Foreign Concepts

My fascination with Canada predates even the Dave Thomas-Rick Moranis “Great White North Skits” on SCTV decades ago, during which the home-grown comedians spoofed their native land as a nation of flannel-clad, tuque-topped, beer-swigging, hockey-playing “hosers” who end every other sentence with the word “eh.”

I’d first ventured north of the border, if just barely, on a family vacation to Niagara Falls when I was maybe 8 or 9. I don’t remember much about that visit except the magnificence of the water—especially Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side—and the vague sense that I’d left the United States and set foot in a new place that closely mirrored my own country, but wasn’t. There were Maple Leaf flags all over the place. The coins and paper currency were different. The accents were flatter, and some people spoke French. I may or may not have noticed then that various written words featured an extra “u” or a transposed e-r, as in “centre.” Regardless, I clearly wasn’t in America anymore. There was a skewed familiarity to everything that made Canada different without being scary to my young, provincial self.

Now I’m 52 and have been back to Canada several times—most recently in late October, which I’ll get to shortly. Because our neighbor to the north is chilly and under-populated—two qualities Lynn and I prize in vacation destinations—we’ve been to the Canadian Rockies and Vancouver on one trip and to Newfoundland, Labrador and the Maritime provinces on another. To me, there’s so much to love about Canada: the natural beauty, the vastness of the land, the lack of bluster and self-importance compared to what I see every day in this country, the national health care system and tough gun laws.

I was impressed, too, when Canada approved gay marriage nationwide a few years ago. But I think it was really the security measures enacted after 9/11 that iced the cake for me. Now Americans need a passport to cross the border, which is extremely important to someone like me who’s still seen little of the world. The passport requirement means, to me, that I’ve now officially been to three foreign countries—Iceland, Japan and Canada. Before, when Americans could gain access to Canada simply by producing their driver’s license and assuring the border guard there were no explosive devices in the trunk, Canada’s legitimacy as a sovereign nation for travel-resume purposes seemed vaguely questionable. Sure, Canada had different laws and other political and social quirks, but so did, say, Utah and Texas—US states that also weren’t quite like mine. The passport lent Canada an extra layer of exoticism.

It was with even greater anticipation than on previous visits, then, that I prepared to cross the border this time. Lynn and I were bound for Toronto, where neither of us ever had been, and it would be our first border crossing since enactment of the passport requirement. On the morning of Monday, October 25, with great pride in my worldliness, I handed over our proof of US citizenship to the Canadian official on that country’s side of the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, Ontario. That he turned out to be kind of a hard ass who chastised me for failing to heed some stop sign neither Lynn nor I could recollect having even seen took nothing away from my excitement as we proceeded by car into the land of metric highway signs and throwback Esso gas stations.

We would spend most of that day and two full ones in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, before returning to the US on Friday the 29th. During our stay we had a fantastic time walking the city from our centrally located hotel—some highlights included the top of the CN Tower, the Royal Ontario Museum, much gluten-free vegan fine dining (emphatically not an oxymoron in Toronto, Lynn delightedly discovered) and a couple of hours at the Hockey Fall of Fame (OK, maybe more a highlight for me than for Lynn). But what I’d really like to share with you in this post are three specific ways in which, I observed during this trip, Canada is so not the US, should any readers still need convincing—the passport thing notwithstanding.

· I was struck almost immediately by the complete and utter lack of bumper stickers. In fact, it got to the point that I was thrilled we’d valet-parked our car upon arrival at the hotel and only reclaimed it when we left town. My rear bumper area features not one, not two, but four stickers—promoting the Human Right Campaign (the “equal” sign), Amnesty International, vegetarianism (“Veg”) and the greatness of cats (“Meow”). Here in this country, I like displaying them, because I feel they project to the driving public that I’m a fan of social justice who’s comfortable with his feminine side. In Ontario, though, the bumper stickers made me feel garish and loud. They seemed the visual equivalents of screaming my opinions in Canadian ears, thus finding yet another way to be the Ugly American foreigners love to hate. What was this utter dearth of sticker mania? Was it a manifestation of Canadians’ stereotypical politeness, not wanting to offend those with opposing viewpoints and allegiances? Was it the pointlessness of “I’m the NRA, and I Vote” belligerence in a country with no gun lobby? Might it be welcome modesty about their honor-student kids? Was it the problematic distance to long weekends at “OBX”? Whatever. Once you zero in on it, as I did, you know this ain’t America.

· Being the technological caveman I am, I’d brought an old-school transistor radio with me so I could listen to music while in the shower, as I am wont to do. I found a Toronto classic rock station, which I then listened to for a total of maybe 45 minutes over those few days. I was stunned and overjoyed not to hear a single song by Boston during that time. Instead, the gaps between the standard Stones, Clapton and Tom Petty tunes were filled by unfamiliar offerings that turned out to be lesser hits by the likes of Canada’s own Rush and the Guess Who. I was completely flummoxed by the DJ’s mention at one point of the Jeff Healey Band. Playing a hunch, I Wikipedia’d the group on our laptop computer. This was the first sentence: Norman Jeffrey “Jeff” Healey (March 25, 1966 - March 2, 2008) was a blind Canadian jazz and blues-rock vocalistist and guitarist who attained musical and personal popularity, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. Not in the US, he didn’t. Now, that’s what I call foreign classic rock.

· Canada’s Election Day had just been held when we arrived in Toronto. Toronto had elected as its new mayor a city council member named Rob Ford. His relatively easy victory had been deemed surprising—not only because Ford is a member of the Conservative Party in a Liberal-leaning city, but also because he’s fat and undiplomatic. Many Torontans were concerned that his protruding gut and blunt, take-charge attitude—qualities that characterize many a successful US politician—would ill-represent their cosmopolitan and polished city. The Toronto Sun quoted a local dietician as advising that Ford, whose unintentionally ironic campaign slogan decrying profligate government spending had been “The gravy train stops here!”, had “better have waist management on his agenda.”

There’s a lot more about Canada that’s “foreign,” of course—from the “loonie” dollar coin and those wacky Celcius temperatures, to the self-denigration and national inferiority complex that turn America’s belief in its own exceptionalism on it head, to the mistaken belief (per Lynn) that tights and leggings look good on all women regardless of body type, to a military policy that favors peacekeeping over war-making, to an endearing lawfulness that seems to preclude pedestrians crossing against a traffic light even during lengthy windows of opportunity, to the iconic status of “Hockey Night in Canada” as not only a television broadcast but as a national description of Saturday evenings everywhere from St John’s in the East to Yellowknife in the West.

Still, it seems to me there’s no better definition of "foreign country" by American standards than one in which one might never know a motorist would “Rather Be Golfing,” might never hear “More Than a Feeling” or “Peace of Mind” on the radio, and might seldom see and hear a lawmaker with a piehole as huge as his belly.

I already can’t wait to go back. I'd better keep my passport current.