use that word a lot as well.
What's the problem with Hershey chocolate, then? Seem to remember in the distant past I had some, and it was a bit gunky, but the memory is dim on this topic...
LOL! Oh, Degrassi. Still on my bucket list.
The finest in Canadian culture, worldwide! We’re so lucky.
They’re even following the tried & tested Star Trek model by having Degrassi: The Next Generation (or Degrassi: TNG to teen drama geeks).
Presumably to be followed with Degrassi: Deep Ontario 9 and the like, culminating in a JJ Abrams reboot.
So the Original Degrassi was filmed around the corner from my house. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this until after it was over and Joey Jeremiah was deemed cool.
bahahah, this cracked me up. well done ;D
‘Cracked you up?’ This is dead serious investigative journalism!
Well, okay. I may have taken the occasional liberty.
(Thanks for popping by.
)
“striding manfully or womanfully”. Just imagine….
No need to imagine. Just wander around in Canada. They do it all the time there.
and don’t forget about our obsession with Tim Horton coffee and donuts! This more than anything else unites Canada.
Double double and timbits tops the list of Canada’s national foods.
Ta. Thanks to the enknowledging power of Wikipedia, I am now acquainted with said produce for the first time in my life.
“Timbits”?
While I love coffee and I love donuts, I’d be loathe to consume something that’s named after the “bits” of someone else. That’s just wrong. Look, here, have a hot-dog I just made: I call it “Mike’s bits”. You see my problem now? Kinda like that.
I hope Tim leaves this unwholesome naming trend behind him, or at least stops using himself as the template. A better alternative: “Mountie’s Bits”. I think that would probably have quite a large following in some circles.
‘Er, hi there Mike this isn’t a criticism but… what the hell are you doin’ ?!’
I know a certain Canadian academic I ought to send this to… You know who I mean Mikhailovich.
No need. I’ll leave it until we’re all together on some remote European island, all chatting away or at least making an effort to, and this post will somehow arise as a topic of conversation, and there will be a short, horrible silence, and then I will decide that the best thing to do is to recite the whole damn thing from memory, and then there will be a longer, infinitely more awful silence which I’ll attempt to fill with some well-meaning yet catastrophic witticism, and the rest of the meal will be somewhat akin to the ice cave scenes in The Empire Strikes Back, sans lightsaber.
I’m not suggesting this is what should happen, or that I intend to engineer it. Good god, no. But is almost certainly is what is going to happen.
I’ll remind you of this someday. Mark my words.
I am so sorry about that Mountie striding/skiing myth that keeps circulating around the world. So glad to see you clearing it up.
That’s what blogging is about – busting lies in half. BAM.
This.is.so.cute.
Why, ta.
This totally cracked me up, “I mean, I went to Paris reeking of cologne, secure in the knowledge that Parisian women in their ultra-permissive ways would grab me and whisk me off to a life of hedonistic abandon.”
And no mounties? Why go to Canada then? : )
Don’t worry, there *are* Mounties. Everyone you meet is a Mountie. Even young children, and pets. But it’s important not to blow their cover. So you need to act like they’re normal people. It’s important, and more than that, it’s polite.
I am the Mayor of Degrassi.
*bows* Your
highnessHolinessum….your Mayoressness. I am honoured / honored by your presence.Since you’re here, I have to ask: is it true that there are many fatalities in Canda due to politeness paradoxes?
eg. Two Canadians approaching a door.
“Please, you first.”
“No, I insist, you first.”
“No, really. Please. I’m in no hurry.”
“Oh, I’m sure your life is more eventful than mine and your needs are more pressing. So it’s you that should go.”
“On the contrary…..”
….
*3 days later, two corpses are found on either side of an unopened door*.
LOL!
I see nothing to laugh at. This was a sober piece of investigative travel journalism.
“That’s aboot enough of your chippy antics, you little shit disturber!” Aboot? Are Mounties also Geordies?
I met a Canadian once. He fed his pet bear Poutine for breakfast every day.
Well, I know where two Mounties were on Canada Day…not exactly Canada, but at the Canadian Pavilion in Shanghai. They were looking good!
Ok so this is comment number four that I have made (including the two comments in one post on what you were up to…not that I’m counting or anything). I’m so glad you were able to meet my friends, Crispy Crunch and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Crispy and I drifted apart and haven’t seen in each other in years. Reese’s was the same but we get together from time to time. Kraft Dinner (or KD as she is affectionately called) and I see about each other once a month. Or when we really have to catch up or when times are bad (aka cravings), a few times a month but never more than twice a week. It would just be overkill. Great post. Is it a sin that I haven’t read Will Ferguson? Here’s my little post on Canadian-isms: http://natmelikey.tumblr.com/post/7131468933/canadian-isms