Oh Canada
5 Aug
I just got back from a trip to Canada, but I feel like I am returning from an alternate Universe. No, this has nothing to do with the fancy way Canadians speak their “Os” or their love of beer or how damned polite they all seem to be.
Canadians have made health-consciousness and green living accessible to everyone. Yes, I repeat. Canadians…even the poor and disenfranchised…choose to be healthy and earth-friendly.
Okay, maybe it’s a bit of a wide-sweeping generalization. I saw plenty of unhealthy looking, obese people driving with Canadian plates. But an awareness of good health and green living has seemed to penetrate Canadian culture, with help, love, and support from the government. Imagine that!
So much so that even McDonald’s appeals to this underlying desire to be healthy. On a poster ad for Happy Meals that dressed a store window in a McDonald’s in Guelph, Ontario: “Protein Powered! Vitamin Enriched!” I can’t quite say that I believe the claim that Canadian chicken Mcnuggets are any healthier than the crap they serve in New Jersey, but clearly McDonald’s Canadian marketing department thinks that their consumers will a) know the benefit of eating protein and b) care. Amazing.
On our drive up from Niagara Falls to Southampton, a small town of about 3000 people along Lake Huron, we passed by the most beautiful farms offering organic produce and grass-fed meat (many organic and grass-fed by default, without certification, because “hey! that’s just how we farm!”)
In downtown Southampton, residents buy their groceries at Harrigans 100 Mile Market, one of a large group of Canadian supermarkets committed to ”providing farmers, producers, growers and artisans within 100 miles of a metropolitan centre, a year-round, seven days a week channel of distribution to urban consumers seeking healthier, more nutritional alternatives to food processed, chemically treated, packaged and shipped thousands of miles before it reaches their table.”
On the main drag alone, there was a chiropractor’s office and a naturopathic doctor. This, in a town of 3000!
My friend Alison, who has spent her summers in Southampton since she was a kid (and so graciously invited my family to vacation with hers…S.W.A.K) told me that the town has placed a premium on garbage collection so that community members will recycle. Each bag of garbage costs $1.50 (that’s Canadian dollars). You have to buy these garbage stickers at the grocery store, and place them on your bag, or the truck won’t take it. And guess what? Recycling is collected free of charge. In Ottawa, where they live the rest of the year, composting is supported and encouraged by the city!
On a personal note (and I know many readers might not necessarily agree with me), 
most schools in Canada are nut-free and my nut-allergic family has never been so well-taken care of in restaurants as we were by friends and strangers in the Great White North.
In one pub in Fergus, when the chef heard my son was allergic to peanuts, he came out of the kitchen to not only reassure us about the safety of my son’s meal, but to warn us about a bowl of peanuts at the bar, in case my son had airborne reactions.
Why does Canada feel that it’s appropriate to impose such “restrictions” on their residents? Why don’t they care about the potential outcries of “privacy” and “choice?”
Thinking about it now, it’s funny how much time Americans spend knocking on Canadians. It’s eerily reminiscent of the schoolyard bully who always picks on the smart kid.
I’m not moving to Canada any time soon, but I do have to wonder how Canada seems to get it so right. And America, so far, still manages to do it so wrong.
My family spent a week in Vancouver on vacation earlier this summer and just loved it! We don’t have allergies, so I wasn’t aware of that, but we barely used the car (and the only reason I did at all is because I’m too pregnant to walk super far in the heat) because public transportation was everywhere (not as big of a deal for East Coast people, but it certainly is for those of us on the West Coast!). Everyone was super nice; I felt like every parent was watching out for every other child. I only saw obese people in the hotels (ie: tourists) and was thrilled to see how many people were out being active all of the time. I would seriously consider moving to Canada.
america, love it or leave it!
Tom, don’t tempt me.
But, seriously, I honestly can’t understand or subscribe to that mentality. The only person, place or thing that I will love unconditionally are my children. And even those little rugrats experience my wrath when I feel like they are doing something inappropriate, dangerous or unethical. If my country, (and currently that’s the good ole U.S. of A.) is acting in a way that I feel does not benefit me, my family, or my fellow community members, I have a right and responsibility to do something about it.
Amen, sister!
Places like that exist in the US. It all comes down to: what’s important to the community.
I live in Portland, ME and we pay per bag of garbage too. $1.50 (American LOL) and we don’t just get stickers, we buy 15 gallon bags that are blue marked for our town only. Our recycling is free and is easy to do because the city utilizes the concept of “single sort” – we throw ALL plastics (1-6, yes, all!) as well as glass, paper, and tin/aluminum cans into a collection bin… or two! My family of four (mom, dad, 7yo and 3yo) set out one bag of trash per week and about every 3 weeks or so we set out an extra.