(This is Josh posting. I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays!)
Many Americans do not appreciate how big Canada is. Ontario alone has a total area of 415,000 sq. miles and two time zones (Eastern & Central) that is 1.5 times larger than Texas (268,581 sq. miles) and 2.5 times larger than California (163,696 sq. miles). Canada's largest city, Toronto, a close cousin to New York City in terms of economic importance and political clout is located in central Canada. The east coast for many Canadians is 1,500 miles or a 2-hour flight away.
Quick story: some relatives of mine came up here from New York City for a visit and wanted to "see the Rockies over the weekend". Their perception of Canada was of Mounties on horses, mountains and trees, naturally, the Rocky Mountains were a short drive away. I had to explain to them that the Rockies were five days away by car. I asked them to consider the time it would take to drive from NYC to Aspen, Colorado, it was only then that they realised how strange their request was.
I have never figured out why there is a perception that Canadian geography is on the same scale as Belgium or Denmark. I guess when viewing a TV commercial about Canada, the viewing public is shown the shores of Nova Scotia, Ottawa, Toronto, RCMP Musical Rides and then of course…mountains in a 30-second clip. The old tagline was "Canada…the world next door". Tourist companies could not sell tours if the tagline was "Canada…the stuff worth seeing is thousands of miles apart". Hmmm.
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7 comments:
No kidding...this geography dunce got a load of that when we had a bloggy meet up and I had no idea why one of the gals couldn't do it until I saw that she would have been driving FOREVAH to get to Detroit ;0) I thought she was just up the proverbial street (Doy!)
Geography was never my strong point.
I so know what you mean - there is the old story of a guy flying from England to Newfoundland and asks his BC cousin to pick him up. The BC cousin replies that you are closer to England then you are to me!!
Kinda like some of the people that I've taken to see Lake Michigan for the first time in Chicago. After they stand there dumbfounded for a minute they remark, "Wow, it looks just like an ocean. I thought I'd be able to see the state of Michigan from here." Um, didn't you ever notice the size of the great lakes on a map?
Some people are just geographically-challenged...
We lived in Alaska for three years and people were the same way about that.
That's funny... we learned that Canada is larger than the United States, and has the population of California. But yeah, that was like someone in Brazil asking me if I knew so and so from California. I had to explain to this person carefully that you had to drive 13 hours south to get to the Mexican border and 13 hours north to get to the Oregon border.
love this--being from Canada, I get sick of people asking me if I know so and so. Oh yeah--we all know eachother from that little country!!! Duh
M
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