so much Canadian news

Often, when I was in the packing shed on Sue's farm, washing vegetables or stuffing them into bags or boxes, we listened to the radio to help pass the time. There were only two radio stations that came through clearly on the packing shed radio. One station was the local branch of CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a kind of Canadian equivalent to NPR. CBC plays a lot of interesting interviews and programs, but it's a very talky station, and it was kind of hard to follow what they were talking about if somebody was using the power hose. So usually we ended up tuning to the other station, which happened to play "easy rock." This is a code word for a mind-numbing playlist of the same twenty to thirty stale love songs, repeated over and over again until you find, rather against your will, that the music has insinuated itself into your brain and the repetition becomes calming and reassuring, in a way, and while you still don't really like the music, you find yourself humming one of the songs hours later when you're in bed, trying to fall asleep.

We didn't always turn the radio on. Sometimes it was better than silence; sometimes, not.

Even the soft rock station, which boasted of how much music and how little "talk" it featured, occasionally condescended to reading the news headlines. I didn't usually pay too much attention, but I heard snippets about the state of the Canadian dollar and the actions of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and so on. And so one afternoon, I found myself wondering, "Why do they have so much Canadian news on this station?"

Here in British Columbia, it's easy to forget sometimes that you're in a different country. They speak the same language here, and the Canadian accent is not really so different from any American accent. Oh, perhaps the Canadian language relies a bit too heavily on the word "eh," but you get used to this verbal tic pretty quickly. Canadian culture is fairly similar to American culture: no strange customs to get used to, no pyramids or palaces to remind you how far you are from home.

It's hard not to notice, however, that Canada's relationship with America is very different from America's relationship with Canada. Sure, we're friends and all, with the "longest unguarded border in the world" and so on. But does the United States Postal Service print a stamp specifically for sending mail to Canada? I don't think so. Canada produces such a stamp for mail directed towards the United States. And the Canadian newspapers and radio stations (even easy rock stations) cover much more news about the United States than the American media covers Canadian news. The actions of the United States affect Canada more than vice versa, which I suppose is the natural consequence of having a nation of 30 million next to a nation of 300 million.

For that matter: how many of you knew the name of the Canadian prime minister before I said it above? Believe me, everyone in Canada knows George Bush.

When I say that Canadian culture is similar to American culture, I do not mean to say it is identical. There are many small ways in which Canada manifests its differentness on a daily level. I have already mentioned the peculiarities of Canadian currency -- the loonies and the twoonies, and no one-dollar bill. Traffic law is another way in which Canada is different. The standard warning sign in Canada is a square, rotated 45 degrees, with a checkerboard black-and-yellow pattern, and in the middle, a small black arrow indicating the direction in which one is supposed to go. It's effective in getting your attention, but trying to figure out what the sign says is a little like looking at one of those optical illusions and trying to see the two faces or the wine goblet. American drivers are familiar with the blinking red light, which is equivalent to a stop sign, or the blinking yellow, which means yield, but Canadians also have a blinking green light. A blinking green light -- what could this mean? Slow down? Be careful? I have not yet had the opportunity to ask a Canadian.

(Fortunately, I have not yet been required to do any serious driving in Canada. The most driving I have done was moving the old gray pick-up truck around the farm, and even then, I managed to back into the wall of the packing shed and mess up the tailgate so it wouldn't close. Sue knew how to fix it, luckily.)

The Vancouver mass transit system provides another point of contrast, in its apparent reliance on the honor system for fare payment. There are the SkyTrain elevators that do not require you to go through a turnstile or show a ticket at any time. Today, on a ride through the Kitislano neighborhood (Vancouver's equivalent of Brooklyn or Queens), I was struck by the fare collection system on the city buses. They allow you to enter through one of two or three doors. It is assumed that if you need to pay the fare, you will get on through the front door and do so. If you use one of the rear doors, you are presumed to have a monthly pass or whatever.

This may seem strange to one who, when he thinks of mass transit, thinks of the MTA's jail-cell-style super-jump-proof turnstiles. I could say that Vancouver is a more trusting city than New York, a cleaner city, a safer city, a younger city, a smaller city, and so on, but I feel it is unfair to keep talking about Vancouver only in terms of comparison. The city has its own peculiar charms, after all, chief among which is the natural setting. Downtown Vancouver is on a peninsula between two inlets, and it makes full use of the waterfront with promenades and parks. The view to the north is spectacular -- green mountains sloping right down into the water -- all the more impressive when the blue-white skyscrapers of downtown are silhouetted against it. I took a walk along a beach today near UBC, the University of British Columbia (an "infamous" clothing-optional beach, as I believe the guidebook put it, but being a cloudy October day, most people were fully attired), and I decided that perhaps Vancouverites are not being disproportionately boastful when they say their city has the highest quality of life in the world.