What is it like to come home to Canada?

[urbandreamer]

Canada, aside from its large older cities, is empty. No ambition, just this segregation and decay with most of the land controlled by mining and forestry companies and intolerant Mennonite, Hutterite and Dutch Reformed and Scots-Irish Presbyterian farmers.

Everytime I'm in small town USA, it feels like there's more economic activity than 80% of Canada.

Aside from Quebec (not too familiar with downeast), the most immediate difference you'll notice is this massive underclass of South Asian TFW who've become slaves to the corporate elite and their successful more established countrymen. It's shocking.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Canada, aside from its large older cities, is empty. No ambition, just this segregation and decay with most of the land controlled by mining and forestry companies and intolerant Mennonite, Hutterite and Dutch Reformed and Scots-Irish Presbyterian farmers.

Why does your view of Canada in 2023 always sound like some throwback to a Stephen Leacock-era rural Ontario?

[Nashe]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Why does your view of Canada in 2023 always sound like some throwback to a Stephen Leacock-era rural Ontario?

I was gonna say... do you live in Leamington?

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by niwell

Personally I don't really mind stuff like the old "birdcage" wires on King st in Toronto or somewhere like Kensington and despite the protestation of the urbantoronto crowd would say they even add a bit of charm. https://maps.app.goo.gl/hpR93FDrodpAHbRt8

I couldn't disagree more. Would you add overhead wires to Amsterdam West or Cours Julien to make them more charming? Of course not. Overhead wires don't add to charm, they detract from it.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Most interesting shock? We get out of the airport and it's been a long day of travel. It's late. But I'm happy to be back in the homeland and feel that my patriotism should be indulged with a Tim's. So we drive to the first Tim's outside the airport. I ordered my usual and the minute I tasted it, I nearly spat it out. Turns out I had lost the taste for Tim's while away. I regained my citizenship when I found out that I hadn't lost the enjoyment of poutine.

Alternatively, everytime I come back from Europe. On business or vacation though, I got through a few days of mini depression. I realize how ugly our cities are. And I don't just mean downtown. Average subdivisions can suck. Getting around is so much more difficult. From the lack of intercity rail to the lack to cheap flights to worse transit. The food. Everything from poor produce quality to so much crappy fast food.

I find that the quality of the food has a lot to do with how walkable a community is. When you make a near daily stop at a neighbourhood bakery on your way home from a transit stop, superior bread is going to be more common. But when you take a weekly drive to a supermarket then you need bread that lasts a week, which is how we ended up with Wonderbread. That's why green grocers, butchers and small bakeries are more common in walkable areas than car dependent suburbs. And Canada is mostly made up of the latter.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

1) Exposed power lines. In most of the developed world, power lines are buried in urban and suburban areas. It's very third worldish to have a rat's nest of wires right outside a bunch of suburban condos. But that's normal in Canada. The visual clutter is terrible.

There are two opposing demographics that kill attempts to bury power lines in Canadian cities. On one hand you have the Ford Nation types who want the whole country to look like Milton. They oppose spending on aesthetics, especially in walkable neighbourhoods they consider to be elitist. On the other hand you have hipster leftists who think that exposed power lines somehow add character, and that burying them will make an area generic. They prefer a city to be grubby and cluttered. It's a bizarre confluence of two groups who unwittingly work together to make our cities uglier.

In most other developed countries power lines being buried is just the norm, and there's no relationship between a decent public realm and lack of charm.

[urbandreamer]

I grew up surrounded by Mennonites, attended a Mennonite private school and dated a Mennonite girl - unfortunately, I discovered her religious intolerance too late. Really nasty, insular tribalism disguised as Christianity. The only reason they're pacifists is so none of their offspring are killed and thus can continue to buy up farmland across America.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Mister F

I couldn't disagree more. Would you add overhead wires to Amsterdam West or Cours Julien to make them more charming? Of course not. Overhead wires don't add to charm, they detract from it.

Obviously nobody should be adding them, and I certainly wouldn't complain if they are removed. But in the big scheme of public realm concerns it's not really that high.

Out of curiosity I've asked people visiting Toronto if they noticed it and not a single one did before I pointed it out. It's much more offensive in suburban areas that aren't already vibrant.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by lio45

In my corner of Florida they're in the back alleys (they look exactly like ours, except they're not right there on the street; they're behind the buildings they supply rather than in front of them like here). It's kind of the best of both worlds IMO: just as cheap, but not visible in the streetscape.

my house is serviced by above-grade wires running through my backyard. It's a pretty unusual setup in Ontario, but it does exist.

I have an easement over my property as a result which the lawyer I hired for the purchase failed to disclose despite it being very obvious... ended up pulling the easement myself later lol.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by lio45

In my corner of Florida they're in the back alleys (they look exactly like ours, except they're not right there on the street; they're behind the buildings they supply rather than in front of them like here). It's kind of the best of both worlds IMO: just as cheap, but not visible in the streetscape.

In my subdivision in Moncton, all the power lines are along a ROW at the back of the property line. This keeps the streetscape nice and clean. There are more than a few neighbourhoods in the city like this.

The downside of course is that most people's backyards have a lot of trees therefore there is a higher frequency of power outages as a result of storms. NB Power is getting more aggressive lately about keeping the ROW clear of tree limbs. I lost a cluster of White Birch to them earlier this year.

FWIW, when we built our house, we buried the service connection to the backyard powerline underground.

[p_xavier]

I've spent months in Japan and South Korea and when I came back to Canada there was this homesickness that still doesn't go away. The nation of Canada doesn't exist anymore so there is nowhere I can go back to that feels like home. It's the worst feeling in the World. Asia with cultural norms, a proud shared heritage, customs, homogeneity. I wished I was born a South Korean and experience that feeling. I don't like to live in a post-national economic zone but where to go? It's probably my mid life crisis but this country is getting more and more foreign to me. My coworkers don't understand me when I speak cause they all have this France French accent from France or Northern Africa and this is supposed to be MY country?

And don't get me started on the woke marxists hating on the "colonials".

[Acajack]

I don't think backyard power lines in Canada are that rare. In modern suburban areas (low-density SFH areas generally built in the 60s and 70s) it seems to be a norm of sorts. I lived for a few years in a suburban area of Ottawa built in that era and our power line was along the backyard property line.

Suburban parts of Gatineau from that era that don't have buried power lines also tend to have the poles and lines behind the house.

Power lines at the front along the sidewalk and street seem to be in older areas that have a more traditional urban street grid.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Suburban parts of Gatineau from that era that don't have buried power lines also tend to have the poles and lines behind the house.

Power lines at the front along the sidewalk and street seem to be in older areas that have a more traditional urban street grid.

And of course, this being Quebec, sometimes they're not just "along the sidewalk":

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle...ookshire-eaton

[Innsertnamehere]

Canada vs. Europe to me is best described as "abundance". The US is even more extreme.

The lifestyle is increasingly fading to that one for the rich in Ontario, but for 2 generations the idea of middle class households was that they had enough money for a detached home AND a cottage or weekend getaway spot.

My Family has had a cottage in Haliburton since the 1950's - we've had European guests up over the years who sit on the dock and just marvel in the abundance of it all. Many Canadians own a 2,000sf home, 2-3 cars, a cottage, or a boat, or a sports car.. it goes on.

Middle class, even upper middle class, life in Europe is a decent apartment or rowhouse, and 1 car. Coming to Canada and seeing the sheer excess and abundance of the land, the lifestyles.. it's different.

And I feel it when I come home from a vacation in Europe or wherever. I toured the UK and Scotland for a few weeks in May, met some extended family, saw a good chunk of Scotland. As beautiful as it is, you see how more modest materially most people lives are. Land is scarce, and while nobody is really wanting for much, the level of abundance in the economy is just clearly so much less.

I enjoy that european lifestyle in many ways, as I'm sure many on this board do too - but there is something comforting about coming home to Canada, getting in your car at the airport and driving back to my detached home where you have a spare bedroom, 2 cars in the driveway, many having access to a summer vacation property... etc. It's obviously not the universal Canadian experience, but it's far more common here than elsewhere in the world.

The US can be even more extreme in this regard than Canada in many ways. Median lifestyles are even more "abundant" - but give up even more european style culture to achieve it as well.

[thewave46]

I'll try an inversion of the question, because I can answer that one.

What's it like to go away and find Canada?

Once one gets past the sheer familiarity of the nondescript North American accent, media, and lifestyle of the United States, the layers of the onion are peeled back to be something different underneath. Not shockingly so, but enough that it's not quite as home as it appears to be on the surface, nor I as seamless a member of that place.

The more the place had roots in America, the harder it was to blend like a local. A newish city like Phoenix was a crossroads of America by virtue of most people not being from there initially, so I felt more at home there. There was less context needed compared to other places I'd explored in the United States.

Then I'd end up in Scottsdale or something of the like and realize that I was still a poor rube comparatively - the level of wealth and where it was concentrated in second-tier American cities blew second-tier Canada out of the water. Everyone expects New York or Toronto to have money; the sheer amount in pockets of second-tier America just was unlike what I'd experienced here in our second-tier.

The place that was somewhat surprising was New Zealand. Oh, that country had more retained British in it, a product of its isolation. I was a dead-ringer as a foreigner on the accent alone, but the other mannerisms felt similar.

The country's outlook, its relationship to its Indigenous people, its history as a former colony, its economic structure as a resource provider, the unspoken way of how people related to each other. Queenstown, a Southern Hemisphere version of Banff; the various timber resource/farming towns, Auckland kind of giving vibes of alternately Toronto or Vancouver, but with less climate-related weathering. The Kiwis' relationship to the Aussies.

Almost a version of Canada that didn't have as much of the influence of the neighbour to the south, or France's thumbprint from centuries ago. It was uncanny for being half the globe away.

[MonctonRad]

I have always felt an affinity for NZ.

[Truenorth00]

The wealth disparity is a good point. And I don't think most Canadians who are tourists in the US realize it. I didn't understand it, until I saw people commuting by private jet where I lived and until I went to a billionaire's home for breakfast (a donor to the school where I was studying). Sure we have millionaires and billionaires in Canada. But they are far less common and far less friendly.

Echo the point about New Zealand too. Very much Canada vibes. One thing I do like about New Zealand is how much more their Indigenous culture is being mainstreamed and incorporated into their national identity and culture. Right from the boarding greeting on Air New Zealand.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by p_xavier

I've spent months in Japan and South Korea and when I came back to Canada there was this homesickness that still doesn't go away. The nation of Canada doesn't exist anymore so there is nowhere I can go back to that feels like home. It's the worst feeling in the World. Asia with cultural norms, a proud shared heritage, customs, homogeneity. I wished I was born a South Korean and experience that feeling. I don't like to live in a post-national economic zone but where to go? It's probably my mid life crisis but this country is getting more and more foreign to me. My coworkers don't understand me when I speak cause they all have this France French accent from France or Northern Africa and this is supposed to be MY country?

And don't get me started on the woke marxists hating on the "colonials".

I have to say I also sometimes envy the much greater sense of nationhood and cultural identity that you feel in most places other than Canada, and yeah when I get home I am sometimes a bit depressed as a result.

Though on the other hand I don't really have trouble relating to people here living next to me who are from the international francophonie or even from other countries.

And if Canada isn't more like all these other more soulful countries, it's not really the fault of immigrants (recent or less recent). It's Canadians who've been here for a long time who made Canada what it is and feel the way it feels.

[giallo]

South Korea is as homogenized as it gets, and that place is a cultural prison. Sure, you get everyone thinking, looking and acting the same way - which I suppose can help with a nation's identity, but I've never lived in an unhappier country. The pressure to perform as the "perfect Korean" on every level has caused so much needless stress and anxiety to the populace, it's driven the country to collective alcoholism. Almost every Korean I befriended was looking for a way out - especially if you were lower on the hierarchical ladder.

I've never met a more patriotic citizenry that all wants to leave their country. It's a fascinatingly bizarre place.

I'm so glad Canada isn't like this.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Mister F

I find that the quality of the food has a lot to do with how walkable a community is. When you make a near daily stop at a neighbourhood bakery on your way home from a transit stop, superior bread is going to be more common. But when you take a weekly drive to a supermarket then you need bread that lasts a week, which is how we ended up with Wonderbread. That's why green grocers, butchers and small bakeries are more common in walkable areas than car dependent suburbs. And Canada is mostly made up of the latter.

Not Just Bikes made an exact video about this. It is actually bizarre that grocery shopping is an insane ordeal here and that we turn our homes into convenience stores to save a few bucks.

• Video Link

And I agree, quality is crap. It has to be. You can only do so much, when your primary customer wants you to serve them in 30s inside their car. That kind of setup doesn't lend itself to many fresh, decent options.

Originally Posted by Mister F

There are two opposing demographics that kill attempts to bury power lines in Canadian cities. On one hand you have the Ford Nation types who want the whole country to look like Milton. They oppose spending on aesthetics, especially in walkable neighbourhoods they consider to be elitist. On the other hand you have hipster leftists who think that exposed power lines somehow add character, and that burying them will make an area generic. They prefer a city to be grubby and cluttered. It's a bizarre confluence of two groups who unwittingly work together to make our cities uglier.

In most other developed countries power lines being buried is just the norm, and there's no relationship between a decent public realm and lack of charm.

I've heard of and come across people who are always opposed to any expenditure on aesthetic grounds. But I've really never come across anyone that opposes buying power lines because they like the cluttered look. Either way, this is an aesthetic, for me, that I routinely associate with the developing world. So it always strikes me when I see it in Canada.

But more than aesthetic, most developed countries bury their power lines for other reasons. It vastly improves reliability and safety. And at least in urban areas, you're gaining sidewalk space. It's insane to me that we'll spend tens or even hundreds of millions rebuilding major avenues and then not bury power lines.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by giallo

South Korea is as homogenized as it gets, and that place is a cultural prison. Sure, you get everyone thinking, looking and acting the same way - which I suppose can help with a nation's identity, but I've never lived in an unhappier country. The pressure to perform as the "perfect Korean" on every level has caused so much needless stress and anxiety to the populace, it's driven the country to collective alcoholism. Almost every Korean I befriended was looking for a way out - especially if you were lower on the hierarchical ladder.

I've never met a more patriotic citizenry that all wants to leave their country. It's a fascinatingly bizarre place.

I'm so glad Canada isn't like this.

White guys from North America always find traditional Asian cultures appealing. It's amazing how much they don't understand their privilege. Those cultures are stifling for actual Asians, women, and every "expat" who isn't white.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by giallo

South Korea is as homogenized as it gets, and that place is a cultural prison. Sure, you get everyone thinking, looking and acting the same way - which I suppose can help with a nation's identity, but I've never lived in an unhappier country. The pressure to perform as the "perfect Korean" on every level has caused so much needless stress and anxiety to the populace, it's driven the country to collective alcoholism. Almost every Korean I befriended was looking for a way out - especially if you were lower on the hierarchical ladder.

I've never met a more patriotic citizenry that all wants to leave their country. It's a fascinatingly bizarre place.

I'm so glad Canada isn't like this.

This jives with people from SK I've met who are living / working in Canada. Never met someone who had to go home (family reasons) with so much dread.

Also friends who went to work in SK who really enjoyed their time but reported this dark side of the society.