spouse of scouse

The rules seem to be as different as the prices! For example, you can't buy any drugs for the relief of nasal congestion that contain pseudoephedrine here without a lot of hoopla. The WA state government has put the restrictions on the drugs because pseudoephedrine is used in the manufacture of illegal amphetamines. The restrictions are known as Project STOP, and this is what the pharmacist needs to do if anyone requests something like Sudafed, which is commonly available over the counter in the UK with no restrictions.

Project STOP Sales and Supplies

• the purchaser is known; or
• the purchaser’s identity has been verified by photographic evidence.

The product must be labelled with the name and address of the pharmacy and a unique number or alpha-numeric code. The sale must be recorded in Project Stop™ with the following information:

• date of sale
• name and address of purchaser
• name and address of the person the medicine is intended to treat (if not the purchaser)
• name and quantity of medicine supplied
• unique identification number or alpha-numeric code.

Records of pseudoephedrine sales must be kept for at least 2 years.

scilly

I use a lot of Tylenol ................. Tylenol Extra 500 mg, Tylenol Arthritis (AKA 8 hour) 600 mg, and Tylenol 3 (300 mg paracetamol + 15 mg caffeine + 30 mg codeine), all depending on my need at the moment.

The first 2 I buy only when they come on sale, as they do frequently. The sale price often coincides with an "bonus" of 20 or more tablets. 150 + 20 for $14.00 = ca 8 cents per tablet. If I can get the 200 bonus pack for either $14 or $15 the cost per pill comes down to just over 7 cents.
I buy 2 or even 3 at the sale price .......... I'll have a stock of at least 2 bottles of each in my store cupboard, waiting until the next sale.

As for the Tylenol 3, the pharmacist's cost is more than the cost of the pills.

scrubbedexpat091

Sudafed and generic versions are kept behind the counter in BC although last time I bought some I don't recall being asked for ID or anything, but you do have to ask at the pharmacy counter for it.

When I first moved to Canada I was surprised you could buy medications with codeine over the counter, not something one could do in the US where it's prescription only. Not sure cough syrup with codeine is still sold here or not though, I haven't tried in many years now. (over the counter as in no prescription up to a certain dose, but you do have to ask at the pharmacy counter.)

Lichisadave

scilly

Over-the-counter (ask the pharmacist) medications containing low doses of codeine including cough syrups were apparently still available until fairly recently, because I remember hearing that they would no longer be available, a result of the opioid crisis

Believe it or not, but I can remember Sudafed, Actifed and similar medications being on the open shelves near the pharmacy counter. I used to buy them regularly for my daughter.

scrubbedexpat091

Not sure when BC restricted Sudafed and such, but it was always with the regular OTC cold and allergy medications in California until midway through the first decade of 2000's, when I worked at Target before they had to be kept behind the counter, people would literally come in and buy everything on the shelf sometimes 30-40 boxes. But that was before the state restricted it so it was completely legal.

caretaker

It's probably because you can use sudafed to make meth, prime driver of crime rates almost everywhere now. As usual a few bad apples spoil things for everybody.

scrubbedexpat091

Yep that is 100% the reason for it. When California first restricted Sudafed and related, people would stand outside drug stores and ask people to buy them 2 boxes and would provide the funds, but then the records went electronics so easy to track now, you need to provide your ID and its swiped and tracks how much your buying, the monthly limit is 9 grams which is 2 to 3 boxes a month depending on dose.


One thing I wish I had known before moving here is the various healthcare services that are not covered.

scilly

You know, we never even thought about what was and was not available, how long vacation we would get, whether it would be a nice place to live, or anything serious like that! The thought of schooling for children never entered our heads ....... we didn't have any children at that point though we did think we might have at least one "some time".

We were interested in new experiences.

We just looked at where in the US and Canada we'd like to go, picked the Pacific Northwest as looking interesting. OH wrote a letter to 3 or 4 universities between BC and Oregon, basically saying "These are my qualifications and my experience. This is what I would like to do. Are you interested".

He got several replies, because his "experiences" and what he wanted to do were really quite unusual in university life .......... not many are more interested in teaching and in students than in spending all their time researching and begrudging any time spent with any student below the graduate student level.

We discussed and decided that the offer from Vancouver was right up his street, and I'd see if I could get a job later.

We landed here, and just never thought about how much we had to pay for OTC or prescribed medications, how much we had to pay for dentistry, or rent or what have you .................. partly because we both were at that point making more than we had ever made in the UK. My monthly salary as a research technician was about double what I'd earned in my second year as a high school teacher in England!

It all worked out well for us, and I do know that it doesn't for a lot of people.

Yes, it was sometimes hard to get to the end of the month with some money still in our pocket. But most of the friends we made were in the same boat . Entertaining was having up to 4 other people to dinner, making spaghetti with meat sauce, buying one or two bottles of Chianti in the straw baskets, putting a checked table cloth on the table, lighting candles put into empty Chianti bottles, and turning off the main light.

It was amazing how cheap that evening could be!

More than one evening at a certain house was spent with up to 10 people sitting on the living room floor, with newspaper and tablecloth covering the carpet. The host would have caught a big salmon, called everyone up on the spur of the moment, and there would be a potluck.

Not sure that any of that still happens to that extent. I do know that my daughter and her friends often have potlucks so there is not such a great expense.

BristolUK

I wonder if the differences were not so great when you moved to Canada.

From the food and drink that people miss or make do with alternatives, there seem to be quite a few things either not available here or available at a price.
For me it's Colman's and other brands casserole/cook-in sauce mixes or jars, the different sausagemeat stuffings from Tesco, M&S etc...even the dry mixes have a dozen selections in the UK compared to only a couple here.

Others have mentioned the ready made/prepared stuff.

I'm wondering what food things might have been available in the UK then but not Canada and maybe it was just Vesta curries?




The other differences are probably procedural type things or banking for which Canada is considered a bit dated or old fashioned. But 50 years ago it was probably much the same both sides of the Atlantic with no computers or anything available either side.

Some of the things I experience or read about for this province, they just don't make the use of IT that one would expect. But that might just be NB though.

Siouxie

That sounds much the same as when I moved to Hong Kong back in the 70's, we chose it over moving to Russia or Cali, S.Am. We didn't know anyone or anything about HK- just had a job offer with the English Schools Foundation and 2 plane tickets. We were told we would have a hotel for the first two nights (we stayed at the Peninsular, very posh!) and would be placed in accommodation (paying a % of salary in rent) on the 3rd day and given HK$800 - at that time worth £80 to rent furniture for a month (after that we had to pay for it ourselves, or buy) and buy bedding, fans and anything else we needed (like pots, pans, crockery and cutlery). We were met at the airport by 2 expats and taken to our hotel and then to the pub. Our shopping was done by going to the market for fresh veg, fish, meat etc., - walking through the village getting spat at, walking past cows at the bottom of the lane to get to the beer shack to buy Tsing Tao - and by placing a telephone order to 'Asia Stores' - the only 'supermarket' there was although in later years "No Frills" Supermarkets opened. No internet, airmail took around 10 days, but it was a fabulous and exciting time in my life! Sometimes you just have to take a giant leap of faith! We had planned to stay for 1 contract (2 years) but ended up staying for considerably more.

Twitcher1958

scrubbedexpat091

Weird that it would be banned in Canada, the US used to have the powered but it was discontinued at some point.

But then kinder surprise candy is banned in the US, so who knows..countries can be weird sometimes about food stuff.

mattheww65

Been in Canada for a few months now, and the things that jump out at me:

• Not many things I ate or drank in the UK that I can't find similar Canadian versions of...
• Food here tends to have a higher sugar and salt content to the equivilents back in the UK - probably fewer regulations
• A little bit of snow doesn't bring the country grinding to a halt...
• I thought driving standards were low in the UK, but drivers here (generalisation) make us all like professionals!
• Free banking is the exception rather than the rule - it does exist but you need to give up a level of convenience for it
• Produce in the grocery store is far more seasonal than the UK
• Getting paid every 2 weeks is odd to begin with, but nicer once you get used to it! No more struggling towards the end of the month!
• You get less vacation days on average, but more bank holidays throughout the year.
• Internet speeds are amazing - we get 300mbps as standard! Makes the UK speeds 'upto 8mbps' seem archaic!

My observations - most have some exceptions but i've found them generally to be true!

scilly

I've been thinking about this, about what was and what was not different from the UK

First of all, we had lived elsewhere for a year, in a very different place.

Second, there were some great similarities and some great differences between here in Vancouver and in England.

Differences ...........

There was very little available that we'd been used to in the UK, so we had to adapt. Names of cuts of meat were different, not just ground beef vs mincemeat but names of joints or cuts. NZ lamb was relatively easy to get, mainly frozen, with BC lamb plentiful in May and June. But no sauces, no Vesta

Much more "foreign" food was around ...... Chinese, German, Japanese, Hungarian, Italian, Greek, etc. Our regular restaurant for celebrating was a block from our apartment and it was Hungarian, but the restaurant had originally been Italian, so had rd flocked wallpaper, and Italianate statues around. Going out with friends for dinner almost invariably meant going to Chinatown. or occasionally to Japantown. The evidence of the greater variety was evident in the grocery stores, or in the shops in Chinatown, of in the other ethnic shops around.

Lots of the food offered at the university lunch buffet where we ate most days was very different to what I'd had in the UK, but it tasted so good!!

That was the real thing I noticed ................ how good food was, either buying fresh or eating out.

None of the clothing brands that I was used to in the UK were here ............... either stock up when you went back, or find the good alternatives here. I stopped stocking up on M&S underwear and sweaters after our second trip back in 1975. Not worth it.


Similarities .................

Lots of people with British accents around

Vancouver is really a conglomeration of what used to be separate municipalities until the 1920s or 30s, so there are several small centres of shopping along main streets ............. Point Grey, Kerrisdale, Kitsilano, South Granville, Marpole, etc were all separate entities, with their own mayors and councils. The evidence of this is all around in the shopping areas, that still have 1 or 2 storey shops.

When we arrived, most of those shops were occupied by individually-owned businesses, almost like High Street in England used to be. We were one block from one of those areas ........... butcher, baker, small grocery store, fish shop, some men's and women's clothing stores, shoe shops, post office, small branch of the main Vancouver Library, 2 or 3 banks, a couple of furniture stores, etc etc. All this within a 5 block stretch (both sides) of the main street from downtown. We often bought food as we came home ........ except what we bought was different and we cooked from scratch. Almost no pre-prepared foods. Certainly nothing like Vesta!

Surprisingly, most of those shopping areas still remain, some of the buildings have been demolished and replaced with 2 or 3 storey buildings with shops at street level and offices above. Many are still the same low structure, and some still surprisingly have the same sort of store in them. The same ladies dress shop is still in the same building 1 block from the building where we lived. The butcher, fish shop and baker have gone, but the shops are still there. Fancy restaurants have moved in, though some of the ones we knew stayed until the last 10 or so years.

The banks seemed much the same as back in the UK, but also a little more advance in some things! I remember that we used to get our pay cheques attached to the pay slip, and had to detach it and take it into the bank personally. The big advance was Direct Deposit of our salaries into the pay bank!


Overall, I would say that we probably had much the same culture shock, especially when looking for those items that we had "always" used.