How our preceptions are often quite wrong...

vanity ^ | Now | Me

[Happygal]

I've just come back from a three week vacation to Canada. British Columbia and Alberta, to be precise.

Just a couple of thoughts, that I imagined Freepers may like to discuss.

Before I go any further. Canada is an AMAZINGLY beautiful country. Quite jaw-dropping in the spectacular nature of its awe-inspiring beauty. A place where 'back to nature' sits on your doorstep. Beauty personified. (Not only in it's natural state, but also in it's people).

And what I learned...

I was in BC and Alberta. Both places are very, heavily populated by trees. I learned from a BC resident that it had been christened 'The Brazil of the North' and that environmentalists were discouraging clearcut logging.

Of course the same resident said that trees re-spawn (not the right word, but I'm sure you know what I'm saying) there, within a few years of cutting, and in 40 years or so, are fully grown again - practically. (BTW..from what I could see, the population of earth could work 24/7 and try cut down all the trees in British Columbia and the damned things would have fully grown by the time you finished). What I'm saying...THIS natural resource, this paper, log, wooden floor, house building resource, NATURAL factory is being targeted by Greenpeace people - a.k.a. long haired hippie middle class children whose parents paid for them to go to college. :-)

AND no I'm not being funny, because I went to the Queen Charlotte Islands and went crab fishing with a girl, who went there - having saved the Brazillian rainforest with Greenpeace for two years -- is now living and completely enjoying a gun-toting lifestyle (which I guess, is different from her Mammy and Daddy's middle class house in Toronto) killing her own deer on those wonderful Queen Charlotte's. Put it this way...she's no longer a vegetarian! :-)

Regardless, I live on an island (Ireland) that is infant-sized to the mass that is Canada.

My tiny island is probably more socialised (and YES, I know, I know, probably more socialist -I'm doing my best to change the tide, I swear- than Canada).

What I'm trying to say is I live on a little island that America laughs at a lot..but in social terms is a lot more (without sounding elitist -and those are not at all the right words - ...because that would NEVER be my intention)..more 'traditionally' educated, and social (NOT socialist...I literally mean social).

I had a wonderful time in Canada and could easily live there. But it made me think quite a lot about how insular we ALL are. How I thought,before I'd been there, how I'd be overwhelmed in Canada (a massive land mass) and what it could teach me socially. When in fact Ireland (a tiny land mass) taught the Canadians I'd met (lovely,lovely, amazing frontiers people) a bit about socialization (only in Irish terms). But those fantastic people (while quite different) taught ME a lot about 'real, real life'.

What am I trying to say?

~shruggin'~ I don't know.
Visit Canada? (I know I'm going back)

Realise that places outside your own little world maybe different than what you thought they might be, and discovering the difference is damn good! :-)

I guess I'm saying....TRAVEL!!! *S*

And maybe A LOT of my American friends could learn a lot from a visit to Canada, as I certainly did.

BTW Canada...I'll be back :-)

[Happygal]

Welcome to my vacation...but something to ponder about in there I think *S*

P.S....I had a BALL! :-)

[bourbon]

My wife and I spent our honeymoon in British Columbia last year. You're right about it being a wonderful place!

BTW, I've been to Ireland too and think that it is equally as great a place. I wish we in the States have the "traditional" educational system that Ireland has. I confess to envying that aspect of Irish society very much.

one other thing, you seem to have a little bit of a parentheses problem. Have you considered treatment for this disorder? :-)

[Happygal]

Cote..it was quite different than what I'd expected really.

When you come from a small island (that is Ireland) and learn from people the the small town you live in (pop. 25,000) is considered a city...makes ye scratch yer head! :-)
But in a good way too.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

You lot have a damn lot of land under ye though! *LOL*
That's a helluva lot of potato sowing ground! *ROFL*

[Happygal]

I don't have a parentheses problem (I do have a problem with a parent though! *ROFL*)...But I don't do 'brackets' (that's what we call 'em in these dar parts! *ROFL*))...I'm a journalist and my grammar sucks. Imagine that. I guess they hire me not for my ability to write but for my screed of originality...(they keep paying me, so I keep turning up! Damnit! I'd sooner be a check out girl..seriously! *S*)

[bourbon]

I used to be a journalist too, albeit briefly. That was before I was cured.

So, what do you call these---> [ ] in your neck of the woods? parentheses?

Oh, and BTW, while I'm chatting with a real live Irish person, maybe you can help me with something? I have this faint memory that the Irish call strawberries "queens." Am I crazy? If a "queen" isn't a strawberry what is it?

[Happygal]

*ROFL*...we call those things [..] or these {..} or even these <...> stuff that interfere with conversation. (we are Irish, godammit...we don't do grammar...we write the best books that Americans have to ponder for milleniums, but there's no clue to James Joyce not using commas or colons, or even capital letters it's all because Irish people don't bother to use that shit...we talk to goddamn fast to use parenthese..and besides, you mention parentheses, and we think parent, and automatically we're into child abuse, and that's a different novel! *L*) (I know, I'm writing one meself! *L* About American's I've met on discussion boards! *ROFL*)

I'm a piss taker (Irish term) *L* Sue me *LOL*

[bourbon]

Be careful, Happygal might hit you over the head with a bottle of Guiness.

I'd rather she hit me in the mouth with a bottle.

[dighton]

How was your flight?

[bourbon]

I know, I'm writing one meself! *L* About American's I've met on discussion boards!

I love it!

BTW, I'll see your Joyce and raise you one Faulkner. Y'know we Southerners have a bit of a grammar problem too.

[another cricket]

You lot have a damn lot of land under ye though!

I think you have hit on one of the key reasons for the misunderstanding about the US and Canada across the pond. We do have a lot of land. And much of it is very sparsely settled. So we see things very differently. I live in Michigan, which was logged off about 100 years ago. There are forests all over the place now and deer and bear live in these forests. So we cut down trees secure in the knowledge that they will grow back. I think that maybe in Europe you cut down the forest and then people move on to the land. Naturally the forests never grows back. It isn’t the case here.

Something like 70% of the land on the North American continent is unsettled and unused. Every one over on your side seems to be crowded on top of one another by our standards. It doesn’t help when y’all come over here and just visit NYC and LA either. You leave thinking that we’re crowded over here too.

a.cricket

[bourbon]

Good point, coteblanche.

If a "queen" isn't a strawberry what is it? Are you sure you want an answer to that question LOL?

okay, since happygal won't answer my foolish question. I'll answer it myself.

[Savage Beast]

For sheer beauty, nothing beats the Canadian Rockies--especially Mount Edith Cavall and the Angel Glacier, Lake Louise, and Glacier Park. I had the pleasure of being snowed in at Lake Louise one winter. It was so gorgeous! And once, as I was writing a postcard in my room at the Prince of Wales Hotel, I realized that the scene on the card was the same as the scene from my hotel room. What a beautiful place!

[Happygal]

a-cricket...I think you answered my question. I was in this tremendous land mass that is Canada that has a population of 30 million. But my little (under populated, in European terms...thumbnail) that I call Ireland...has 3.5 million peoplle living in it. We ALL could live in a tree grove in British Colombia, and still go looking for civilisation.

Canada.....GREAT country. Rednecked as bejayis..but rural. As most of south America (south meaning Above Mexico) is too.

Still a frontier.
I like that idea.

[Happygal]

You have to remember in terms of land mass that Ireland is, a snot out of Goerge 'Dubya's' nose. (So that makes me insignificant...hey, maybe I clung onto a silia, or somthing..like I care, because we are socialist pigs and all who live in liberal Europe and all, and Dubya has to court our favour and all because we speaky the French). (I hope you get the sarcasm. *S*)

[Drew68]

Glad you had fun. I went to Canada (Vancouver, British Columbia) for the first time last year. It was absolutely beautiful. In fact, the picture of me in a suit on my profile was taken in the exclusive Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel. I'd post more but it was at a Christmas Party and that pic was the last one of me relatively (though not entirely) sober!

Anyhow, I loved Canada and I hope to visit real soon. It was cheap (the American dollar went far) and so much fun.

It's wonderful you had a good time, though it would be hard not to in the Great White North.

Sláinte!
Drew.