O Canada

Moving to Canada been on your mind lately?  Thinking about butter tarts, hmmm?  Maybe knowing that Canada legalized same sex marriages about ten years ago would allow sleep to come sooner at night?  Tired of those pesky pennies?  How about some excellent chocolate from England, Ireland?  And speaking of chocolate, you're just dying for one of those Kinder eggs, illegal here in the US; forget the candy and go buy a US of A legal semi-automatic AK-47, you wanna live dangerously already.  How about adding a /u/ after an /o/ in several words, rounds out that flat Americaan accent that causes Canadians to double over in guffaws, but that's probably as snarky as they get.  They'll slap you on the back and buy you a brew to show no hard feelings.

Going over to Canada used to be fairly easy before passports were required, we'd pile into the Ford wagon to go see Niagara Falls, or a date night would be at a Chinese restaurant in Fort Erie, Ontario.  I had Canadian friends when I was a kid, and we would trot around the now all-gone amusement park at Crystal Beach or go to Thunder Bay and swim in the breakers coming off the Lake.  It's where loganberry drink originated, and french fries with brown gravy live.  Throw cheese curds in with the french fries, and you have the high octane fuel known as poutine, designed to keep a Canadian warm in winter.  These are mostly outdoor people.

They really do say "Eh?" at the end of a sentence, as a request for agreement, or how about that; it was my turn to stifle a smirk as a friend said it, just like the Canadians portrayed on Saturday Night Live.  I was thrilled, it was like finding out something really is true.  Eh?  It doesn't fall easily to me to stick one on after my commas and periods, but listening to a fast conversation with a group of six Canadians sounds like a vowel convention.  Ay? Aih? Ah noo, eh?  Raght, eh? Whudja think, lad, eh?

One of the funniest, weirdie moments came when my friend's Canadian mother did an American accent; hearing what you sound like to other people is like looking into a funhouse mirror.  You see the contortions of your own language, similar to when you first hear the sound of your own voice.

Go to a restaurant anywhere, even just over the Niagara River from Buffalo, New York, and the panoply of accents displayed by customers ranges from proper London to Galway to the Hebrides.  The ear trains itself to discern colloquial conversations that eliminate syllables by blending all the letters, as well as the back-in-the-throat, thick as porridge roaring Scotch, often heard when their team scores.  The further east you go towards Montreal, the more French, and government signage is printed in both English and French everywhere.  A human United Nations is in Toronto (pronounced Tronno by the natives); T-Town has every ethnicity, fabulously amazing neighborhoods which cater to cultural requirements, districts where English is a second language, and most of all, everyone is welcome.     

Crime is minimal; for example: a friend goes walking at night, a brisk walk for exercise, at night, in the dark.  I flipped.  If I have to go down to my parking lot, I arm myself mentally and scan the pavements for lurking shadows, and here she is, galloping aboot after sundown.  She frowned a bit when I asked her if it was safe.  Sure it is.  Why?  American me warbled on about muggings, thievery, kidnappings, shootings, abrasions, hangnails, and low-flying owls.  Shootings?  Oh right, eh.  You folks have guns.  Here's a news flash: hunters are allowed rifles, but Canada severely restricts hand guns resulting in only 172 fire-arms related homicides in 2015 for the whole, immense country.  The States had 11,208 homicides not counting suicides, accidental fatal discharges, and gun deaths with "undetermined intent".  

The passport restrictions now require planning for a drive, children under 16 need a certified birth certificate, everyone else must have a passport.  Families may not be able to afford parental and older sibling documents, when all it used to be was a tank of gas and you could take the kids for ice cream at the dairy in Fort Erie, or fried lake perch in Port Dalhousie.  Rent a cottage on the shore and vacation, stop at the diner for burgers.  They don't ask you rare, medium, etc.; all burgers are well done.  BUT THEY ARE SO GOOD.    

Canada is a great friendly neighbor that doesn't easily get riled or scream if McDonald's screws up the order, there is little drama.  I think socially, it's a behaviour-conscience population that gets embarrassed if you aren't having a nice day.  Alcohol is bought at special stores, everything is expensive (butter $6 a pound except it isn't a pound it's a metric something), teachers are paid very well, and healthcare is free--although there are catches to that.  Speaking of metrics, they only switched over from the Imperial system in the mid-seventies, so most Canadians are well-versed in both.  Me?  I like when the speed limit says 100, but it means 60 mph.  The little things.

The clouds are not American, neither the sky nor wind hold boundaries over the globe.  The air we breathe circulates, pushed by streams and currents in the atmosphere, the molecules of oxygen break apart and find themselves reattached to carbon or a part of photosynthesis and become a tree.  Very few oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon molecules escape into space, we are working with what we started with; what this means is that we share what the dinosaurs had, what the slow, chunderous continents pushed and pulled apart; what the oceans first said.  In the the time of reptiles, us cousins would have been dead, for the air was 30% oxygen.  Whee, you think, I'll get the laundry folded in no time.  But, no.

We can live comfortably between the ranges of 19.5-23.5%, can survive at 15-28%; over that and a human suffers vasoconstriction, muscle twitches, edema of the lungs, and possible death.  Forest fires raged out of control during those eras in spite of the humidity, according to the rock record; even wet plants will burn then.  Once the larger animals began eating the plants, the oxygen dropped, and here are you and I, pterodactyl-free, (they couldn't fly in this atmosphere anyhow), waving at each other out our windows.

There has been a drowsy snow all day, leaving little but a slippery covering over the city.  I heard the first snowplow dozing along, spreading the ubiquitous salt; I saw the first orange sky of winter, as the sodium lights glowered on the sheet of snow in the air.  The back room is chilly, so I will unearth wool blankets from the linen chest and find real jammies.  There is something comfortable about the deep sky, emblazoned by city lights and whatever refractive cosmos exists temporarily on the other side of the planet.  But listen; December 21st is coming, the winter solstice, marking the longest night and shortest day, and then it changes.  It shifts, the north pole will start to tilt towards the sun, and the days will begin to return to light.  Count the time, my friends; sound the gong at 10:44, Universal Time.

Until then, love your loved ones, pet the cat, feed the dog, find your slippers, and a cup of tea.   Settle with a book, bustle with the holidays.  Love each other with compassion, kindness; reach out and tiptoe into a life that could use a bit of warmth.  I read in one of H. Kushner's books a saying from the Talmud, that when you do something good without being asked, God says that for this moment, the world was worth making.  You are good, you do good.  The world spins on.