'BERRIES IN A BARREL--Part II

So This is Canada, Eh?

Our cabbie represented our first introduction to the people and culture of Canada. But overall, we would slowly come to appreciate the subtle differences that exist even a short hop across the river. Though many of these observations would require the next three days, we’ll take a brief detour and highlight some of them here.

The most obvious difference was the cold. Yes, we thought the weather had been unseasonably nippy when we left Louisville. But here, it was at least 25 degrees colder. Jennifer and I had mistakenly packed for a spring vacation, since it was, after all, spring, but in our wisdom (alright, my paranoia), we also had come prepared with at least one winter outfit and our jackets. We would ultimately need them throughout most of the trip. When we commented to our Canuck cabbie about the cold, his response was to lightheartedly say, “Aw, you get used to it.” Possibly, but what would be our motivation to do so?
Jennifer and I frequented many of the restaurants and Starbucks during our time in Canada. Either they’re behind the times, or they feel our American culture peaked 20 years ago, because with perhaps one rare exception, we didn’t hear any ambient music playing that was written after 1989. Everything was 80s, 80s, 80s. Most of it was good music, but Jennifer and I found ourselves wanting to Electric Slide our way to the counters, tell the managers to Rock on to Electric Avenue or Beat It and let us “put another dime in the jukebox, baby.” Maybe then we could find ourselves Puttin’ on the Ritz in a way that would let us “party like it’s 1999.”

Starbucks. Anyone who knows the Thornberries is aware of the passionate tongue caresses we reserve for the gentle, wet lips on the cup of a Starbucks venti latte. We generally get one such steamy tryst per week, an institution I’ve recently come to call our “coffee ring.” On vacations, however, we relax the rules and let our coffee ring draw us deeper into its moist embrace. We’re accustomed to having ready access to a bordello o’ Starbucks pretty much anywhere we travel. But in this part of Canada, it so available that one can be a coffee whore and open themselves up to the experience on any street corner. Yes, we counted no less than five stores in a three-block area. At one point, I stood across from one Starbucks and could still see the one we passed three minutes previously, back up the sidewalk. Inside one Starbucks, I would almost swear they had signs posted that said, “Coming soon, Starbucks.” If we’d had a car, we could probably have filled the gas tank with Starbucks coffee. If coffee is love, then there was a whole lotta lovin’ goin’ on. Of course, with Canadian prices, it sure wasn’t free love. ;)

The prices. Holy porcupine crap! We’d come prepared to face the issue of the exchange rate on our currency, and we solved it most of the time by just using our credit card. But Canada’s government is clearly different from ours. Now we understand how they pay for that nationalized healthcare system that everyone up there knows and loves. Every time we purchased something, the receipt came back on a streamer of paper as long as our arms. The top couple of inches listed the item, date and price. The rest of it was all the taxes they rammed up our colons. Wow!!

There was another unique Canadian phenomenon, and that was the prevalence of children working the businesses. Not older teenagers, but ‘tweens and pre-teens. We’re talking kids between 11 and 14 years of age. My first thought was that it was a weekend and they were perhaps just getting extra money by working in their parents’ businesses. But we were there on weekdays too and the kids were still working. Don’t they go to school? We’d also considered that perhaps the Canadian summer break had already started, since they almost certainly don’t cancel schools for bad weather. On the issue of Canadian servers, however, it is certainly worth noting that everyone who assisted us up there, young or old, was unfailingly polite and exceedingly friendly. We did greatly enjoy interacting with our Canadian brethren.

Finally, Jennifer and I endured one of the “dislocations” of the Buddha, which states that the nature of life is to be continually forced to confront that which causes us the greatest suffering. For the Travelin’ Thornberries, that means crowds. Yes, we had taken great pains to set our vacation strategically so that it fell right before tourist season and avoided the Memorial Day holiday throng. Smugly, we had assumed this would reduce the elbows and knees we’d have rammed into every part of our anatomy as we tried to enjoy our view of Niagara Falls.
Wrong.

By avoiding Memorial Day, we’d placed ourselves squarely into the Canadian “Victoria Day,” a comparable holiday in another country that brought out the same throng we’d striven to avoid. That would haunt us the next day after our arrival. Damn the Buddha for being right. Perhaps I’ll take Sheldon Kopp’s advice: “If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!” *Snort*

The Travelin' Thornberries move through the Victoria Day Crowds

NEXT TIME: Welcome to the Oaks Hotel!


Click for Part III