Northern Exposure

Greetings from Canada!

I’ve been here a couple of weeks now, and am slowly getting used to this place and it’s strange ways. The first thing most people thought of when I said I was going to Canada was “won’t it be really cold?” But unlike most of the country, Vancouver is pretty mild and the weather is often pretty similar to London. It’s famous for its rain, but unlike England when it rains here it really rains. On Monday for example, it rained all day long from when I woke up to when I went to sleep. That’s some pretty dedicated rain. The only time it gets really cold is when you go to the waterfront areas where there’s no shelter. There the wind blows down off the mountains and you get a nice taste of Arctic air. And that, my friends, is co-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ld.

There have been a few things here that have surprised me, and maybe knocked a bit of my view that Canada was a modern, forward-thinking country. One of the first things you notice about the city is the homeless people. There are a lot. A lot. There’s one notorious road called East Hastings Street, and in the same way that if you walk down the street in Chinatown and everyone’s Chinese, and if you walk down the street in Upton Park everyone’s Pakistani, if you walk down East Hastings you’re in the minority of you’re not homeless. There are loads of them just shuffling around aimlessly like some kind of zombie film, and it’s really sad. And around the rest of the city there are people begging for money on every corner (and a Starbucks on every other corner). Apparently they come from all over the country to Vancouver because of the mild weather (would you want to be on the street in Calgary when the weather is -25 degrees?), but there’s also a story about the mayor of Calgary paying to bus them out of the city during the Winter Olympics in 1988 to make the city look nicer. Vancouver is hosting the Winter Olympics in 2010, so it will be interesting to see what they do this time.

Another thing that’s surprised me has been that Canada is a bit of a rip-off. Not because everything is expensive (it’s still cheaper than London by a long way), but the way they try to get every spare dollar out of you. For example, sales tax is added to all purchases so the amount on the label isn’t the amount you pay. And then there’s the whole tipping thing. If you’re served by anyone you’re expected to give them a 15% tip. And that isn’t just cab drivers and waitresses, that’s people who serve you at the bar, people who serve you in shops, pretty much anyone who you come into contact with. So you see the price, then you add the tax, then you frantically try to work out what 15% of that is so that you don’t offend the person behind the counter. I have to open a bank account, and they charge you $8 per month just to have the account, extra for a cheque book, extra of you use your bank card more than a certain amount per month, and if you use another bank’s cash machine you get charged by both your own bank and the bank you’re using! But the ultimate so far has to be mobile phone networks. You pay a set amount each month (like normal), but you have to pay a compulsory $6.95 connection fee each month. 50 cents 911 emergency access each month, and a $30 activation fee. And most of the networks here have a different kind of system to the rest of the world so they don’t have SIM cards as the connection is built into the phone. Which means you need to buy a new phone even if you already have one!

Aside from that little rant, most things here are pretty cool. I had my first major Canadian experience last night when a few of us went to an ice hockey match. I have to be honest and say I didn’t have a clue what was going on most of the time, and the game is so fast that you can’t see where the puck is! Unlike a football match the whole thing is an entertainment spectacle and not just a sports match, so there’s music being played every time play stops, cheerleaders running up and down the aisle during the game, and a ton of competitions during the breaks. Bizarrely there are 3 periods to the game, which surprised me when I was waiting for the 4th quarter to find that everyone was leaving the building. The game itself is brutal. You always see hockey players fighting on the ice, but I didn’t realise that the referees stand there and monitor it, and I didn’t realise that it was proper bare-fist-in-the-face fighting. And during the game players are frequently slammed hard into the glass surrounding the rink. The other weird thing that happens is the changing of the players. Skating around at high speeds can exhaust you pretty quickly so players just tag another player on the sub’s bench and they switch places. Sometimes the whole team switches at once. So again, I had no clue what was going on most of the time, but it was great to watch and I’m sure I’ll be going a lot more during my time here.

At the moment I’m having job interviews and looking for apartments, so it’s all a bit boring for the time being. I’m looking forward to living and working with Canadians though, as all I see is Aussies at the moment! I’m off now to a cheesy Valentine’s night out at a local bar. I hope you all had a good Valentine’s Day, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Take care,

Jamie