On Canada...

[arib]

What follows are various reflections I had during my trip:

Toronto subway cars- drab on the outside, clean and cushy on the inside. The streetcars are kind of funky, though. Very narrow.

Workplace safety signs- gory, but thought-provoking. (One features a guy showing his dismembered hand to the camera)

Downtown- clean, but not as sparkly-sanitary as everyone paints it to be.

Restaurants- quite good. The cheesecake's too good to be legal. That is to say, Oh. My. God. The cheesecake.

Driving 60 on city streets feels weird, even if it's metric. On highways, I broke 120.

On visible patriotism: you see maple leaves displayed everywhere, more than you'd see stars or a red, white, and blue decorative scheme in the US. On the other hand, you see fewer Canadian flags here as opposed to the stars and stripes.

There's a supermarket chain here called "Dominion." Thing is, Canada hasn't been a "dominion" since 1982. It'd be like a supermarket chain in the US called "Colonies." For some reason, that makes me smile.

Illegal transit strikes make traffic disgusting wherever you are. On the other hand, I've finally seen angry Canadians. On the third hand, the radio mentioned that people are organizing rides for random strangers. Apparently, unions have *lots* of clout here.

The border agent returning to the US was just as gruff and businesslike as the border agent entering Canada.

Comments

[qweeeejk.livejournal.com]

A Canuck signing in:

We are actually still a Dominion. According to that ever-accurate fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion#Canada), the official title of our country is "Canada", and has been since 1867. (All that happened in 1982 was that "Dominion Day" became "Canada Day". Oh, and we got our own Constitution, too.)

If you're curious, the origin of the term "Dominion" is that, when Canada was becoming independent, some of our Founding Fathers wanted to call the new country the Kingdom of Canada. The Americans took exception to that term, not wanting a monarchy in North America; so the Brits told the Americans that there was nothing to worry about, Canada would be a Dominion and not a Kingdom. Then they told the Canadians that "Dominion" in fact did mean exactly the same thing as "Kingdom". I don't know if it's true or not, but gosh darn it, it should be.

Yeah, maple leaves are everywhere. After a few decades, though, you don't even notice them any more until one day you go to the 'States and hey, there's no maple leaf on those Golden Arches. Ironically, in my part of the country, there are precisely zero maple trees. (Well, actually we do, but their leaves aren't shaped at all the same way.)

I love the Toronto subway. And the Toronto restaurants. And the 24-hour Dominion store two blocks from my room was kick-ass. I think that's the thing I miss the most about Toronto, going down to the grocery store at 4 AM. Oh, and the smog. But I miss the smog in a totally different way…

[mangosteen]

The one observation I remember most about Toronto was "It's rather large."

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

Connie and I first visited Toronto in 1982 (we went to Montreal and Toronto on our honeymoon that year). Our next visit was in the summer of 1998, and we did notice that the city wasn't as clean as it looked on our first visit. Still much cleaner than New York, but not as clean as it had been.

A fun town, though, and we've been back a few times since.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

Hey- relax, I spent a weekend in Toronto, and all I can say is this: they have a nice Hillel building, and there's a politically right-wing taxi driver at the airport who offered zodiacmg and I a place to stay for shabbos if we needed it, and pointed out all the shuls on the way to the aforementioned Hillel building.

[arib.livejournal.com]

It's huge! Their equivalent of the Jewish stretch of Harvard Street goes on for a good 15 miles, at least.