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I've lived in Montreal, Halifax, Fredericton, Edmonton, and the GTA. I've also visited every province except Newfoundland so I can take some questions as well I guess! Alberta is a terrible place, but not as bad as Manitoba as far as I can tell. It's also better than New Brunswick, which is the worst place in the world.  I currently work in Northern AB so I can speak to that a little bit as well. Fun fact about Alberta: There's a town called Vulcan that's dying and has a Star Trek centre shaped like a spaceship. It's very depressing! tuyop fucked around with this message at 01:24 on May 16, 2017 |
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May 16, 2017 01:22
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Earwicker posted:what are the basic Canadian accents? I know about the Newfie accent, the Quebecois accent, and the one where they say "surry" and "oatside" I guess that's Ontario? people in western Canada seemed to have the same accent as most of the western US. People from cities talk like Americans. People in the countrysides of provinces have hilarious and distinct accents. Off the top of my head: Nova Scotia South Shore accent, kind of like a stereotypical person from Maine. Cape Breton Accent, low rent Newfie Halifax, wannabe Torontonian Dartmouth, white trash New Brunswick Bay of Fundy, hardcore franglais that actually can't be understood anywhere else Northumberland Straight, see Dartmouth above Fredericton, see Dartmouth above Quebec Montreal, I don't know, they say their T's weird or something. Ontario Toronto, they speak like everyone else but refuse to pronounce their city name as if it starts with a T. The rest I've seen sounds just like any newscaster in the US Manitoba You start to get some weird hick sounding voices up here. Kind of like white trash but they'll talk more about pulling the head off of a turkey instead of going to the only strip club in Nova Scotia (Ralph's Place). Alberta Many words have two syllables for some reason: fire, car, wire, etc. See Manitoba. BC We're back to typical North American poo poo except for the rural areas which could be confused for Alberta except snowboarding instead of cowboying (read: driving a snow mobile).
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May 16, 2017 02:14
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Nessa posted:I keep meaning to do a road trip to Vulcan! Oh yeah, and the Mike from Canmore Royal Canadian Air Farce (is this known in the US?) accent is a real thing. I don't know if it's actually from Canmore. I also like Drumheller. It's got a very interesting landscape. Being from the East Coast, I find the topography around here really unsettling. It's too flat and you can see forever and I don't like it.
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May 16, 2017 03:23
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PT6A posted:I flew from Calgary to Peace River the other day, and it's really striking just how much loving nothingness there is along that route. And then you realize that the southern part of the "north", like Yellowknife, are as far again as you've just travelled and there's whole expanses of even more nothingness way north of that. Yeah I make the drive up from Edmonton to a town near Peace River every few weeks. It's like driving through New Brunswick. Canada is a little bit bigger than the entire US, including Alaska, and has fewer people than California. It's just a lot of trees and swamps forever. Edit: I think it's a cool experience to drive up the I95 from Georgia straight through to New Brunswick, because even Maine looks like a thriving metropolis compared to the Northern side of the border along that route, and if you continue East or West along the Transcanada, it'll be like 6 hours until you reach a place with a population larger than the undergrad population of a large university (Quebec City to the West, Halifax to the East). I95 in comparison is basically one huge city for like 30 hours of driving. tuyop fucked around with this message at 02:42 on May 17, 2017 |
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May 17, 2017 02:35
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Macarius Wrench posted:
It's funny you say that, we drove down to see Life and it took 90 minutes each way. The tickets only cost $5 each, the Theatre only took cash, and it looked like it hadn't been renovated since the 70s, there were even ashtrays in the seats! And we're not even very far north, you can drive places! There are whole sections the size of France where there are just no roads and you've got like 40 shipping containers and some prefabs where people live. Like Igloolik, where I desperately want to work for a year or two. Though Resolute Bay has better photos of that stuff I think. It looks like the surface of the moon.
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May 17, 2017 21:30
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Macarius Wrench posted:I always said to myself that if I visited Canada it would be the maritime provinces. I always found the idea of visiting Nova Scotia fascinating, might be cause I'm Scottish. Also had no idea that Montreal was on an island. With that I have done Canada questions I could just google but I'd rather hear answers from authentic Canadians. 1. Albertans in cars. 2. I like Amelia Curran and Buck 65. 3. We had compulsory french until high school in NS, but I only learned passable french in the army. Most officers have to learn french to make Major or above, IIRC. 4. Canada was almost entirely French fur trade colonies until the seven years war when they were forced to cede land to the British. After that, Canada beat the poo poo out of the US in the war of 1812. 5. I'm not sure exactly what you mean, the colonization techniques of the french and Spanish are very different. And the nationalization strategies of Canada and the US are also very different. In Canada, to avoid a rebellion, we had to make a deal with the Québécois where their language and religion and stuff was made part of the constitution. Also, since France and French culture is so centralized, you end up with close ties to the former colonial power. I think the Texas Mexico comparison is particularly flawed because Mexico had their own independence war. With Spain, they're more like the US is to the UK than France is to Quebec.
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May 20, 2017 04:48
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Earwicker posted:is the average Canadian proud of Rush, or embarrassed by them? Every Canadian likes Rush. From birth, we can also identify every Canadian celebrity well known in America. Off the top of my head: Keanu Reeves Dan Rather William Shatner Rosie O'Donnell Ryan Reynolds Ryan Gosling Seth Rogen Michael J. Fox Kiefer Sutherland Bryan Adams And I don't follow celebrity news or otherwise give a gently caress, I just KNOW. (One of those is a fake for my fellow Canadians.)
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May 20, 2017 16:33
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Scudworth posted:Ok, but it still is with "eh". That's not my experience at all. Unless hicks are also maritimers, which I'd buy. People say eh fairly regularly, as far as I can tell, and it has almost no regional or economic basis. But I might just be a hick!  Regionalism.png
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May 21, 2017 18:19
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:You mean the british did, with british troops, born in Britain. Up until Confederation the canadian "military" was a territorial militia that would have rolled over even in the face of the mediocre US army of the time. Well if you want to get pedantic it was often aboriginal fighters, like outnumbering the British 20-1 in some battles.  But yeah, the big attack on the White House that everyone knows was pretty much all British. So I guess you're right. My national pride.
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May 22, 2017 22:16
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I see that they sell potato wedges now. Every time I go in, they're out of potato wedges and won't make more. So I get a jalapeño asiago bagel with herb and garlic cream cheese and breathe in peoples' faces all day to express my rage.
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May 25, 2017 02:35
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Nessa posted:I had the potato wedges when I went out today! They're a pretty good cheap snack. I hate you so much right now.
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May 25, 2017 03:20
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Aunt Beth posted:Don't you mean Peter Jennings? Dan Rather is Texan. Holy poo poo my Canadian sense betrayed me.
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May 27, 2017 05:38
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PT6A posted:The driving test is ridiculously easy, but in theory to get your full license (as opposed to a restricted license which still permits you to drive alone), you have to demonstrate being able to drive in city traffic and handle things like merging. There are no experience requirements, and you don't need to demonstrate winter driving ability. Unlike the UK, you can take the test in an automatic and then drive a manual. Driving tests are provincial, though. The Alberta system seems to take years longer than the Nova Scotian system, which was much harder than the New Brunswick system. I have no idea how PEI does things, but Ontario's also seems a bit onerous. I'm not just talking about the tests, but the Graduated license systems that seem to be getting more popular.
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May 29, 2017 05:17
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Spadoink posted:There are a fair amount of westerners posting in this thread, so if anyone wants specific info on the east (I live in Toronto, am from Newfoundland (Labrador!), went to high school in NB and university + 5 years working in NS) I can try and answer stuff about these areas too. I've heard that stuff is looking up in Newfoundland. Is it still dire there? Like a beautiful PEI or NB?
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May 30, 2017 03:42
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I wonder why more Vancouverites don't hop over to Halifax. It's just like Vancouver but with 10% of the costs, natural beauty, and hope! In the late 2000s I was making around 35k with parttime work and my rent was $650/month for a mid scale downtown high rise apartment that would cost three times as much in Edmonton. You can live in Dartmouth and buy a beautiful house near like six lakes and the ferry for <200k. It's ridiculous.
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Jun 4, 2017 16:05
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DeadMansSuspenders posted:Yeah, just move across the country why don't you! A few of my friends went to Halifax for university and only one of them liked it. The most succinct description I heard was "It's just like London (where I live) but everyone smokes". Of course that's skewed to the student viewpoint. I don't know, everything's so far apart that I don't see much of a difference between moving from one coast to the other and moving from any other large city to another unless you're in Southern Ontario. What are the other options? Nearly everything in this country is a day away from everything else and the only difference is whether you're flying or driving. I would say that Halifax is a bit like London, Ontario, though. Vancouver is not really like London.
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Jun 4, 2017 20:49
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ilmucche posted:How strong is the anti-toronto sentiment in Edmonton? Did any of that change after the economic collapse surrounding the oil industry? How was trudeau's election received in alberta, given it remained conservative? I didn't know that such a thing existed, but I don't know too many idiots here.
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Jun 4, 2017 21:22
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Chillyrabbit posted:I wouldn't say its like Vancouver at all, for one thing you don't have an IKEA. I grew up in Vancouver but went to school in Halifax for *reasons*. Things I noticed while studying there; Asian food is sparse, the weather is really horrid compared to the mild Vancouver weather, and nearly everything is closed on Sunday. Admittedly you are right about the rent, and wages but I'm just not entirely convinced and I don't think I would ever move out there. I greatly prefer living in the west, and I don't really plan on moving further east then Saskatchewan unless my job advancement prospects don't pan out. Working in Calgary right now though. Not trying to be defensive but the IKEA is opening soon and Sunday shopping is pretty much universal now! I also don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars having an extra five or six sushi or Thai places is worth to you, in housing costs, but that's a strange metric. Especially when Saskatchewan is preferable. I would totally believe ~culture~ as a reason, though. The whole region is hopelessly conservative and fatalistic about progress and that really fucks with lots of hard to quantify quality of life stuff.
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Jun 7, 2017 04:49
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Canada is highly regional. I feel more in common with people from the Northeastern US (Vermont, Massachusetts, parts of Maine, New Hampshire, etc) than with anyone West of New Brunswick. That being said, there's a whole lot of country to go past Edmonton and it's a bit silly to write it off based on Alberta. Personally, I think Quebec is incredible and I'd follow an opportunity there in an instant, but I'd have to really consider Western BC if something came up.
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Jun 7, 2017 13:18
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Mak0rz posted:also I spent 22 years of my life in the sticks of Newfoundland ama I guess What's a common vacation spot for people who want to get away for like a week? It seems like there are huge barriers to seeing other places that are unique to Newfoundland. Are you talking Labrador sticks or Island sticks? I know nothing about Labrador. There could be dragons there for all I've learned. What did your parents and grandparents do for money? Were people hilariously upset about the closing of the fishery?
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Jun 11, 2017 15:36
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That's interesting and I feel bad now, I was imagining more of an Albertan response to the national energy program, which is hilarious to me because Alberta was - and is - absurdly rich in oil. Since they weren't really hurt that badly by the NEP, I'm pretty unsympathetic to the bellyaching. I didn't expect despair from the fisheries closure, I guess.
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Jun 11, 2017 19:21
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Mak0rz posted:Yeah, apples and oranges. The Alberta collapse is exactly the kind of blowup you'd expect if you put all your eggs in one very lucrative but volatile basket without preparing for contingencies. Hubris played a big role. Yeah that's exactly it. The latest drama about oil has produced stories in my workplace that go like, "Oh man, that family was doing so well! They had a boat, two trucks, a jet ski and snowmobile in their driveway. Then the jet ski went away, then the snowmobile, and now they've sold their house after just two months!" And people will be nearly in tears recounting these stories. I just can't understand the sympathy or feel bad for these people.
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Jun 11, 2017 20:44
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I really enjoyed this a lot, thanks! My mother's side emigrated from Newfoundland before my grandmother was born, and my great aunt on my father's side is from there as well, so it's nice to learn more about it.
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Jun 13, 2017 02:37
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Mak0rz posted:
This is still pretty common on reserves here too! That's a bit of a different story though. 
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Jun 13, 2017 12:19
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What the gently caress Alberta?
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ilmucche posted:1) How do you feel about the 150th? 1) I kind of hate it because I've had to put a million hours of work planning events for nonprofits for it. Other than that I guess it's neat, but I'm pretty fiercely opposed to strong nationalist sentiments. I'll probably go to a friend's cottage or something. 2) I wasn't aware of this at all. I mean, I'm very happy to see people recognizing and expressing some guilt about FNMI relations and mainstream Canada's role as a beneficiary of... that stuff. But I feel about 90% sure that none of it matters. It's either ill-considered Pomo iconoclasm, which means well, or it's a distracting form of protest that doesn't do anything about the actual issues, which means well. As for the usefulness of these sentiments, I've taught mostly FNMI students at this point and I'm becoming a bit troubled by the shallowness of the coverage of racism and FNMI issues by the whole system. The young people in these communities should really be on some next level poo poo but a lot of families and communities are so deeply dysfunctional that it's just not possible. My students will call someone racist for, like, telling them to pick up their garbage and then in the next breath call someone a human being or treat women like poo poo. They're not able (for many reasons, some outside of their control) to connect the mistreatment of First Nations peoples with the struggle for gay or women's rights - or anything for that matter - and it makes the oppression they face much more effective.
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Jun 13, 2017 22:34
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Those native populations do still exist, yes, but good look finding many Canadians who've ever actually met a native canadian in their entire lives. Native peoples REALLY keep to the reservations in Canada, and there are not many of them to begin with, so most people have never interacted with them at all. This is a highly regional thing. You see First Nations people quite often in the west. Growing up in the Maritimes I saw so few aboriginals that I actually didn't recognize them as any sort of minority when I moved to Alberta. It's a bit strange for me the times I've been accused of being racist because I teach only Métis and First Nations students right now and I constantly forget that they're a different ethnicity. It just doesn't register. I also know none of the pejoratives or epithets and only a few stereotypes, which are obviously absurd to me because homeless people are just messed up white people where I'm from!
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Jun 13, 2017 22:55
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Well, it's good that you live in one the more integrated cities as far as native canadians go, but it's hardly the national experience. And that's unequally distributed across the country. Here's a graphic:  So in all of NS, NB, and PEI, you have fewer than 60 000 FNMI people and that's in a region with 1.8 million people in an area the size of Greece with, I think, only three actual cities (Moncton, Saint John and Halifax). If only 40% of them live on-reserve, that's still less than 12 000 people per actual city. For scale, nearly 7 000 people speak Arabic as their most spoken language in Halifax, and many people only encounter Middle Eastern people when they buy pizza or take a taxi.
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Jun 14, 2017 02:43
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Picnic Princess posted:Like, can you not tell who's Native? Absolutely. I've taken a six month course in Cree, taught at two schools with over 90% FNMI populations, and specialized in aboriginal ed in university with mostly native faculty. My boss is a First Nations woman who specializes in Cree language instruction, has a PhD in aboriginal education, all that, and I'm still kind of... surprised, I guess, when I hear her speaking cree or talking about being native when it comes up because I just don't see it, despite all my exposure and understanding. The same goes for the Cree teacher here, it just doesn't enter my awareness most of the time.
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Jun 18, 2017 05:21
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MANime in the sheets posted:It's almost like being exposed to things makes you more tolerant and understanding. Well, maybe but not really my point. I can't think of a single encounter with a First Nations person before I moved to Alberta, except seeing some Canadian Rangers in the army and having it explained that it's kind of an aboriginal-focused part of the reserves. If Albertans weren't constantly telling each other who is and isn't a native, I probably never would have noticed at all.
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Jun 18, 2017 15:02
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Nessa posted:It looks like outdoor pools will be free this summer starting on the 1st! Are any other cities doing this? There are significant architectural differences around the country but you have to cross regions to notice them and just hopping the border won't give you much. Like, Alberta is full of legit Wild West facades and closer to the mountains everything looks like a lodge. The East is full of actual old fishing villages (that people still live in) painted pastel colours or just straight up shacks made out of driftwood. Check out pictures of Lunenburg or Peggy's Cove and compare them to Banff or Victoria or Ottawa. I think Red Deer also has a lot of the Wild West stuff going on, but sections of Edmonton are like that too.
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Jun 24, 2017 16:34
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Nessa posted:Yeah, those are quite noticeable differences, but much of the country can be comparable to a similar location in the US for filming purposes. I don't personally know of any common building styles that are unique to Canada that you couldn't find in the US. I'll have to take a picture the next time I notice one. I'm going to High Prairie this weekend and I'm sure that the whole section off the main street has these buildings. They're modernized a bit but it's still really odd when you're not from here.
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Jun 24, 2017 17:13
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Our Trudeau coverage is dwarfed by Trump coverage so he could be doing pretty much anything and it wouldn't make the news.
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Jun 30, 2017 19:50
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I did something stupid and my insurance used to be like $350/month for just me on a hatchback. Now it's like $125 for my wife and I and no commute. Same car.
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Jul 19, 2017 15:03
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Lungboy posted:That weather sounds exactly like what we have, dreary grey wet winters, possibly getting to zero and rarely snowing. If it does snow or freeze, everything grinds to a halt as we aren't used to it. You're right about the rental prices, I've had a look on Remax and Home Optima and they are akin to London prices, which are considered insane by the rest of the UK. In my city, a 2 bed flat in a nice area is £500 or so, which is ~$820. I can't find much under $1400 in Mississauga, Oakville or Burlington, am I looking at the wrong websites? Check kijiji.ca and Craigslist for rentals as well. The latter has gotten a bit crazy with scams in the last little while but that'll give you something more representative. You may find it more palatable to be a roommate for awhile. But otherwise, that price doesn't sound that unreasonable to me. For <$900 in a city you're looking at the market in Halifax or Winnipeg or absolute shitholes in places where you'd actually want to live. I paid $165/month for a place in "downtown" Fredericton, for instance, that was both a shithole AND in a place where nobody would choose to live. My friend pays $1500 for his Etobicoke condo and it's pretty nice.
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Jul 20, 2017 01:52
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El Laucha posted:What are the biggest problems Canada is facing right now, apart from the real estate prices and fentanyl/carfentanyl epidemic? I think internal migration is a huge issue that doesn't get too much play. This story does a good job of summarizing the maritimes, and this one for Quebec. Manitoba looks like it's starting to have a similar problem. That's about half the country by population right there, and I don't think it really covers the brain drain from the northern areas of everywhere. Like what does a gifted young person from Cape Breton/Gaspé/Attawapiskat/Prince Rupert do? On its face, the numbers are kind of laughable. These aren't Chinese ghost cities, but I think it's a cultural problem that's really hard to predict. These regions are all part of the weird Canadian fabric and as the ambitious young people generally decide to leave, those regional identities suffer and I find it really worrying. It upsets me almost enough to move back to NS and accept a 50% pay cut  .Edit: Also, Canadian academia is a shambles and maybe that's related somehow? Most of my best profs were U of T alumni if they stayed in Canadian universities, if not they were Harvard or Stanford or MIT or Oxford alumni. Maybe not one of the biggest problems, but I think about it a lot. tuyop fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Aug 8, 2017 |
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Aug 8, 2017 17:59
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I don’t know if there really is any Canadian cuisine as much as regional cuisines. I know in the East you’d be crazy not to have some lobster, solomon gundy, blueberry grunt, fried clams, fish and chips, or some kind of mussel dish. But that’s probably all stuff you can get in New England as well. I don’t know what Vancouver brings to the table, they’ve got good sushi? Which is Japanese. Man, now I really want some loving fried clams.
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Dec 18, 2017 05:58
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I prefer The Boat for my East Coast self loathing nostalgia. I’m actually reading it to my students now. They say it’s “lit” and I’ve been pausing the story to show them pictures of small NS towns to give them context. They can’t believe Hall’s Harbour is a place, haha. Most of that weird Newfie food sounds loving amazing and I’m going to try to put stuffing on fries with gravy and cheddar soon. Holy poo poo. My wife keeps on trying to get us to do a trip to Corner Brook where her family is from and I just can’t commit to the extra time and expense over, like, other places. Like we can spend $600 on a 2-3 day ski trip instead! Or $1000 and go to a tropical paradise for a week. I think there’ll be some time home in my future though, father in law just got diagnosed with cancer back in Halifax.
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Dec 19, 2017 05:27
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mobby_6kl posted:How much lamer is Canada than the US? I've been to the states a few times and enjoyed it tremendously (so avoiding the problems that come with living there). Canada though seems like, I dunno, the North American version of Belgium or something. Replace the ability to be shot by someone with the ability to be mauled by a polar bear.
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Mar 6, 2018 18:30
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If you can find a job, move to Halifax and area. No skiing, but everything else is in order and a loving mansion in Dartmouth is like 400k.
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Mar 7, 2018 20:27
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Counterpoint: alberta is full of people who actually think evolution is a myth and you’re constantly assaulted by pro-life posters on the highways. Also, speed cameras. And most of it just hideous flat space or lovely swamp woods. Like 1/8 of the province is quite nice and at that point you’re basically just in BC.
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Mar 8, 2018 01:28
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