Texans in Canada, Part 1

Folks, both locally and across the border, have asked me if it feels like I'm in a foreign country. For the most part, no. Canada is a lot like America... except cleaner, greener, more friendly, and proud without being full of itself.

There are slight differences that I find interesting and will likely make up the bulk of my Texans in Canada series. Much of it may go unnoticed to some, but for me it's like living in an episode of Sliders. The question that will need answering during my extended visit to this foreign land is will I ever make it "home" or will I end up just settling here in this alternate reality.

A visit to our new local grocer brought up the subject of language. Do Canadians sound funny? Do you have to learn French? The answers are yes and no respectively. Canadian speak is a bit off kilter but after living in the boiling pot of America, where cultural and ethnic consistency is a bit muddled, the Canadian tongue comes across as just another accent to which my ear quickly adapts.

Only in Quebec is there a concentration of French speaking citizens and they are as shunned and ridiculed by other Canadians as commonly as Americans shun and ridicule "true" Frenchies. Due to their influence however, country-wide Canadian signs, ads, websites and grocery items all display both English and French wording. It's like never graduating from French I in high school and being forced to review flash cards for the rest of your life. In fact, if you failed the class and had nightmares of having to repeat it over and over again, daily Canadian life would be a realization of this living hell. The chips aisle at Metro, (the Canadian Kroger I guess), would be a particularly diverse and torturous circle of bilingual mockery on your descent into Dante's snow covered inferno. I took Spanish.

I'm realizing that language may have to spill over into one or two more blog posts (we have to cover the obsession these people have with the letter "u" and their selective dyslexia of the "e"), so I'll end this on the subject of the grocery store. One major difference at the grocery store is found in the concept of bagged milk. Yes, milk here can come in a bag. I suppose milk essentially comes from bags, some more fun than others, so perhaps this is not totally unnatural. At first glance however, it is comically unnerving.