Just for fun, I made two lists: “Ways we’ve become Canadianised” and “How we know we’re still Australian”. Here goes…
Ways we’ve become Canadianised…
- We wear toques and sweaters instead of beanies and jumpers.
- We say supper instead of tea and washroom instead of toilet.
- We eat cookies instead of biscuits and talk on cell phones not mobiles.
- We drive on the right side of the road (except for Ben on one memorable occasion just last month…).
- We have gotten used to cheddar cheese being orange and carrots being any size except normal.
- We have eaten pumpkin for dessert, marshmallows in a salad, and poured brown sugar over mashed sweet potatoes for a main dish.
- We wear denim on Wednesday nights.
- We do not nurse babies, we cuddle or hold them (that’s an important difference here…).
- We know what loonies and toonies are.
- We just say “hockey” when we mean “ice hockey”.
- We want the Canucks to win.
- We’ve learnt a few French words (although can’t pronounce them), because all product packaging is legally required to display both of Canada’s national languages.
- I have started saying “foreverr” instead of “forevuh”.
- We associate hot weather with June, July and August.
- We call 10 degrees a “beautiful day” as long as it’s not raining.
- We know the tune and words to O Canada (the national anthem)… and it makes us feel patriotic to stand and sing it at sporting events even though we’re not Canadian!!
How we know we’re still Australian…
- We can play Killer Bunnies without apologising every time we use a weapon.
- We dislike the expectation that we will tip regardless of service quality. (Hmm – actually, we just dislike tipping in general – but we do it anyway.)
- We think it’s crazy that advertised prices do not include taxes (which differ by province as well as by product category).
- We frequently do the left-right-left dance when manoeuvring around oncoming people in stairwells or on street crossings: we instinctively move left; they instinctively move right… think about it; it doesn’t work!
- When approaching the car, I still look for the steering wheel so I know which side to go to.
- We are some of the few people who welcomed BC’s new distracted driving legislation (because using hand-held devices while driving has been illegal in Australia for years).
- We miss really smelly mangoes.
- We think burgers are better with egg and pineapple.
- We found fault with the menu at an Australian restaurant in Vancouver because it used the words “fries”, “pop” and “beets” (in fact they spelt it “beats”!).
- We confuse our friends when we talk about whingeing, grizzling, getting roused on, going crook on someone, and chucking a nana.
- Our friends are unsure if we’re insulting or complimenting them if we say they look lairy or are such a hoon.
- Sometimes I see a large stick out of the corner of my eye and my first thought is “snake!”
- We delight in teaching people the Tim Tam Slam (it’s a radical new dance move… or not…)
- We still pronounce it lahst, fahst, pah-sta, cahn’t, to-mah-to, ba-nah-na… no matter how many times we hear it otherwise.
- We read Banjo Patterson poems aloud at US Thanksgiving (although a fair dinkum Aussie would have recited them from memory).
- We love telling people we’re Australian. Aussies are well-liked and warmly welcomed everywhere!
