Tortillas in Canada. Yes, they exist, but note the manufacturer:
I have to admit I laughed out loud when I found these in Costco.
Speaking of Costco, you know how the items they carry are different from store to store down in the US? Well, it gets worse up here, because there are products that are US only or Canada only items. Years ago they stopped carrying Turkish apricots in the US, switching to California apricots (which are not as good in my opinion) and (for a while) some awful organic things that tasted like bland cardboard soaked in bit of corn syrup. Well, those Turkish apricots are available up here. For me that is just about reason enough to remain a Costco member all by itself.
Also, alcohol is expensive. We're trying BC wines out of curiosity. So far they are drinkable, but a bit sweeter than CA wines. The red varieties I see most are Merlot, Malbec, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, plus blends of those. On the white side I see Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, and a couple of others. Thus far the most impressive bottle we've had (and all the ones we've tried have been comparatively inexpensive) is the Naked Grape Pino Grigio. It's quite good. Not too sweet, with some citrus notes in it. Most of the local bottle shops, however, have fairly poor selections as a rule, and we'll have to go a bit farther away to find more choices. The Wikipedia article on BC wine indicates there are more varietals grown up here, but I haven't seen them yet.
People are pretty much unfailingly polite, unless they are driving. A small but significant percentage of drivers are rude, aggressive, horn honking, elegant gesture making, um... individuals. Not sure why that is, but it is a thing. In person, though, apologizing really is as common as the stereotype would indicate - much more so than in the US - and it's a way of greasing the skids, of making society work more smoothly. Apologize early and often - and be certain to politely acknowledge apologies! - and you'll blend in a bit better. (Being American means I will never completely blend in, but I try.)
Some things are expensive. Car insurance is something like four times what we paid in the US. Renters insurance is also costly. Maybe our rates will go down once we've been in country and insured for a year or two, but I have my doubts. Gas is also really expensive. Blueberries, though, are pretty cheap at the farm stands. Still trying to figure out electricity and natural gas. The weather has been so warm that we haven't needed much of either yet. Come January, that will have changed, and we'll see what the bills look like.
The overall pace of life is a bit slower here. Admittedly I am used to Silicon Valley - where things are rather intense - so perhaps most places would feel slower, but it is notable. It's not quite all the way to island time, as on Hawaii, but it is still significant. I am told that Vancouver Island - home of Victoria, the capitol of BC - runs on island time. Eventually I will confirm that one way or another.
Video availability on the internet is highly variable. Some things I used to watch simply aren't available. John Oliver is mostly not accessible. Rachel Maddow's stuff on YouTube is available, but the free segments from her show on the MSNBC website are not. (And don't ask me how to get paid content. Last time I looked into that, MSNBC wanted to know which cable service we subscribed to. Being cord cutters, we had none, and the same is the case here. So I guess we're out of luck on that front.) But some of these limitations are odd. Why isn't the stuff that John Oliver puts up on YouTube available world wide? No clue. Seems like they are unnecessarily reducing their available audience, but maybe there are considerations I don't understand.
Speaking of TV, so far it appears the city of Richmond mostly shuts down on Sunday evenings for Game of Thrones. Without a cable subscription, we don't watch it (and I began loathing the books somewhere along about volume 4 or 5) but we can see the park is mostly empty on Sunday nights when I think it is on. We walk the dogs every night, so the difference is pretty obvious.
Canadians pay for most everything with plastic. Credit or debit, makes no difference. Some, apparently, never carry cash at all. And they use a tap & go (NFC) system for smaller payments that doesn't require any ID confirmation. Above a certain amount, though, you have to enter a PIN. We had the tap & go system in the US briefly. I think it was called something like "pay wave" but it never caught on, and as far as I know it disappeared from all our cards after a brief time.
And of course the US never went to chip & PIN on credit cards, opting for chip & signature instead, which is dumb. Chip & PIN is much more secure, but apparently the CC companies in America thing Americans are too stupid to adapt to that. Alas, the current occupant of the white house makes me think the CC companies might be right about that.
I'll probably have more observations like this over time, but school will overwhelm me starting in about two weeks, and I hope blog posts start being about art more often once that happens.
