Over the Edge adventurers brave the depths of a foreign country in their continued atempt to reach Vermont. They are driven only by the fearless drive to reach the children of one and return them to the haven of Oregon, but first, they must cross Canada.
Talking about Canada, one question springs to mind. Why? Canadians make up a large part of the player base on the U.S. mud Medievia.com, a giant online game. That question comes up more often than any other as Canadians and Americans posture and belittle each other, sometimes for fun, sometimes in earnest.
Americans pick on Canada’s misplaced belief in Marxism, embodied most distinctly within its universal health care system, which may soon have a fee attached. Online, Canadians pick on American selfishness, greed and general attitudes, but who wouldn’t? Americans elected Bill Clinton — Twice!
The best part, as long as the Canadians aren’t trashing the United States, the Americans take care of it themselves. They have no compunction about trashing their own country. Canadians provide a sharp contrast to that. Other than Quebec, they seem genuinely proud of their own country. They don’t really seem that interested in defending Quebec’s existence.
The Canadians I know online are wonderful, friendly people and really share common interests if not political or economic beliefs. Of course, most Americans, being to reliant on the government’s paternal guidance and leadership to carry them through life, don’t much care for my political or economic beliefs either. At least Canadians admit their Marxist tendencies.
Needless to say, I was looking forward to seeing what was there. Many Americans, at least those I know, seem to think Canada is little more than a part of the United States anyway and wonder why we just don’t merge the whole sloppy mess, cutting French-speaking Quebec loose to flounder in the Atlantic Ocean.
In our journey to reach Vermont, Lee, Jeff and I traveled along Interstate 90 through the northern states to reach Sault St. Marie, Mich., where we crossed into Canada. Rather than dropping south into or around Chicago and the Great Lakes on into New York, we chose to travel nearly straight east across Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan’s northern peninsula to reach Ontario and Quebec where we would drop south into Vermont where Lee’s children, Eric and Anna, live most of the year. The Canada route cut roughly 600 miles off of the entire trip.
As it turns out, Ontario is just like the United States only different. The differences are big enough to be noticed but not huge traveling into Ontario. First of all, speed limits are written in kilometers per hour, but drivers ignore the speed limits just like they do in the United States.
Second, in Ontario, signs are all written in French and English, presumably to accommodate travelers from neighboring Quebec. Vermont also has signs in both languages, enough to make me wonder if Vermont is really not part of Canada.
Third, the money is crazy and neary worthless. I wandered into a McDonald’s and ordered $6 and something in Canadian dollars worth of food. I handed the clerk $10 U.S. She gave me almost $8 in Canadian change, including this crazy little two-tone $2 coin.
At a gas station near Ottowa, Ontario, the attendant didn’t have what he thought was a good exchange rate, so I ran my debit card — Shoulda seen that one mess up my checkbook balance. More than $60 Canadian in gas became $38 U.S. through the bank conversion. Our powerful U.S. dollar didn’t help much with gas. That was about how much we were paying on the U.S. side of the border.
All of the little differences make visiting Canada weirder than visiting a fully foreign country. It’s like being in a caricature of the United States. It’s not quite the United States, and it’s not quite a foreign country.
I was firmly entrenched in a sunny graveyard driving shift by that time. Lee and Jeff were working the daytime. I would take over about 10 p.m. and watch the sun come up at about 1:30 a.m. (in real West Coast time) by this point. That was more than a little freaky. I’d drive anywhere from another six to eight hours before Jeff, fully refreshed after sleeping in the back of the van, would take over for me. I would stay awake another hour or so before I’d crash out. By the time I’d wake up five or six hours later, Lee and Jeff would be yacking, Lee taking over after a couple more hours.
The sun was still up when we made Ontario, and the two-lane Ontarian superhighway was quite visible in all its narrow, faded-paint glory as it wound through a beautiful green countryside. There was no hope for a normal freeway and it was a gloomy feeling watching the sun fall down and torrential rain begin to build, making it impossible to drive faster than 20 mph along a route about as twisted as U.S. Highway 20 to Newport.
Canada has a four-lane highway system throughout the country. It stops at Ontario’s western border and doesn’t begin again until the highway reaches Ottowa. From there, the Quebec border is all of an hour or so to the east. In other words, Ontario has virtually no good freeways for an east-west route across the nation. It’s like cutting Washington, D.C., off from the rest of the nation with crummy backroads as the only access from the West — Maybe the Canadians are onto something here.
Crossing the border into Quebec should not be allowed in any direction. Quebec is a foreign country entirely. It makes no sense that it has anything to do with the rest of Canada. The province speaks French. Every sign is in French except one at the border that orders everyone to buckle up. Another sign in English warned of oncoming buses in the fast lane crossing a Montreal bridge. Guess it was serious enough that Montreal didn’t want simple-minded English-speaking drivers to miss the 10-ton hints blasting down that left lane on the other side of a line of orange cones.
Here and there, leftover English names for places were marked by signs, and Montreal even named a boulevard after me — Boul. Morgan. I thought that was a nice gesture from French speakers, whom assumably must be some of the most frustrated people in existence. Imagine going about daily life speaking nothing but that cryptic French language, and remember that in France folks eat snails, elect communists to positions of power and got Americans involved in one of the lamest wars in history.
The folks we met there were friendly. After picking up the kids and reaching a little place near the Vermont border, we stopped at nice restaurant for a restroom break. Asking if it would be all right for the kids to use them, a nice lady said something. We shrugged and led the kids to the bathroom. I can only assume at this point that she was telling us that it was okay.
Of course, we’re really not sure who the lady was with whom we were talking so well. She could have been a waitress or the owner. I like to think it was just a customer who got tired of waiting for coffee and was just up helping herself to the coffee pot.
When we stopped on Boul. Morgan at a convenience store, we didn’t bother trying to communicate. We didn’t have the time. We walked in and said “bathroom.” The clerk, at least we assume he was the clerk, said nothing, but he pointed. When we returned to the store for coffee and candy bars — Amazingly, the foreign country of Quebec uses the same money as the rest of Canada — the fine gentleman spoke perfect English to us, making our two-stop trip through Quebec all right. We figured the clerk had visited Quebec at some point and couldn’t find his way out again.
Throughout the foreign land of Quebec were signs warning of moose crossing. Still, I saw no moose.
Next week: Vermont, Quebec border guards and dogs.