The Columnist Manifesto

[Travels in Canada]

I really like Canada and all, but things seem kind of backwards there, as though every day were opposite day. (In which case, paradoxically, no day would be opposite day. I think.)

To be sure, the flushing-water in the toilet swirls in a counterclockwise vortex, just like the rest of the Northern hemisphere, but many other truths seem to stand on their heads there.

Take this news story:



Excuse me, but don't people typically go missing from the U.S. and to Canada?

I found it very disorienting to travel to Vancouver on the west coast of Canada, and then get on a ferry heading even further west, and then drive west to the town of Sooke, and then walk out on the deck of our room and look out in a westerly direction over the water -- only to find that there were mountains on the horizon! Not just mountains, but mountains in the United States!


The view from Sooke.

That's right: the view is of Washington state's Olympic peninsula, over the Juan de Fuca strait, and those are the Olympic Mountains. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. On this trip, we headed up to Canada, but are actually south of the border of the "lower 48" United States.


Mystery solved.

Now can you understand why I've been so confused?