Subtle Differences

Amongst the familiar, the Starbucks, the language, the signs, the labels, appears the unfamiliar.

The roads. Now then, driving on the right is purely something you adapt to quickly, the sight of a briskly moving never stopping tram tends to focus your mind as you step out and look left. However something more challenging, and equally confusing, is the pedestrian crossings.

The first task is to try and find the pedestrian signals, if at all. The town planning department one day had to decide, twenty pedestrian crossing signs or three hundred and fifty more dual French and English Airport signs. Oui to the latter. Crossing the road is a game of roulette, some times there are friendly white men waving you across, other times, well, there just isn’t. But it doesn’t all end there. Just because the big red hand goes and the friendly white man comes, it doesn’t mean you wont be run over by an A-Team style truck or an ever quickening tram.

That’s because even when it says go, the cars can go as well. In theory, it’s up to the cars to stop for the people crossing with the big friendly white man. Unlike the apologetic drivers on the little Island back home, it seems not uncommon for stand up confrontations if the big white man and the big truck man cross paths. The best form of defence seems to work. Walk along side other people so they get hit first. The true test of identifying a local is to simply stand at the crossing. Those that walk across five seconds before the big white man comes out are local. Those that the walk five seconds after the big white man are not.

Not tipping in the Canadian service industry is like telling your girlfriend she looks fat in a dress. But just like deciding when to be honest or truthful with your other half, it’s often difficult to tell when to tip or not to tip. Okay, you tip when you go for a meal or order drinks at a bar. But do you tip when buy a coffee from Tim Hortons? When does service not become service? If she bends down to get you a Maple cookie as opposed to you picking it from the front, does that constitute fifteen percent? If she smiles as well does that add another five per cent on the bill? I almost feel like paying them a service charge just to stop me thinking about the service charge.

Streets are roads out here. That’s not the only difference. If you look at a map and the guidebook says ‘down the end of Gerrad Street East’, you tend to think that can’t be very far, after all, there is a Gerrad Street West. Wrong. When the guidebook subtlety says you can take a tram down the street to see how the locals live, it is really saying, “Don’t walk whatever you do, not only will you see how the locals live in one suburb, you will also see how they live in the next five suburbs”. Quite simply, a street can go on for miles, and miles and a few more miles. After eight miles I looked back and realised that the CNN tower, the tallest in the world, was starting to look like the shortest tower in the world. Not only did every street look exactly the same after the fifty seventh interjection, I came not closer to working out the secret pattern of the pedestrian crossing puzzle.

Walking in Canada seems a faux pas around the city. And I was soon discovering why. Quite simply people think you would be crazy to walk mile in thirty degree heat, roller blading and cycling is by far the preferred option. This is maybe not that surprisingly when the cycle paths are the same size as the roads on the little Island back home. If ever the Canadians were nailed on for an Olympic medal other than Ice Hockey, it would roller blading. You heard it here first.

After seventeen miles of walking and getting absolutely nowhere it was time to admit defeat. Using the Large and ever present CNN tower as my compass, I got…. even more lost, finding dead ends and little islands that even the town planners hadn’t discovered. I knew I was nearly back when I saw a woman hitting and cursing (“You stupid bastard, you have ruined my life and I am going to beat the shit out of you”) a traffic warden for giving her a ticket and a man walk in front of cars and grabbing the drivers whilst asking for money. I was starting to think behind that nice smiling and approaching face, there were more to these Canadians than meets the eye.