The Canada Thread

Going to?

I wouldn't wish it ya though. At the height of the storm we saw great blue balls of light flashing every few minutes. Thought it was lightning at first but quickly realized it was all the transformers blowing as the trees started coming down.

Wow!
Hi, Joeblow, good to see you again. That looks awfully cold..…but very pretty.

Joe, Sorry I didn't realize you were in the affected area. I'm glad things are back to normalish for you too.
My brother lived in Ottawa when they had six weeks of outages after a huge ice storm. He was lucky, he had power restored after 10 days, but the people across the street had to wait out the entire blackout. His house was filled with fridges and freezers and all kinds of other electronics charging and what not.. Strange days indeed.
I'm a little worried for my friends in NB.

Hi Margo- it was absolutely stunning on Christmas Eve in the early afternoon. The sun came out briefly and the trees looked like crystal with all the reflections. But they sounded like breaking crystal too! Took your life in your hands walking around anywhere near any trees or lines, you did.

Ceili, me and mine are all fine here no worries! Looks like Rothesay, St. Stephen, Sussex and Moncton are still the hardest hit. There are a few links in the list (http://www.nbpower.com/Open/Outages.aspx?lang=en)
that further define the region. Maybe you can find their area. Most towns have warming centres set up but it can be a challenge just getting to them. If they've got wood burning or gas fireplaces, and are otherwise fit, they should be fine for a good while longer though exhausted. It's a an ordeal for sure.

I don't want to fathom six weeks of it! Jaysus!

55 canadianisms that confuse the world...

Or do they? Discuss.

from something I saw on FB, it seems she'll be spending more time in Ontario in the future

mebbe it'll inspire you to stop at Lester B for more than an hour or two sometime

It sure looked pretty, didn't it.

The birds and squirrels are hunkering down in my big cedar since so there was so much destruction to the big trees they normally hang out in.

I'm kind of afraid to go to the back of the yard to determine what happened to the back pole of the clothesline.

How to speak Canadian: nine terms that confuse the English-speaking world



Last month, as actors on U.S. late night shows each took turns impersonating Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, a surprising number decided to portray the chief executive with a stereotypical Canadian accent — nasal, slow and punctuated with “ehs” and “aboots.”

In truth, Rob Ford sounds pretty much like an American, save for the occasional Canadianism, such as “mickey of vodka” or “fill your boots.”

In October, Jules Sherred, a B.C.-based contributor to GeekMom.com, decided to put some of the unique quirks of Canadian English to the test. The blogger compiled a list of 82 words that, according to Sherred, made American friends “look at me with a blank stare,” and then ran them past a survey group comprising 52 Canadians, 104 Americans and 19 people from the rest of the former British Empire, including New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, England and Wales.

Two months and 17,000 data points later, the blogger ranked each word both by how familiar it was to the Canadians and how unfamiliar it was to the rest of the English-speaking world. What emerged was a surprising compilation of words that are apparently foreign to the world beyond our borders.

MICKEY

Used by 88 per cent of Canadians, a mickey is a 375-mL bottle of liquor. In the United States, the term “mickey” is slang for a date rape drug, and 69 per cent of Americans were unaware of its more benign Canadian usage. Mickey is actually one of a series of uniquely Canadian booze measurements revealed by the survey. “Two four” (a case of 24 beers), “twenty sixer” (a 750-mL bottle of liquor) and “forty-pounder” (a 1.14-litre bottle of liquor) were all virtually unknown outside the Great White North.

TOQUE

The term is used by 100 per cent of Canadians. Virtually every culture with both cold weather and access to sheep has some national variant of the knit cap. The Afghans have the “pakol,” the U.S. Coast Guard supplies its crews with “watch caps” and Canadians, for half the year, wear “toques.”

But while this was the only word on the survey that obtained unanimous usage among the Canadians, a majority of the non-Canadians said they had never even heard of it.

FREEZIES

Used by 98 per cent of Canadians, freezies are like Popsicles except that instead of being served on a stick, they come in a cheek-lacerating plastic sleeve. In a world where the product is known by everything from California Snow to Ice Tickles, Canadians have fervently laid claim to the least creative term for the summer treat.

PABLUM

Used by 71 per cent of Canadians, this word often arises in Canadian political discourse to describe a policy that panders to the electorate or is without substance. Commentator Lawrence Martin, for instance, recently described a Justin Trudeau speech as “full of pieties and pablum.”

The term arises from a specific Canadian food product, Pablum, a processed cereal for infants first released in 1931. This tasteless, inert mixture of bone meal, corn meal, vitamins and grains never seems to have caught on in the rest of the English-speaking world, however. Only 11 per cent of American respondents said they used the word.

DONAIR

Used by 71 per cent of Canadians, this meat-heavy, Turkish dish was actually invented in Halifax, although it bears strong relation to what the rest of the world would call a “gyro,” a “doner kebab,” or a “shawarma.” Less than one-fifth of the non-Canadians recognized the term.

PARKADE

The term is used by 71 per cent of Canadians. While “parkade” is often the official posted term in dozens of Canadian malls and downtown, almost none of the non-Canadian survey respondents could identify the term.

In the U.S. and Commonwealth, multi-storey concrete parking structures are known as “parking garages” or “parking decks.”

PENCIL CRAYON

The term is used by 96 per cent of Canadians, but Americans call them “coloured pencils” and Brits call them “colouring pencils.” Canadians have stuck firmly to pencil crayons, which Jules Sherred suspects is the result of mashing the English “coloured pencils” with the French “crayon de couleur.” A mere 14 per cent of Americans recognized the term.

ROBERTSON SCREWDRIVER

Used by 92 per cent of Canadians and technologically superior to its wedge or Phillips-head cousins, the Robertson screw, invented by Ontarian P.L. Robertson, is ubiquitous on Canadian construction sites. Yet the term only constitutes a fraction of all U.S. screw sales — purportedly because the screw was long ago eschewed by carmaker Henry Ford.

Thus, while respondents had probably encountered “square head” screws before, only 16 per cent of Commonwealth respondents and 5 per cent of Americans recognized the product’s technical name.

HOOPED

Used by 54 per cent of Canadians, the term means “broken” or “useless,” as in “this Volvo’s engine is seized; the car’s hooped.”

The survey revealed that not only is this term completely foreign to Americans, but also to many Canadians, leading Sherred to believe that it is a purely western Canadian expression.




I'm really interested in seeing if these words are foreign to non-canadian ears. I may start another thread... Every single one of these words are part of my vernacular. Are they truly foreign to you?

I'm familiar with, and use, all of them. Guess that means I'mm 100% Canajun.

Although I'm more familiar with UK terms, I know for a fact I'd have a really hard time understanding Aussie terms.

Mame, I guess I was surprised at some of the words, especially hooped. I honestly thought it was a universal term.
I grew up in such a multicultural neighbourhood, I thought donair was normal till I went to NY. Even the taste of a gyro is different, and the sauce. I had no idea...
I'm pretty good with the basic British slang, but even my mom is lost on some of the modern Irish slang.
Aussie, whelp it's so different. Upsidedown as it were.

I knew the Donair, (Ive eaten em) , and the pencil crayons since I often buy my years supply of PC's in Frederickton NB at an art supply that handles Sennelier stuff.

The Robertson screwdriver head is interesting. Ive been looking for the best head for interior shop shelves etc. I don't like the square types , but I do like the hex head screws. All these things take the special head driver for your power tool , that's all.

The other words are foreign to me, PARKADE sounds like a drink.

Whats Homo milk? I don't see a big market for it in , say, Mississippi.

Are you just trying to be cute?

If you look at Ceilis first sign that lists the "Canadianisms" there is a reference to HOMO MILK. I mean Jeez Looeze, everyone gives GM **** for failing to recognize what the name "CHEVY NOVA" means in Latin AMerica. I think that Canadians could have recognized the duality of Homo Milk. I mean how hard is it to automatically set the type machine to print "HOMOGENIZED". It really doesn't save any time or space in our world of computerized type set.

I think HOMO milk probably started out as branding, back in the day - before computers. Some ad exec probably thought the average canadian needed the shortcut. And it could be the same in English and French, being a greek word and all..
Quebec was the biggest producer of milk in Canada for decades, might still be.
Just a guess.

The robertson is my screw of choice. They rarely strip and the driver doesn't slip as easily.

You can really find anything on the net. I have lots of free time today so I looked up the Robertson screw and its history. In actuality it was Robertson who turned down Ford because Ford wanted to have an exclusive contractual agreement with Robertson for all the screws that Ford wanted to use on his cars.

Interesting, didn't know that.
For years, Canadian smugglers used to use the screw on crates. They knew the guards didn't have the screwdrivers to open them up. Of course, 911 changed all that.