Interesting Facts Abour Canada

[sfell]

Just wanted to say that I always tell distance in time "turn right and go for about 5 minutes then turn left at....."

I love salt & vinegar potatoe chips, they are my favorite. I have always spelt doughnuts like that and not donuts, which one is which?

I love vinegar, and will soak fish & chips in it whenever I have the stuff.

And I swear that when I was younger that red ribbons were first and blue were second and then somewhere along the line when I was in elementary school they changed it! I remember this because it took me until junior high to remember that blue was first and not red.

Maybe alot of this has to do with the fact that I spent my younger years in Michigan?

 

[adymarie]

I love living in Canada! Toronto is a great place & I feel very safe, even though it is Canada's largest city. Have you ever heard of Red Rose Tea. They have an ad line "only in Canada eh?" Well only in Canada can we insult our politicians on nation TV and have them participate. There is a show on CBC called "This hour has 22 minutes".
http://www.22minutes.com/index_2.php. It is hysterical. They go to Parliment Hill and even get the members of parliment to sing songsd with them. They started a petition to have the opposition's Leader from Stockwell Day to Doris Day (Day wanted a resolution passed in gov't that if enough people signed a petition then the gov't would have to hold a referandum on the subject). Over 1 million people signed the petition on line. They also had a section called "talking to Americans" - sorry, but it seems most Americans no nothing about Canada. They got the governer of Iowa to congratulate Canada on switching from the 23 to 24 hr clock!

 

[melissa]

Adrienne,

I love This Hour has 22 Minutes! Those people are absolute riots!! I have to admit the 'Talking to Americans' part is pretty funny :laughing:But, I'd have problems answering specific questions about the States too(however, I DO know they use a 24 hour clock

) Its pretty neat that various people in political positions will go along with their silliness, definitely good sports!

 

[alicat613]

Originally posted by Melissa


But, I'd have problems answering specific questions about the States too(however, I DO know they use a 24 hour clock

)

You think American's use a 24 hour clock?

That would be no. Militaries use a 24 hour clock, and my grandparents have one just for fun, but we go 12 hours of AM, then 12 hours of PM, just like normal people everywhere.

 

[melissa]

We don't use a 24 hour clock here either. I was thinking in terms of 23 hour days not what appears on an actual clock.

 

[alicat613]

Oh, we have 24 hours in day here!

 

[sunlion]

Wow, lucky you guys, actual 24 hour days!

I'm pretty sure my days only have 19 or 20 hours and that's why I'm always exhausted and behind!

Is Red Rose available only in Canada? I know it's not a big deal here in the South where iced tea is a thing, but my Grandpa used to drink it all the time. He was from Nova Scotia but lived in Massachusetts.

What I really miss, is Carr's Table Water Crackers, the big ones that are like 6" in diameter and have the perforations like graham crackers have to break them into 4 sticks.

I used to miss Coffee Crisp candy bars, but there is a strange grocery store down here that carries all kinds of unusual items, and they got a shipment of Coffee Crisp last week so I stocked up. Don't know how they got to Texas, they had "Product of Canada" and "Nestle's Canada" written all over them. But it was so good! Literally been 20 years since I had one and it really brought back memories!

 

[angel]

HI I loved it IM FROM CANADA.

 

[adymarie]

Sorry Sunlion,

Red Rose Tea is only available in Canada. It has to be one of the best teas out there! (I don't drink coffee).

 

[sunlion]

I wonder where my grandad got it, then. He didn't drive any farther than the grocery store and the VA hospital. He must have still known someone in Yarmouth who sent it to him.

Moot point now, he was 83 when he died in 1987.

 

[melissa]

Is your grandad from Yarmouth orginally ? Thats only about 45 minutes from where I live, I shop there all the time

 

[sunlion]

I'm not sure where he was originally from, and there isn't really anyone left on that side of the family that I can ask, but I'll tell you a few little stories about his youth and maybe it will mean something to you.

He was born in Nova Scotia a few years after the turn of the century. He wanted to enlist in WWI but he was only 16 so he lied about his age to appear older. Now this is where the timeline gets messed up for me. Apparently at that time all the birth and death records were kept in a church that burned down. The story is told that nobody could find his records when he emigrated to the US so they used the erroneous military record, but I think it must have burned down before that, because surely he would have needed a copy of his birth certificate to enlist? He was quite senile by the time he was telling me any of these stories, and he was never quite sure if he had corrected his birthdate or not, so I'm not entirely sure how old he is.

Either way, away he went. He ran into a little problem because his name was Ansel Butler with no middle initial, and the sargeant who did his intake insisted that since the form had a space for a middle initial, he had to come up with one, and the sergeant chose "R". My mom remembered him telling this story, but by the time I knew him, he was saying it stood for Robert. So, I'm not sure whether he has middle name or not. Certainly his immigration papers said so, but they were based on his military records, which as I said are questionable.

His family was mostly farmers, but during the Depression they had more mouths than they could feed and his brother Aubrey emigrated to New Hampshire to work in the factories there. I have never met Aubrey, so I don't know if he stayed in the US or returned to Canada. Grandpa eventually married a woman from NH who was 10 years younger than himself (my grandma) apparently because they were pregnant but they lost that baby. My mom was born some years later in 1937, the first of 3, but that isn't important.

The only other person I know from that generation on that side is "Uncle Dan". I never knew his last name so I don't know which of them was related to us, and I think his wife was Gladys but I'm not sure. They were snowbirds, used to drive to Florida for the winter and back to Nova Scotia for the summer. He always came to our house and took my picture, beautiful studio quality pictures, that he gave my mom as a gift. I remember for 2 reasons : My parent's didn't take many pictures of me - no joke, there's like 5 rolls of film of my entire childhood, they just weren't picture taking people - and he is one of the few people to take a good picture of me. I am not photogenic. Anyway, they eventually got to old to take that trip twice a year and retired to Florida. I don't know when they died, but they had stopped visiting us by the time I started school.

My mom remembered going to Nova Scotia as a child, but she didn't remember the name of the town. A friend of mine who has family in the same part of the country said the church fire was in Yarmouth because it affected his family records for the same generation, but that's an educated guess. So if you live near a bunch of Butlers, and any of the over 50's remember an uncle Ansel or Aubrey, or even someone who emigrated toward the end of the Depression, they're probably my family.