POV: You Just Moved to Canada and Nothing Makes Sense Yet
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Welcome. You made it. Canada is very glad you're here even if it hasn't said so directly because saying things directly is not always how it's done here and you'll understand that soon.
You have questions. Possibly many questions. The weather alone has raised several. This is normal. This is actually the correct response to Canada when you are new to it. Everything will make sense eventually, and some things will never make sense, and knowing the difference is part of the journey.
Here is your orientation. Informal. Affectionate. Completely honest. 🍁
The Weather Is Not a Malfunction ☀️❄️🌧️
If you arrived in spring, you experienced four seasons in one week. This was not unusual. This was spring.
Canada has weather in a way that other countries have weather as a background condition. Here it is a foreground condition. A main character. Something Canadians discuss at length with strangers, with neighbours, with cashiers, with anyone who will make eye contact. "Cold enough for you?" is a greeting. "We needed the rain" is a complete conversation. You will begin having these conversations naturally within six months and you won't notice it happening until you're already three sentences deep with someone at a bus stop.
The winter will be longer than you're expecting. This is true regardless of what you're expecting. Budget for more winter than feels reasonable. Then add more.
The summer, however, is extraordinary. Canada saves up all its goodwill and deploys it in July and August and it is worth every February that came before it. 🌞
The Canada Goose Is Not Your Friend 🪿
There is a bird here. Large. Brown and white. It looks like it would be gentle. It is not gentle.
The Canada goose is a national symbol in the same way that the Canada goose is a parking lot hazard and a path blocker and an entity that will hiss at you for walking too near its general vicinity. It has no fear of humans. It has decided humans are, at best, an inconvenience to route around and, at worst, a threat to be addressed immediately with its full wingspan and a sound you were not prepared for.
Do not approach the Canada goose. Do not make eye contact with the Canada goose in a way that could be interpreted as a challenge. If the Canada goose begins walking toward you, walk away first. This is not cowardice. This is wisdom that every Canadian has acquired personally.
You will come to respect it. In time, you may even love it. Everyone does eventually. 🪿
A Double Double Is a Coffee Order ☕
You will hear this phrase and then you will hear it again and then you will be asked for your order at Tim Hortons and you will need to know what it means.
A double double is a coffee with two creams and two sugars. A triple triple is three of each. A medium is what you ask for because Tim Hortons doesn't do small, medium, large the way you might expect — they do small, medium, large, and extra large, but "medium" is what most people want most of the time.
Tim Hortons is not just a coffee chain. It is a cultural institution, a community gathering point, a place that is open when nothing else is, and the location of the Timbits box at every hockey game, office meeting, and family occasion in the country. You will go to Tim Hortons. You will go more than you expect to. This is fine. This is correct. ☕
Everything Closes Earlier Than You Think 🕔
Stores close at 6pm on Sundays in many places. Some things close on holidays and the holidays are not always the ones you know. Boxing Day is December 26th and it is a real holiday with real store closures and real sales and you will need to know this.
The LCBO — the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, if you're in Ontario — sells wine and spirits and has its own hours that are not the same as grocery store hours, and you will learn this at 9:01pm on a Saturday and it will be a lesson you only need once.
Pharmacies are called drugstores. The grocery store is called a grocery store but also sometimes a supermarket. Canadian Tire sells hardware and automotive supplies and seasonal items and sporting goods and also, confusingly, some groceries, and the reason it's called Canadian Tire is a very long story and you'll understand once you've been there twelve times. 🛒
People Are Going to Apologise to You Constantly 🙏
If you bump into someone, they will say sorry. If you bump into a door, the door will almost feel like it should say sorry. If there is a long wait somewhere and you are inconvenienced, the person responsible will apologise with a sincerity that may feel disproportionate to the situation.
This is real. It is not performance. Canadians mean the sorry even when the sorry isn't technically warranted, and they mean the smaller sorrys even more than the big ones because the small ones are reflexive and the reflexes here are apologetic.
You will start saying sorry. Not because you're told to. Just because it's in the air and you've been breathing it for a while. This is fine. It's a good instinct to have. 🍁
The Tipping Is Real and It's Non-Negotiable 💳
Canada tips like the United States, not like Europe. The standard is 18-20% at a restaurant. The machine will suggest 20%, 22%, and 25% and will sometimes put 18% in small text at the bottom as though it's slightly ashamed of it. You tip at restaurants, you tip your hairdresser, you tip for food delivery. The base wages in the hospitality industry here reflect the tipping structure, which means the tip is genuinely part of the compensation, not an optional bonus.
Just tip. 20% and move on. You'll be fine. 💳
The Metric System Is Used Except When It Isn't 📏
Canada officially uses metric. Temperature is Celsius. Distance is kilometres. Liquid is litres. Weight is kilograms.
Except: people give their height in feet and inches. They give their weight in pounds. Recipes sometimes use cups and sometimes use grams depending on where they were written and what decade they're from. Lumber is sold in nominal imperial measurements. Fabric is sold by the metre. A building that was designed in the 1970s might have hallways measured in feet that are described in centimetres on the modern plans.
Canada converted to metric in the 1970s. It did not fully complete the conversion. It committed to the idea of metric and then maintained a working relationship with imperial for certain specific categories of thing. You will develop a sense for which system applies when. It takes about a year. 📐
Ketchup Chips Are a Flavour and They Are Correct 🥔
At some point you will encounter a chip flavour called ketchup. It sounds wrong. The flavour sounds like something that should not work. Please try them anyway.
Ketchup chips are a distinctly Canadian product that most of the world does not have access to. They taste like ketchup on a chip. They are perfect. They are not available in most other countries and Canadians who move abroad will pay for them to be mailed internationally, which tells you everything you need to know.
Also available: All-Dressed chips, which are all the flavours on one chip. Also correct. Also something you need to try immediately. 🍟
People Will Ask Where You're From and Mean It Warmly 🌍
Canada is one of the most multicultural countries on earth and people here are, genuinely, curious about where you're from and how you find Canada and what's different and what's the same. The question "where are you from originally?" is usually asked with actual interest and without subtext.
You are not an outsider here. Canada has been built by people from everywhere and it knows this about itself. You'll find your people — your food, your community, your version of home within this one — faster than you think.
Welcome. For real. You're going to be okay. 🍁
One More Thing 🪿
The moose is larger than you think. If you see one near the road, slow down significantly. This is not aesthetic advice. This is physics.
For everything that feels Canadian and a little unhinged — shop the collection at paigepoutine.com 🦊