Canada is not just a whiter version of the United States, and I know that is how many of my fellow Americans view the Great White North. After all, we share semi-similar pioneer roots and a British birth as well. But, even the little bit of time I have spent here has firmly re-enforced what I already knew. Canada is not a suburb of the United states; it is a foreign country.

Rob laughs at me when I describe him as exotic and point to the fact that he and his country are foreign to me as proof, but even he agrees that Canada and its people are not what Americans think they are.

We went grocery shopping last evening at the Safeway. It’s just a grocery like any other. The aisles are set up to lure you into overspending and there is even a Starbucks at the entrance and it doesn’t get any more status-based consumption oriented than that. But, as I wandered after Rob pushing the cart with Katy in it and plucking items with the kind of assurance that is born out of familiarity, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in an episode of Ray Bradbury Theater. The one where the guy comes back from a hunting trip via time machine in the past to discover that death of the prehistoric butterfly he accidently crushed beneath his boot has somehow resulted in a Nazi victory over the Allies (a favorite scenario of sci-fi writers it seems). 

Everything was different but in a surreal way. New York artist and illustrator, Brad Holland, defines the surreal this way “Surrealism: An archaic term. Formerly an art movement. No longer distinguishable from everyday life.”  And that is how it felt. Everyday ordinary. And yet, it wasn’t ordinary at all. The products I recognized, and there were many, were packaged differently – bigger letters on the labeling and unrecognizable color schemes. French leaps off the labels at you. People cock their heads a bit in a puzzled manner when you speak. 

And it’s not just stores. There was the restaurant where the server wanted to know if I wanted my toast made with white or brown bread. There are washrooms, not restrooms. One has to take care to watch for moose as well as deer when driving the rural roads and at night you can hear the occasional coyote yowling in the not all that distance.

I am learning to disregard the tendency to ask “what degree is that in fahrenheit. 22c is a nice day. 30 is god awful hot…..if you weren’t born and raised below the 49th, and anything below 17 is long pants and sleeves weather. When gas is 99.9 it is still more expensive than it is in Iowa and Canadian paper money only looks like you should be using it in Monopoly. It still buys things.

Starbucks and McDonalds may be ubiquitous, but Tim Hortons has more outlets, donuts and pastry in addition to artery-hardening  fast food, and it has better frozen lattes too. 

On the way home from the strip mall (which are remarkably like “home”), I was scanning the countryside, as I am wont to do these days, and Rob asked me what I see when I do that. I told him I see “not home” in the sense that I feel as though I haven’t got a bearing yet. I don’t recognize landmarks or streets to the point that I can “sleep-drive” the way I could back in Iowa. I am not sure that this is a bad thing really. I have been set on auto-pilot for too long and I am pretty sure that isn’t a widow thing either.

Tim Horton was a hockey player by the way. He played for one of the original six, The Maple Leafs. He died in 1974 and his partner cheated his widow out of her share of the chain that bears his name. Can’t escape that widow connection even when you are just looking for a box of Timbits to fill a four year old tummy. Small world. Just live in a different section of it now.