Canucks or Aussies?

January 5th marked the 1 year anniversary of our arrival in Canada. A couple of weeks later, Canada then surpassed England to become the country we have lived in the longest as a married couple. It’s strange to think it will be 2013 before Australia gets back in the lead!

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!