nobody wants to meet me is it cos i argues all the time??

No - it cos yer way out in Ontario yer silly bat

Oh believe me, I would much rather do something else.... however, the wife thinks it is an Olympic sport and is practising for the gold medal!

FWIW chain restaurants like dbd mentions don't bother me, in fact, I quite like them in a perverse way - at least you know the food is generally consistent between different branches of the same chain....

consistent, yes.

Come off it, East Side Marios was the site of a meet in one those BC towns starting with K (maybe they all start with K). iirc a chain was also proposed for a meet in Halifax (too lazy to look that up). I suggest that this is because most places in Canada only have chain "eateries" and not pubs. I expect Calgary has a pub but, in general, the food eaten in restaurants in small town Canada is planned by a division of Philip Morris Inc. It's all fine if you like it but it does mean that whether you live in a subdivision near Vancouver, a subdivision near Calgary or a subdivision near Toronto your life is pretty much the same (and, by and large, the same as in subdivisions near Dallas, Denver, Orlando and so on).

Beyond the "eating experience" many Canadian towns have an "outlet" mall selling cheaper versions of name brand goods specifically for outlet malls, the local bargain in suburban Calgary is the same local bargain as in the godforesaken corners of the GTA. I haven't been in a mall for a decade or so but I understand that they all have an Old Navy, they all have a Gap, they have La Senza. The flash ones have H&M, the less flash ones a department store like the Bay. The really rough ones have Zellers or WalMart. It doesn't matter whether you shop in Halifax or Calgary as the goods on offer are the same.

Other than the malls, each group of subdivisions has an area of big box stores; Home Depot, the Brick, Future Shop, probably a Montanas. I suppose it could be fun to go there, if you shop, but it's the same thing other people are doing coast to coast, posters even come home on the same day with the same camera.

Maybe living in a Talking Heads song isn't a bad way of life but it's not in any sense individual. North America barely even has regional accents or expressions anymore, it's not like the UK where you have to learn about whippets and owt before going past Watford.

Quebec though, Quebec's different, they have PFK.

Nope. The big malls just have several of the same stores, if you get bored with the West Gap Store you can try the East Gap Store.

feels better now. Did I tell you I was poorly?

Serious That's bad! I may have to take a 10 year mall sabbatical like yourself!

Sorry, it is beyond the scope of an expat forum to provide the kind of help you need.

Memorise the following two words: 'Big Box'

That's all you need to know about Canadian shopping architecture.

You can't have actually read that thread! Nobody mentioned any of those places.

Exactly Steve.

Us Haligonians (and wannabe Nova Scotians) are actually meeting in a place called Historic Properties, which looks like this:
http://www.historicproperties.ca/

Which is about as different as the regular identikit places (we definitely have them) as you will probably find around here

I went to a wine tasting there. It's a knock off of Fanueil Market (or however you spell it). Cute.

so my local Mall is averagely flash and rough. It has ALL the stores highlighted above.

(H&M "flash"? You're havin a larf ent ya?)

No, my dear - what's up? Even if it's personal, you can tell us, as you're with about 50,000 of your closest friends at any given moment

Flash for Toronto. I know it's not considered flash in Essex, perhaps not in Calgary either.

I wonder if this mall/big box/chain food culture works because Canadians tend not to go anywhere. Maybe the people in Mississauga or Vaughan or whatever the hinterland of Calgary might be called think The Keg is the only The Keg.