Originally Posted by Gezza

Anyone who lived in U.K. for a while will no doubt have the same thoughts on Canada as yourself. You can congratulate yourself for putting your observations in pleasant terms. (I have seen worse!)
The trick to succeed in Canada is to make yourself hate England more.
I found that driving along West and then East Hastings Street in Vancouver
and then Coquitlam was enough to make me depressed. Even on a fair weather Day. In architecture Canada is really very much like Eastern Europe: there is a general contempt for anything that looks dated and a keen desire to delve into post-modern design trends or high rise concrete. To enjoy living there you just need to try and adopt this way of looking at things. It is hard but eventually it must be possible. I remember being driven by a work friend on my arrival in Vancouver going North on Granville Bridge and being shown the high rise office blocks of the Downtown. He showed them to me with great glee and a grin of pride of " What a New York of Canada Vancouver is" kind of thing. But to me the dusty glass of these 70’s buildings was more reminiscent of some African or South American capitols. Mind you, It was not all bad, I did see a few decent houses round Vancouver City going towards the BC University and Granville Street. :rolleyes:

Originally Posted by Athome

There is a flip side to that Geeza.

Houses with the only bathroom off the kitchen and it is really just an add on that replaced the outside toilet.

Originally Posted by Athome

Houses with the only bathroom off the kitchen and it is really just an add on that replaced the outside toilet.

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Originally Posted by Athome

There is a flip side to that Geeza.

I used to visit Edinburgh from Toronto every few years. I consider Edinburgh the one city in the world that is worth visiting more than once (I'm not a city lover). One of the things that I really like about it is the architecture. All those lovely old buildings. So unlike Toronto where I grew up.

Then on one trip as I was walking down a residential street in the New Town I realized that all the windows were not double glazed. I actually got depressed and when I thought about it and put toqether some other factors that I hadn't connected before it struck me that what I was looking at is a place where time stopped around 1953 or so. I don't mean they should have pulled the buildings down and replaced them with concrete monstrosities (although there is a fair share of that), but that people were still living more or less in the same conditions as in the 1950s. There are still today houses with no central heating. Houses with the only bathroom off the kitchen and it is really just an add on that replaced the outside toilet.

Not all progress is good progress of course but wanting things to be new and up to date is also not all bad.