Canada Day–July 1
You may not recognize July 1 as Canada Day — but I do. (Yes, it’s also Becky’s birthday and it’s also her anniversary, but this post focuses on our neighbors to the north). First of all, I met (and married) a Canadian citizen while attending graduate school. Bill has actually lived all over the world: not only Canada, but Switzerland, India, Australia, England, and then to the USA (and Indiana in particular). A couple of years after we married, Bill’s position at IBM was slated to be “downsized,” so he located a tremendous position with the National Research Council. Of Canada. Which meant that we were going to move to Ottawa, the capital city.
While I grumbled a great deal about moving to Canada — we moved in January, and the day we arrived, the temperature was minus 35 degrees — the long-term experience was indeed a treasure. Canada does a lot of things even better than the USA does. I won’t go into the whole national health issue here. Instead, I’ll give you a couple of other examples.
First, recycling. We lived in Canada from 1992 to 1995, and Canada already had wonderful curb-side recycling service for all sorts of products: glass, plastic, cardboard, metals and aluminum. Curb-side is important; you simply placed your recyclables in the green bin and put it near the street. Now that we’re in Tennessee, we remain dedicated recyclers, but we have to load up and drive to the nearest recycling station. Curb-side is a lot more convenient. Extending the idea of recycling, Canada also gives away garden bins for composting and rain barrels for garden water collection. We have to purchase those elements here (and we have). I noticed a lot more items at Canadian grocery stores that were packaged more efficiently: for example, many cleaning and laundry products, even back in the 1990s, were packaged in concentrate form so that you added your own water at home, and milk comes in small plastic bags (which also improves freshness).
But perhaps the biggest difference was in the home buying process. We purchased a home within walking distance to my husband’s workplace (Plumber Avenue). The whole experience couldn’t have been easier. Once we selected the home we wanted — with the assistance of a great realtor! — we all went to our bank together. We showed the loan officer a copy of my husband’s paycheck stub, the realtor gave the officer the details on the home we had selected (after a few negotiations), and within 45 minutes, the home was ours — easy breezy! I guess it’s no surprise that we always remember our first home with fondness: we had a fenced-in backyard, complete with a terraced garden, peonies, raspberries, and grapes that grew through the pergola. Good times indeed. Today, Canada Day, makes me a little wistful for those days. (But not, however, for the cold ice and snow!).
You really should visit Canada someday, if you haven’t already. Going to Montreal, because French is the dominant language, is very much like an European vacation. Be sure to get fresh cheese curds while you’re there. And by the way, don’t bother asking for iced tea — they don’t know what that is (smile).