Americans should review their forms of currency

Because using Canadian dollar (loonie) and two dollar (toonie) coins is a lot of fun.

I go buy a can of diet coke and get to place one gleaming coin into the wide palm of the shopkeeper's hopefully weathered hand. It makes me feel like a pirate.

The coins also collect in my wallet so that when I think I only have a five I actually have another $10 or so in coins. To prove the point, I just checked and found $16 in loonies and toonies. $16! It's like finding money in the pocket of your winter jacket when you pull it from the back of the closet in November, but on the regular.

I think I'd like to keep handfuls of them in individual leather drawstring bags just for the pleasure of pulling a sack from my pocket and dropping it with a solid thunk and merry jingle on a bar in exchange for a pint. Anyone know where I can find small leather bags in bulk? I'll check etsy.

Notes on Spring

I've grown to hate the winter here with a resentful, glowering hate, but it does make the spring feel like an unprecedented miracle.

Just as I was starting to feel that there was nothing but winter, past, present, and future, and that spring had been a fever dream, spring came. And it came fast, and although this week it's marred with unpredictable grey clouds that occasionally open up just as you've walked out of work or out of the coffeeshop, everything is green and budding, and the world feels new. 

The first spring-like day we had, I took a walk along with the rest of Toronto. The runners were out, no longer afraid of slipping on slick sidewalks. And the neighborhood cats were out, fat with napping on pillows and carpets all winter, picking their way along the damp pavement. 

I'd left my bicycle out all winter, so I had to have the chain replaced. But I got it back this week, and have been sailing around the city on fair days and in fair hours, and I feel like a sheep that's been sheared of a heavy winter wool that grew so gradually I didn't recognize its weight. 

(I'm still not sure that it's worth it.) 

Day #559 in Canada

...was last Saturday, and I had a few worryingly Canadian moments.

Canadian Moment #1: I wake up on a bright winter morning, go downstairs to make coffee, and step out onto my snow-swamped deck to check the temperature. Cold, but not painfully cold, so when my roommate asks, I tell her with almost maniacal cheerfulness that it feels "like spring!" only to check the weather app on my phone and see that it is 21 degrees F, but with windchill feels like 9. I have apparently lost my ability to clearly perceive the world around me. I begin to question my sanity.

Canadian Moment #2: In response to the balmy weather, I attempt to fling my windows open with abandon, only to find that they are frozen shut, which I should have realized because I've been developing an approximate method of temperature assessment based on the amount of ice buildup on them on any given day:

Cold. 

Colder. 

Coldest (ice on the inside of the window). 

I bang the ice off of one of them and fling it open, leave it flung for 2.5 minutes, realize that I'm freezing, and close it on all but a few inches of fresh air. Strike 2 against mental stability.

Canadian Moment #3: I take the compost out and open the bin to find a scruffy raccoon staring up at me, wide-eyed and accusing. I let out a sort of spluttering yelp and leap away, and he rockets out of the can and hoists his considerable bulk to the top of the fence. But he then turns and looks balefully back at me, probably hoping that I would politely excuse myself after such a rude interruption of his meal. The judgement in his beady eyes compels me to object that that we have a deal - we separate our most delicious trash with the understanding that it will be eaten AT NIGHT- and then realize that I am standing in the snow and arguing with vermin. That seems to be strike three against sanity, and all three occurred before noon.

To those reading and considering intervention: all I ask is that my asylum be somewhere sunny. The American Southwest might be nice.

Sweeping Generalizations, as Promised

When I was growing up, my family spent almost all of our vacation time in Ontario. Twice a year we piled into the family vehicle, which evolved over my childhood from a station wagon into a minivan into a massive SUV like a mechanized version of Darwin’s fish, for our bi-annual nine hour drive from D.C. to Toronto. Our week-long post-Christmas winter trip was spent with my sweet, diminutive grandmother in the house my mother grew up in in Etobicoke. While my mother cleaned the place from top to bottom and took Grandma shopping, we spent the week poking around her house, iceskating on tennis courts (the concept of which amounted to Nobel-worthy genius in my ten-year-old mind) and, as we got older, reading the soft-core Christian romance novels my grandmother bought in the hope that my sisters and I would grow up to be devout girls who found pious, rugged men who proposed to us after chaste courtships. Summer was better: we stayed with my grandmother for a few nights before proceeding two hours north to Muskoka and the family cottage, which perches on the rocky shores of a quietly gorgeous lake and remains one of my favorite places in the world.  We were usually there for about three weeks, a week of which we spent at an overnight camp in the area when my parents wanted some bloody peace and quiet.

Adding all that time up, I imagine I've spent about a month in Canada every year from ages 1-18, so altogether at least a year and a half. But it was in bits and pieces, and it followed a somewhat insular, family-oriented routine. Sure, we went on outings to places like the Bata Shoe Museum when I was a disdainful teenager (which is by far the worst time of life to bring a young girl to a shoe museum), and we definitely went to the ROM a few times. We went to a Jay’s game once, but all I remember of it was the man sitting behind us spilling his full beer down my older sister’s neck (I’m not sure who was more upset). But mostly our routine kept us in Etobicoke or at the lake, so my conception of Canada prior to my move here was assembled from these odd snapshots. As a result, when I moved to Toronto in August I felt as if I knew the city pretty well and expected it to conform to my expectations. But of course I was being hugely reductive. I've found myself somewhat at sea here, as anyone is when they move to a city with which they have limited familiarity.  

I was lucky enough to find an ideal apartment with lovely roommates only a ten-minute journey from campus by bike in fine weather or TTC in wretched, although I shouldn't attribute finding my place entirely to luck. Before my full move to Toronto in August I flew up in late July to spend a week dashing all over the city and waltzing into the homes of complete strangers to see if their basement apartments were as dank as they looked in their craigslist ads (they were). I saw five or six places a day, and without a car or a bike at my disposal I was riding the trains and TTC buses constantly, learning the layout of the city and trying to understand the bus transfer system (which still eludes me). 

Riding public transport is nothing new to me. Over the approximately six years I lived on my own in D.C. as an adult (that last word should really be in scare quotes), I got around exclusively via metro trains and city buses. For two of those six years I was living in an apartment a few blocks west of the uber-fancy Georgetown neighborhood, and for the remaining four I lived in a group house in a slowly gentrifying, traditionally African-American neighborhood called Petworth.  My experiences in Petworth could’ve sustained a blog on their own, had I been so motivated. I once got off the bus with an woman who interrogated me, “What are you doing here, white girl? White as paper, white girl.” On another occasion, I returned home to find my block cordoned off with police tape; a man had stolen a car and then crashed it into a tree up the street while shooting out the window at the police pursuing him.  So yeah, Petworth was interesting. I didn’t take a lot of evening strolls.

Returning to my point: I've ridden a lot of different forms of public transit- in D.C., in New York on frequent trips to visit friends, and even in Bangkok. Very little shocks me.  But during that first week alone in Toronto I repeatedly witnessed a particular encounter between strangers, enacted like a small drama three times in front of me, that surprised me.  

So here’s the scene: I’m riding a TTC bus, seated halfway towards the back. The bus pulls up to a stop, and a woman pushing a stroller struggles on with a toddler or small child walking on next to her. She has her hands full; in addition to the stroller she might have shopping bags, or maybe she can’t find her transit pass or a token or the fare, or maybe the stroller is just unwieldy, as they tend to be. The toddler wanders past the driver towards the seats. And- here’s where the action gets shocking for me as a spectator- as the kid is loitering, waiting for his mom to catch up, a complete stranger reaches down, picks the child up, and places him in an open seat.  

Seems reasonable, right? After all, the bus could start moving at any minute, and no one wants a toddler to faceplant in the middle of the aisle (aside from a few friends of mine with very dark senses of humor). But as I mentioned, I rode buses all over D.C. in rough neighborhoods and rich ones, and this does not happen. You do not touch a stranger’s child. But I saw this happen three times in the course of my first week in Toronto. Twice it was made more notable in my eyes by the fact that the mother was a woman of color. I wouldn't venture to touch a stranger’s child in D.C. regardless of race, but the race relations in D.C. (which used to bear the nickname “chocolate city”) are tense enough that I admit that I would be more worried about the potentially negative reaction of a parent of color if I laid hands on their child.  I can remember this situation happening once in D.C. - the mom was struggling, and the bus started to move. I put out my hand to catch the already-unsteady toddler in case he toppled, but she swooped him up and I got a dirty look for nearly touching his arm.

An added complication: on one of these three occasions, the person to scoop the child up and put her in a seat was a middle-aged man traveling alone. That surprised me on another level. I've had conversations with male friends about their reticence to engage in any kind of encounter with a young child. When they take their young nieces or nephews to the pool or the park or make faces at a bored kid in line at the grocery store, they run the risk of being glared at or even lectured, unless they have a woman on their proverbial arm. I remember a conversation with a very good friend of mine, a burly, bearded sweetheart who teaches middle school math and science at a low-income Catholic school in D.C. Many of the kids at his school don’t have male role models in their lives, and as one of the few male teachers at the small school he’s a favorite of all the students, from the preschoolers to his own preteen pupils. But he showed me how he responds when the kids hug him: with one hand he stiffly pats them on the shoulder in a show of clear disinterest while his other arm hangs limp at his side. “I don’t want anything to be misconstrued,” he explained. And this is a man who has a sanctioned relationship with the kids who are approaching him for comfort or affection.

Back on the bus in Toronto, each episode ended with casual thanks from the mother. And everyone just went on with their commute. It was clearly utterly unremarkable to all involved, but I was astonished.

So what’s the deal?

To address the racial component (and I should note that I'm basing these hypotheses on personal experience rather than empirical evidence):  Toronto is much more of a melting pot than D.C., which is still largely divided along stark racial and class lines of white/wealthy and black/poor (although there is a growing Latino population). Furthermore, an influx of recent college graduates in search of affordable rent is pushing longtime residents out of traditionally African-American neighborhoods. This, and other factors, make race relations in D.C. complicated and strained. I also wonder if the smaller gap between rich and poor in Canada, as well as the truly multicultural nature of Toronto, contributes to a closer sense of community. Canadian poverty should be less desperate than poverty in the U.S. due to better social programs and accessible healthcare, which may result in less of a culture of fear due to a narrower social division between citizens.

To address the pedophilia component: I've got nothing.

But really, how sweet. What I like about Toronto is that the city feels like a lot of small towns all stitched together, and these experiences only contributed to that feeling. It takes a village, that sort of thing.

The Seasonal Learning Curve of a New Canadian

September 15.

The fresh Toronto summer is settling into the chill of fall. The air pinches my cheeks pink when I bike to campus and High Park. 

I skype with my mother to geek out over the any-day-now foliage. “They’re a little yellow! I think! Up at the top!” Then I speak with my best friend Lisa. A fashionista who's just spent months striving to sashay through the muggy swarm of Manhattan, she wistfully lists the objects of her autumnal affections:  “Boots. Sweaters. Scarves. Bangs that don’t plaster to my forehead.” I've fled north and escaped the height of a similarly wretched summer in D.C., and commiserate even while I exult in the cool breeze flowing over the city and into my east-facing window.

Sign off. Tea time. My new roommate Aziza, M.A. student at O.I.S.E. and all around lovely person, is in the kitchen probably also making tea. “Hello Aziza! Why am I in such a good mood? Oh, I just chatted with Lisa. We were saying we're so excited it's fall!”

I’m not sure if she is holding something, but if she is, she drops it (probably just a spoon onto the counter, but still with dramatic effect) and turns. Almost a head shorter than me and a hundred pounds soaking wet, her usually cheerful face is wearing an expression I haven’t seen on her yet. Her delicate eyebrows are endeavoring to glower and can’t quite manage it. But then she speaks, and her voice is steely.

“DON’T. SAY. THAT.”

“What?”

“WE DON’T SAY THAT.”

“What??”

“That summer is over!”

Now that she’s scowling at me, I reflect that I have noticed a particular refrain in the weather-centered small talk in Toronto’s cafés and shops since my arrival. “It’s beautiful out there, eh? Well, enjoy it, it won’t last much longer!”

How gloomy, I think, taking my tea up onto the roof. It’s like the whole city belongs to House Stark: winter is coming. As if the season is an adversary against whom there is no recourse. Aren't Canadians supposed to enjoy the cold?

February 8.

I know nothing.

Identical

June 2012. Luang Prabang, Laos. 

I was sitting and sweating in a small travel agency that doubled as an internet café, returning emails on a battered computer and periodically unsticking my thighs from a cheap molded plastic chair.  The little room was open to the street, and was empty aside from myself and the Laotian travel agent. He had smilingly greeted me and shown me to an ancient computer before returning to a handsome sort of folding chair of brightly colored fabric slung over dark, polished wood. A few moments after I had settled at the keyboard he began to snore softly, and I saw that he had kicked off his sandals to flatten his bare feet on the cool tile floor. Situated directly in front of an oscillating floor fan, he was getting the best of the breeze that occasionally reached me just a few feet away.  His quiet exhalations and the rattle of the fan and the dimness of the room made me feel as though we inhabited our own funny little domestic sphere, drawn together by the lethargy brought on by the scathing heat of the midday sun. He and I were, I think, perfectly prepared to spend the hottest hours of the day snoring and typing, respectively, in the shade and artificial wind.

It was into this quiet scene that a group of chattering backpackers – two girls and boy in their early twenties- entered. My host came awake immediately, although he took a few moments to raise himself from his chair and shuffle into his flip-flops, a physical demonstration of the ambivalence I repeatedly observed in the Laotians when it came to money. Sometimes a nap is worth more than a commission. 

But these kids were planning a trip south to­­ the islands of Si Phan Don with what seemed like a horde of likeminded youngsters. They were tired of the dust and temples of Luang Prabang and were ready to move on to beaches and beer. The number of tickets that needed to be booked promised a decent profit, so my host took a more upright seat behind a desk and a computer and began to rattle off their transport and housing options.

After a few moments the girls pulled plastic chairs away from the unoccupied computers and perched on them. I cringed to see the boy settle himself into the agent’s low fabric chair, which was clearly a personal item in the otherwise minimally furnished office.  I remember all three travelers as caricatures. They each sported a tank top splashed with a local beer logo, and the girls had strategically sliced apart the backs of their tanks, tying the strips of fabric so as to expose their brightly colored bras and their wing-like shoulder blades to best advantage. The boy was wearing the baggy, shapeless pants worn by fishermen in the south of Thailand, while the girls tugged at their micro jean shorts (denim is not such a good choice in that humidity). Their tan, lithe limbs were heavily bound with woven bracelets and anklets. With all these elements assembled the three were modeling minor variations on the uniform of the young Western backpacker in Southeast Asia, styles which reveal a blithe lack of concern for the modest culture of the area, not to mention the very real risk of serious sun damage.  

So, nothing too notable. I tuned them out and resumed my very important work of composing a facebook status that was subtle enough to not sound gloating, but also made clear to my friends and acquaintances in their air-conditioned offices on the Eastern seaboard that I was loving this city of bright blossoms and gilded temples, while simultaneously endeavoring to tread as lightly as possible on Edward Said’s toes.

After some time the backpackers seemed to reach some kind of agreement on housing, although one of the girls was unhappy with it; she kept petulantly repeating, “I know Kim was really hoping for beachfront”, deeply concerned about the preferences of an absent member of the group. Nevertheless, the Laotian agent rose to fetch something from a farther room that was necessary for matters to move forward, but before crossing the threshold he turned back towards the kids and intoned the refrain of every merchant who deals with tourists in any part of the world: “Where are you from?”

“Canada,” the kids chorused.

“Ah,” he said. “I thought maybe America.”

He disappeared into the other room. There was silence from the backpackers for a moment, and then:

“Did he seriously think we were Americans?”

For a moment, I sympathized. No one wants to be misidentified, particularly when that misidentification allies you with a country famous for foreign policy that borders on warmongering. Laos in particular has suffered at the hands of the U.S. military as the Vietnam War spilled over the border. In fact, by the time the war ended, Laos (which was declared neutral at the 1962 Geneva conference, incidentally) had become the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world. The U.S. dropped two million tons of bombs on Laos, more than the allied forces dropped on Japan and Germany combined during all of World War II. It averaged out to one bombing raid every eight minutes for nine years. Every eight minutes for nine years. And thirty percent of those bombs didn't explode forty years ago. The countryside is riddled with 600,000 tons of unexploded ordinance. 70 percent of Laotians are subsistence farmers, but the explosives just under the soil make farming living extremely dangerous. Every fourth village is contaminated. It’s little wonder that Laos is the 44^th poorest nation in the world. 

So I understand not wanting to be mistaken for the citizen of a country with that legacy. I came to hate it myself.

But then:

“How could he think that.”

“I know, right? Canada and the U.S. are completely different.”

“Totally! Oh my God, so different.”

It was all I could do to keep from turning and scoffing in their faces. “You’re in LAOS!” I wanted to rail at them. “LAOS. And you think that the U.S. and Canada are ‘like, completely different’? They’re basically identical cultures! You want to see ‘completely different'?? Look around!”

I didn't say any of that, of course. The kids jumped onto the computers and started comparing facebook pages, and I paid for my time on the internet and went back to my hotel for a nap before joining my Dutch friend Monique for dinner at the open-air market. 

And now, years later, I've moved to Canada. And it isn't “totally different”, of course, in the hyperbolic terms of the backpacking babies. But it has surprised me in ways that are subtle and endearing. It is, as it turns out, a different culture. How about that.  

Mission Statement and Qualifications

To Whom It May Concern,

The forthcoming blog will detail my perception of the disparate behaviors of the citizens of my hometown of Washington D.C. and the inhabitants of my new home base of Toronto, Ontario.

Possibly with some Southeast Asia thrown in, because I also camped out there for a while.

Much has been made of the well-examined dichotomies of football v. hockey, corn syrup v. maple, and the right to bear arms v. the luxury of not being shot at. With your support, however, I intend to focus on minute, inconsequential differences that almost certainly indicate nothing about the societies at large (seeing as either country could be split into several for all their cultural cohesion), but which my odd mind will recklessly magnify into sweeping sociological generalizations.

In this way, I hope we may begin to heal the contentious rift between these two great nations.

Very Sincerely,

Rosemary Maple-Syrup-is-Clearly-Superior McManus

RESUME

America, United States of. Resident for 27 years. Citizen since 198hem. Born in Washington D.C. Able to recite all fifty states in alphabetical order. 

Canada. Visitor for 18+ months spread over a period of 18+ years.  Resident for 6 months. Citizen since 2013. Living in Toronto. Am starting to pick up a Canadian accent.