The Columnist Manifesto

Dateline: Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Until recently, you could travel to Canada with less formality than getting on a U.S. domestic flight today – flash a driver’s license, maybe answer a question or two from a polite border officer with that cute, rounded accent, and then be on your way. “Don’t forget your passport” was a witty joke to say to someone embarking for Canada from the U.S.


Today, you can cross the frontiers of European countries without even slowing down your car, let alone showing ID to a border guard. These are countries that, within living memory, were still conquering each other in world historical wars. Meanwhile, with our peaceful neighbor to the north, the country with whom we share the world’s largest undefended border as well as two major sports leagues, we’ve erected old-school border control. Passports are required.


Rather than bemoan “the loss of innocence in the post 9/11 world” or whatever – I get my fill of that when I’m ordered by a TSA flunky to take my shoes off and share foot fungus with the thousands of pilgrims who preceded me – I decide: “why not look at Canada as a genuine international travel opportunity?”

Suddenly, my brief vacation in British Columbia takes on an exciting new aspect. I’m “going far foreign,” as the old English sailors used to say.

No sooner do I step off the plane than I start getting presented with most excellent “My Vacation Abroad” scrapbook material. Check this out – they stamped my passport!!


But it doesn’t stop there! Another tourist attraction offered by Canada: foreign money!! The currency is like it was designed for U.S. tourists. They use “dollars” and “cents,” but with the exchange rate that always favors the U.S. dollar, it’s like there’s a big sign at the border: “Welcome! – 10 % Off Everything for U.S. Travelers!”

It’s a delightful combination of comfortingly similar yet excitingly different. They have pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters that look just like ours, but they go one better by replacing small bills with those great $1 and $2 coins. I’ve previously blogged about how the U.S. should go there.


I could live without Elizabeth II’s ugly mug, but you’ve gotta love a country that puts girls and boys playing ice hockey on its $5 bill!

Canadians are a friendly folk. They’ll chat with you, offer directions, talk about their country and ask about yours – with none of that undercurrent of resentment that locals often harbor toward tourists.

Highway speed limits are a reasonable, unhurried 80 or 90 km per hour (about 50-55 mph). Yes, without my really noticing, they went metric some years back, just like our European allies. I can translate kilometers and centigrade temperatures in my head -- I find it a diverting challenge -- but somehow weights and, especially, litres-to-gallons just boggles my mind.


Oh, and they still have the quaint "Esso," the brand that changed mean old Standard Oil into a friendly face. (Why exactly did they switch to Exxon in the U.S., anyway?)

Walk into a grocery store, and you get the foreign travel delight of different product labels and food items. They have cute Britsy foods like meat pies and British-style candy bars. They have lots and lots of Canadian bacon. (Disappointingly they call it “Canadian Bacon.” I thought it would be really neat if they just called it “bacon.”) Even familiar items take on an exotic feel with the bilingual, French-English labels:


Speaking of language – ha, ha! – I’m particularly enjoying speaking the language here in British Columbia, or “BC” as the locals call it. After last summer’s sojourn in Europe, I made a pledge to myself never to visit a foreign country without making an advance effort to acquire at least rudimentary language skills. Canadians really appreciate it when you make a good faith effort to begin a conversation with them in their native English, even if you speak it imperfectly. So I boned up on my English before this trip, and I’ve been presently surprised that to find that I speak it almost like a native, seamlessly deploying local idioms like “no worries” and – with just a slight effort – adopting local pronunciations like “a-boat” for “about,” “warshroom” and “oat-hoase.”

I can see why B is always saying "we're moving to Canada!" every time our President does something nutty. It's nice here!