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British Columbia Goon here! Lived in the southern Okanogan paradise for most of my life before my dumb rear end chased the oil money dream up to Fort Nelson just in time for natural gas production to go tits up here. The whole town is dying and I believe the last census was something like 60% vacancy on businesses at the moment. I live 140 km from the NWT border. Now to clear some things up for "y'all" down in the US: -As mentioned before in BC most people have the north west US accent or whatever so I never understood the Canada accent thing until I moved up here. A combo of Newfies and rural folk on the CB radios really made me laugh. Local slang includes lots of "eh"s and "there"s and "ignorant" means rude for some reason. "I was heading down to the bush (oilfield) there and some Cop pulled me over and was being right ignorant!" - I live 4 hours from any kind of decent sized city (Fort St John). McDonalds / KFC / Walmart runs are a very real thing that people will pay out the nose for. Also no matter where you're headed it's either "down south" or "up north". - I grew up learning French but it was only mandatory until grade 9. Most people out west here seem to treat it as a minor annoyance rather than a national bilingual identity. There is/was a program called French Immersion where the kids speak French in all classes. Naturally most of them got made fun of in high school for it if they let slip they went to the French elementary school. - My town is mostly white and the most common visible minorities are the local First Nations bands and a large Filipino population that seem to run all the service and cleaning jobs. A lot of locals and old timers are super racist and sexist and generally prejudiced. Phrases like "one of those goddamn environmentalists" or "loving Trudeau" come up in every political conversation. -I work in a tire shop and appreciate the US tipping culture because getting 5-10$ for taking 30 seconds to check someone's air pressure is awesome. We do the "local" Uhaul roadside jobs for the area so sometimes that means driving for 4 hours to do a 5 minute job. - the landscape up here is mostly flat swamp/ muskeg, with the Northern Rocky Mountains visible and about an hour north. My hometown (Vernon) is in a lake filled semi desert / pine forest / orchard valley so I gotta say I'm not thrilled at the local scenery. Also as soon as you leave town either direction you lose cell reception for 4 hours except for a couple of summits. - A lot of our media exposure is US, but federal law mandates that channels/ radio stations have to play a certain amount of Canadian content. So you end up with channels like Teletoon which is like a watered down Cartoon Network with lots of Canadian shows that all look the same from being animated with the same program. And stuff like Nickelback dominates the radio for similar reasons. If a Canadian gets a popular song you better be ready to hear it every hour for the next year or so. - Most people I know don't give two shits about the Queen or the UK but some old folks are like super British subjects still and it's kind of funny -Despite being a national symbol beavers are a pest here and people shoot them a lot and blow up their dams. Also I like Edmonton and hate Calgary mostly for driving reasons back when I was the DD in my old band. Vancouver is cool but I lose my poo poo in traffic sometimes. The town I'm in just got a new light so now we're no longer a one stoplight town! PROGRESS
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May 28, 2017 10:41
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Also since we're remote they only have one person to do exams who comes up from FSJ. Three months is the usual booking in advance for a road test so hopefully you don't fail. My buddy did his bike exam and it started snowing (in June hooray) and he skidded slightly around a corner and failed because of it. In more civilized parts of the province you just walk into the Service BC location and wait your turn, usually no more than half an hour.
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May 29, 2017 06:32
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PT6A posted:On the other hand, Quebec is the one province where it's law to stay the gently caress out of the left hand lane of a highway if you're not passing, so they are doing God's work. The dual lanes here in BC have signage saying keep right unless passing. And by "here" I mean 400km away. Single lane with occasional dotted passing line woohoo. There's been times I'm driving up the highway for work stuck behind a convoy of RVs riding each other like 2 feet apart and they never let you in so you have to pass like 10 at a time doing 160 and hope there's no cops nearby.
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Jun 6, 2017 04:09
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There was a burger baron offshoot where I used to live called Triple Burger Express that had a "3 Burgers for 3$" deal that broke teens loved. It lasted a year. That is my Burger Baron story. Any Canadagoons doing anything nifty for Canada Day tomorrow? I'm taking my kids to the parade (which we have instead of fireworks because it's light out until almost 11 pm here in Fort Nelson in summer.) There's a big town party/ carnival after, and I bet the same two bands are going to play Summer of '69 just like every year.
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Jul 1, 2017 05:41
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Jaguars! posted:Question for The Great Burrito or any other Thompson plateau goons that are still hanging around this thread. It was stagnant and mostly the same for awhile, but the downtown really started bouncing back around 2010. Lots of new businesses with young owners. Some new apartment and office buildings went up. The north end of town past the mall is now the usual Walmart/Home Depo/ Superstore endless retail wasteland instead of wetlands. They built a kickass walkway thru the wetlands from Polson Park to Kal beach. Someone burned down the 100 year old wooden bleachers in Polson one night in 2006 and I was there walking by it when it went down. There’s a whole lot more homeless people living in parks and empty lots and people keep whining about having to see them on Facebook. My fav local restaurant (KT’s) closed after I moved and was a Conservative Party HQ (booo) for awhile but now it’s a record store/venue. So the economy is a whole lot better now than when I left. They filmed the movie Fido there in 2006 (also featuring Armstrong and Kelowna). There’s a lot of developments on the once bare hills above the west side of town. Still pretty nice and I visit with the kids a couple times a year when I can. It’s still in that nice spot where it’s a good size and not super busy like Kelowna during rush hour but it’s close to everything. If Fort Nelson keeps dying the way it is I’m moving back hopefully next year. Can’t say much about the Vipers as I am a Bad Canadian and don’t watch hockey much outside of Olympics/ Playoffs but I did go to Vipers games occasionally. They’re tearing down the old Civic Arena this year (They built a new MULTIPLEX beside the Kin Horse Track in 2002) So, busier and bigger I guess? The Great Burrito fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Feb 27, 2018 |
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Feb 27, 2018 20:53
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