1. Chips and dip. Ketchup-flavored chips — that’s the genius of socialism at work, right there. Why don’t we have these in the US? Why does the Frito-Lay Corporation persist in futzing around with flavors like Sonic Sour Cream and Bikini Atoll Twelve-Cheese and Chernobyl Jalapeño — it’s too complicated! It’s like the J. Peterman catalog meets a skateboarding magazine, and it can’t touch the simple, Jetsons-esque brilliance of the ketchup-flavored chip. Or, for that matter, the dill pickle chip. Think about that for a moment. A dill pickle chip. It’s so obvious, really. But can an American find a dill pickle chip? No! I’ve never seen one south of Niagara Falls in my life! There’s dill pickle dip, too! Come to Canada, buy dill pickle chips, buy dill pickle dip, dip the dill pickle chips into the dill pickle dip, BLOW YOUR MIND! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks. If you can imagine a kind of chip, that kind of chip exists in Canada. If you can imagine a flavor of dip, that flavor of dip is yours for the snacking in Canada. The chip/dip conundrum leads me to believe that Americans should take more pride in the fact that we’ve got the worst obesity problem in the developed world, because we’ve all gotten disgustingly fat without the benefit of these wonderful chips and dips. The US has the most pathetic “variety” of chip flavors on the continent, and yet we’ve managed to triumph over adversity: “Well, son, where I grew up, we only had plain and sour cream and onion, but I never lost sight of my dream, and now I live on this here sofa, forgetting what my feet look like.”

2. The exchange rate. As of this writing, one American dollar gets you one Canadian dollar and fifty-seven Canadian cents. On the flip side, if you take one hundred Canadian dollars out of your bank account at an ATM, you’ve only set yourself back sixty-three dollars and change at home. Then you walk into the Gap, and everything’s priced pretty much the same as at home, but in your head, you can lop a third off of that price. And then you start buying every goddamn thing you see. You charge your way up one side of Queen Street, down the other, and around the corner into Chinatown, and you stagger home with five new outfits, three pairs of Fluevogs, a Hello Kitty watch, fourteen books, a handful of clever glass jewelry that you’ll probably never wear, and a whopping case of buyer’s remorse that nearly gives you a fever, but when your credit-card statement arrives, you’ve only spent about $200 USD. And it’s a good thing, too, because Toronto is chock-full of awesome shoes and vintage dresses. And chips.

3. “Hee — you said ‘eh.'”
“I’ve said ‘eh’ before.”
“Not when you weren’t living here.”
“What? It’s a good word!”
“Aw — she thinks she’s Canadian.”
“Shut up.”
“That’s so cute!”
“Shut up!”

4. ATMs that give out fives and tens. I love that. ATMs in college towns do that, but not in New York. In New York, it’s a little pile of twenties so new that, if you don’t take care when you fold them up, you’ll slash your finger to the bone. Fives and tens make it feel like more money.

5. When the cat sticks its head into your Tim Horton’s Own sandwich bag, the Tim Horton’s Own sandwich bag will get stuck on the cat’s head, because the bag and the head have, by a happy accident of geometry and karma, the same circumference. The cat will panic and run around backwards, trying to remove the bag from its head. You will hear hissing, growling, spitting, and anxious yowling, but only faintly, through a prism of brown paper. Its very muffled quality is blissful. Instead of helping, you will laaaaaaugh and laugh and laugh, because you told the cat, “Stay out of my lunch,” but the cat didn’t listen, and for once, the universe is punishing the cat instead of punishing you. Eventually, the cat will free itself from the sandwich bag, but it will believe that, because it couldn’t see anything, that nothing could see it and its humiliation either. And you will correct the cat rather smugly on that point. You will show it a Polaroid of itself as it so recently careered around the apartment in a rage like a strange beast of Greek mythology, half cat, half bag. The cat will stalk off. You will smirk. The entire incident will make up for the fact that there is no VH-1 in Canada.

6. The candy. Growing up in the States, you learn almost unconsciously the cultural signifiers of the country — the Statue of Liberty, for instance. Rags-to-riches stories. Cowboys. Baseball. Many of those signifiers have to do with food, with McDonald’s and Coca-Cola and ketchup and peanut butter. And Hershey’s. As you get older and certain unpleasant truths about American civilization begin to become apparent to you, you realize that Hershey’s is the Payless Shoe Source of chocolate. It’ll do in a pinch; it’ll get you where you need to go when you can’t afford Steve Maddens. But it’s not good chocolate. Cadbury chocolate is good chocolate. It’s not even great chocolate, not the kind of chocolate that weird guy on the NPR food show goes on about with the cocoa levels and the milk “corruption” and the individual beans pressed by hand deep in the Brazilian rainforest by the holy man of a tribe whose language doesn’t even contain consonants and all of that nonsense. (No, seriously. The show airs on Sunday afternoons. If you think wine snobs take themselves too seriously, just wait until you hear der Mann, der auskennt in Schokolade. He’s a parody of himself. Anyway.) Cadbury chocolate is just consistently very good, and compared to Hershey chocolate, it’s no contest. Throw a Hershey’s Almond and a Cadbury Burnt Almond up against each other in the pilot episode of Chocolate Deathmatch and the Hershey’s Almond is going to curl up in the middle of the ring and cry for its mommy. I’ll even eat the Cadbury Fruit & Nut bar. The Fruit & Nut bar contains raisins, and I think I’ve made my feelings on the raisin quite clear. That’s good chocolate, right there.

7. The Skydome. Let’s start with the fact that it’s easy to get to. Smoke-jumpers parachuting into a forest fire have an easier time reaching their intended destination than ticket-holders at Yankee Stadium. True, Toronto baseball fans tend to behave as though they’ve bought tickets to an open-air christening; it’s eerily quiet even after a home-team home run, compared to the convection current of din at Yankee Stadium (and even more so Shea with the planes going overhead). But the stadium is right downtown, kind of like Fenway, just plunked down next to the CN Tower. You can just walk right up to it. And the Skydome has a smoking section with TVs and ashtrays in it. And a semi-outdoor bar. And carpeting. I sat in a cushioned seat one time. A cushioned seat. At a baseball game.

8. If I understand correctly, regular TV channels allow cursing. That is fucking cool. And I could say so on CTV, in so many words.

9. Matinees. You can go to a movie in the afternoon in New York City and call it a matinee if you like, but it costs the same ten bucks as it does at night, or in the morning, or any other time. In Toronto, a matinee costs $7.50. That’s $7.50 Canadian. That’s practically free.

10. Domestic beer doesn’t suck. Maybe Canadians think that Labatt’s sucks; I don’t know. I do know that, by any objective standard and a whole brace of subjective ones as well, there’s no damn way Labatt’s could possibly suck as much as Budweiser does. I also know that, back in college, we eagerly awaited winter reading period, because winter reading period fell after the holidays, and the Canucks in our midst always hauled several cases of Canadian beer back to the States with them after Christmas. We’d stand in the parking lot of Dillon Gym like sea captain’s widows, waiting for the Airporter to disgorge, in order, a Canadian friend, the tiny overnight bag that contained his clothing and his books, the two giant duffel bags loaded with Molson Canadian, and the two giant duffel bags loaded with Moosehead. The isolationist in the group always felt duty bound to point out that “they bottle that stuff in Detroit, you know,” but we didn’t care. It had a little maple leaf right there on the can. Meister Brau had no such charm of protection.

11. “Hee — you said ‘soary.'”
“I stepped on your foot — I’m not supposed to apologize?”
“But you pronounce it ‘sah-ree,’ usually.”
“So?”
“So this time you said ‘soary.'”
“Oh, here we go.”
“Aw — she thinks she’s Canadian.”
“Shut up.”
“That’s so cute!”
“Shut up!”

12. Wetzel’s Pretzels. I like me a nice crusty New York pretzel with bright yellow mustard as much as anyone. It’s one of the best parts of autumn in the city — that first day, usually right before Halloween, when it’s truly get-out-the-mittens cold outside, and I come out of the subway and huddle into my coat and start walking towards the bar, and at a street corner I walk through a plume of that flat doughy burning-salt smell. It’s one of the few Manhattan smells that’s not as noticeable in the summer, for some reason. Anyway, it’s actually kind of a nasty smell, but the pretzels rule — hard enough to crack your fillings on the outside, softer and hot as Hades inside. I love those pretzels, but a Wetzel’s Pretzel is better. It’s a completely different kind of pretzel, softer and sweeter. It’s a pretzel that I believe may contain trace amounts of crack cocaine. I have knocked Wing Chun down to get to a Wetzel’s Pretzel. More than once. More than once in the last week.

13. Two-dollar coins. Every year on my birthday, my grandmother’s neighbor would send me a two-dollar bill. The bills never showed any signs of wear; she probably had to go to the bank specially to get them, which never occurred to me back then, and when I tried to spend them, the cashier would always give me a weird look and stomp off to clear the bill with the manager. I never understood that. It’s such a handy denomination, particularly for kids, who don’t really buy anything that costs more than two bucks anyway — how come that never caught on in the States? Anyway, you won’t find any bills smaller than a five in Canada. It’s loonies (the dollar coins) and toonies (the two-dollar coins). It’s a great system. The US Treasury is trying to get Americans to use the new “golden dollars,” and not having much success; Americans like their crumply singles, I guess. But if the Treasury introduced a two-dollar currency, I think they’d do a lot better.

14. The French on everything. Don’t ask me why I like the French. I don’t even speak French. And every time I go to the movies, the Goobers package messes with my head, because the French side of the box happily advertises the contents as arachides, and every damn time I look at that box, I think it says “arachnids” instead. “Ew, chocolate-covered SPIDERS? Geee-ROSS! What kind of fucked-up country — oh. ‘Peanuts.’ Got it.” Maybe the idea of a bilingual country appeals to me or something. Maybe I just enjoy reading the packaging out loud while I cook. “Voilà, le Dîner Kraft!” That’s sad, but you have to take your fun where you can get it in this life.

15. “Hee. You yelled ‘go back to Brampton, dickhead!'”
“Well, he didn’t signal.”
“Brampton isn’t really the equivalent of New Jersey, you know.”
“Ohhhh, I know. In New Jersey, we don’t slam on our BRAKES every time a LEAF blows out in front of the car — HEEEEEY BUDDY, I’d like to make this LIGHT before my VISA EXPIRES!”
“Aw. She thinks she’s still in the States.”
“Shut up.”
“That’s so cute!”
“Shut up!”

October 1, 2001

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