Danny B

That's a bit rich coming from you isn't it? I seem to remember you were jumping all over NJ_Dave's reasons for disliking his first year back in the UK.

Anyway, I'm not going to argue with you. I seriously wish you the best of luck back in the UK

Jay Bird

I, along with several other people, objected to NJ Dave's use of offensive language....not necessarily his dislike of the UK. I wondered if he hadn't noticed the problems before he left, as he was away for a comparatively short time.

sans

OB i really dont think you have to justify to anyone else, how you feel and why you feel it....................their are lots of us who feel this way about where we are living, for whatever the reasons And offending posters should stay clear if they dont like it Or maybe.... its their own reasons for lurking in TMBTTUK forum, that is their real problem and not you.

Jay Bird

Thank you sans, it's good to know that most of you get it!

Eric Hitchmo

Imagine complaining about one town and using that as a thinly-disguised basis to whinge about the whole country. That would never do, eh Danny?

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=443093

englishrose

good luck on your move home.i understand entirely where you are coming form with your experience.
yes its laughable,the "laid back" image is a joke,you are right ,its another way of saying how lazy canadians are.

It was for us and not for you either by the sound of it,hope you settle back in here quickly .We say it was the right thing to go to canada in the first place,but it was also the right thing to come back.
x

Danny B

is that the best you can do Eric? Searching through my previous posts to prove me wrong and even then it has no relevance to this thread
Did I say that the whole of the UK is a crap because of Reading?... No, I thought not.

Shouldn't you be mentioning your infamous train journey through Kamloops by now, or the crap wooden houses we have, or the trucks with guns in the back, & the huge amount of red necks in BC?

Same old Eric...

dingbat

Fairly accurate description of BC and Kamloops there, so the problem is......?

meols12

You just reminded me then of meeting four rednecks from Kamloops. Was staying at a hostel in Regina and got chatting to these four lads who had come to Regina for the weekend to watch BC Lions play Saskatchewan Roughriders in Canadian football. Ended up going with them to a Country & Western club. Their whole conversation revolved around anything to do with hunting, fishing, football (gridiron), drinking and women. They were rough, but friendly.

As for Kamloops, don't remember much about the place, except that it was surrounded by scruffy desert like hills. Must have been a fairly nondescript place. Also got stuck with an ex-con at the bus station who was leaving Kamloops for Vancouver. I must have just bumped into the wrong types of Kamloops people.

What was the appeal of Kamloops, Danny?

Bevm

As someone thinking of going back to the UK after 30 years in Canada, I can relate to a lot of this. We've lived in many places and the climate in most is difficult. In Ontario there really are not that many months that are truly enjoyable if you don't like cold or mosquitoes, but it's even worse in many others.

But coastal BC is very pleasant and very beautiful. It's just more and more of the same, though, and there is lovely coast in the UK with other interesting things within fairly easy reach.

Canadian politics drive me nuts, too, with the fragmentation, the English/French squabbling that some think crucial and most think boring. Overall, there's a general flabbiness to politics here with the provinces bickering with one another and everyone in the end doing what the US says.

Culturally, Canada hasn't pulled it together yet. No true national newspaper. Most magazines and books people read come from the US. Canadian national TV and radio comes from Toronto, which thinks it's the center of the country, and most people watch US TV anyway, even for the news.

Most of the time US TV pretends its huge neighbour to the north doesn't exist. Even their weather maps often cut off at the border and they hardly ever report on the news up here.

It has to do something to a country's psychology to get most of its media from a source that pretends it doesn't exist.

Of course this is my personal impression. Clearly most Canadians love their home and native land, and many immigrants are happy to have come here.

Bev

Tableland

Interesting what you write about the fragmentation. A Canadian of my acquaintance (from Ontario) also mentioned to me that the country realy does not have a cultural centre and the provinces are much more separated from one another than the US or Australian states.

Jay Bird

I would agree with this (although I have no experience of the US or Australia); it is very isolating. I really don't feel part of the country as a whole. Whether this is because it is so huge, or because each province has its own way of doing things, I don't know.

Toronto does seem to think it's the cultural be all and end all, and I think it probably feels it should be the capital rather than Ottawa.

Danny B

No I think you portrayed a very accurate description of Kamloopians. We are all deer hunters up here you know



Roll on Nov 6th 2008.

Judy in Calgary

I've lived in Canada, the USA, and Australia, and I don't entirely agree with this observation.

Yes, Canada is a large, sparsely populated country, and that does create separation, isolation and geographic differences. But I felt Australia was similar to Canada in that respect.

In both countries, the majority of the population lives in cities, and that gives them more political clout than rural people tend to have.

Also, in both countries, the population is concentrated in a thin strip, leaving a vast hinterland that is sparsely populated. In the case of Australia, the more densely populated strip is along the east coast. In the case of Canada, it's along the Canada-US border. In Australia you can die of thirst in the Red Centre if you don't plan properly. In Canada you can die of hypothermia outside of the cities if you don't plan properly.

When I lived in Australia, I was struck by the country's similarity to Canada in that respect. What I mean is that I noticed attitudes that obviously were the result of the geographical reality, and I also noticed how similar these attitudes were in these two countries that were so many thousands of miles from each other.

There also is some fragmentation in the USA. I met Texans who made it very clear to me that they thought of themselves as Texans first and Americans second. As a matter of fact, there were occasions on which I appreciated the sort of "diplomatic immunity" I seemed to be given because I was a foreigner and therefore not a "Yankee."

You only have to travel to Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, etc., to see a society that, de facto, has splintered into an English-Spanish divide that is similar to Canada's English-French divide. In Miami I found myself in places where I had to spend some time looking for someone who could answer my questions in English.

But the USA keeps things cobbled together a bit more cohesively than Canada or Australia, because it makes a conscious effort to do so. School kids start their day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and stuff like that.

This perhaps represents a drift from the original topic and, if it is, I apologize. But I did want to defend Canada against this observation that it was more splintered than the USA or Australia, because I don't think it is.

I don't think I can be accused of being a Canadian chauvenist, because I'm on record stating that, out of Canada and Australia (both of which I consider to be reasonably decent countries, for the most part), I slightly prefer Australia.

Frankly, I think I understand how a British person (and indeed any European) could find any one of these "new" countries bland and boring. But, after having lived in all three countries, I don't think Canada deserves to be dissed very much more than the USA and Australia.

THE NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA

Years ago I read a book called The Nine Nations of North America. The author, Joel Garreau, asserted that, effectively, North America was broken up into nine "nations." What he called "nations" were regions that had so much in common from economic and cultural points of view that they may as well have been their own countries even if, in a formal sense, they were divided by the Canada-US border. Garreau's nine nations were:

New England - comprised of the northeastern United States and Atlantic Canada

Quebec - A French-speaking enclave

The Foundry - The industrial heartland of the United States (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.) as well as Southern Ontario.

Dixie - The southeastern part of the United States

The Breadbasket - The US Midwest as well as Southern Manitoba, Southern Saskatchewan, and some of Ontario (a part that he referred to as the Near Northern part of Ontario)

The Islands - Southern Florida (including Miami), the Florida Keys, the Caribbean, and parts of Venezuela

Mexamerica - The Southwestern United States

Ecotopia - The US Pacific Northwest, Coastal British Columbia and Coastal Alaska. Note that many of the people who live in this region refer to what effectively is their "country" as Cascadia.

The Empty Quarter - The relatively "empty" American states, like Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, etc., the interior of Alaska, the interior of British Columbia, the whole of Alberta, most of Saskatchewan, most of Manitoba and most of Ontario, and all of the Canadian territories (Yukon, Northwest Territory and what more recently has become Nunavut).

In addition to the nine "nations," Garreau said there were four "Aberrations." These were places that were unique and that, if they were nested within one of the nine nations, they were so different from their nation that they did not belong.

Manhattan - Although technically this was situated inside of The Foundry, Garreau said it was so different as to constitute a unique pocket.

Washington, DC - I think it would be pretty obvious to anyone that, since it's the capital of the United States, Washington belongs to neither The Foundry on its northern border nor to Dixie on its southern border. It too is a unique pocket.

Hawaii - A unique mix of North America and Asia

Northern Alaska - According to Garreau, it belonged to The Empty Quarter, and yet had some characteristics that were so unique that it deserved special mention.

I immigrated to Canada in 1977 and, when I read Garreau's book in the early 1980s, I thought it contained a lot of truth.

I think things have shifted since then. Perhaps the biggest single change since then has been the increased concern about security since 9/11. This has tended to solidify the border between the United States and Canada (one can no longer fly between the two countries with a driver's licence, and so on).

But a lot of what Garreau wrote about in 1981 still holds today, I feel.

Implications for Judith (Oldbag)

It's interesting to note that Ontario is divided into regions that, according to Garreau, belong to The Foundry, The Breadbasket, and The Empty Quarter.

If one was an anthropologist, I think it would be interesting to know, Oldbag, whether your current Ontario town belongs to The Breadbasket or to The Empty Quarter, and if that might account for some of the differences you've experienced this time around. From things you've said, I gather your previous town, in Southern Ontario, must have belonged to The Foundry (if we can agree to use Garreau's terminology).
x

Jay Bird

What a fascinating post, Judy.....you've got me wondering which of the nine areas I am living in, and which I did live in years ago. For the rest of my time here I'll be in Southwestern Ontario.....(Huron County, to be exact) which I have heard referred to as the Breadbasket of Canada because of the food it produces. I lived in Port Perry years ago, which is north east of Toronto; another small town (it has since trebled in size), but with completely different attitudes.
I do wonder, though, if the changes I have seen are as much to do with the way the world has changed as a whole, especially after the events of 9/11; then of course, I am that much older, and no matter how much I don't want to admit it, ageing does inevitably change one.
Either way, you have given me food for thought, and I shall try to track down that book when I'm back on English soil.
Karma for a thought-provoking post!