Life in Canada

People often ask us what's different about Canada versus the United States. Here are some things we've noticed so far:

1) When we first moved, we couldn't find any store that sold light bulbs, ice cube trays, and the like except Walmart (not a favorite of ours). A few weeks later we were watching TV, and there was a commercial for closet organizers at the store Canadian Tire. It came up in conversation at church, and yes, Canadian Tire is the place to go for those kinds of things. Of course we had driven by it many times, but we'd thought it was just a large tire store!

2) While John swears that he's able to detect a Canadian accent, I haven't been able to hear one and neither have any of our guests. The words that are typically pronounced differently, though, are:

- process, project, and progress - all with a long o whether they're using it as a noun or a verb
- resource - the s is pronounced as a z
- Barack Obama - the rack is pronounced like the word rack instead of rock, and the bam is pronounced like the word bam (now this observation isn't true for everyone we've met, but it is true for all of the Canadian newscasters that I've heard pronounce his name!)

3) Yes, we do hear ay a lot, and we confess, we've begun using it a bit too. Another word used often is right, which takes the place of you know.

4) Kraft Dinner is a big food up here, and what is it? Macaroni and Cheese.

5) No one drives the speed limit. Okay, maybe not no one, but it's not uncommon to have everyone going at least 10 km over the speed limit, and if you're not going that fast, the cars behind you will tail you until you go faster.

6) Cream of mushroom soup is very popular here. We had it as a feature soup at the restaurant I work at, and it was ordered quite regularly. It's also one of the main soups at Tim Horton's, a popular fast-food restaurant that specializes in donuts. Cream of mushroom soup is regularly eaten with grilled cheese sandwiches and ketchup.