No baseball. No basketball. Just hockey.
By: Steve Feitl
There’s something exhilarating about driving 100 kilometers per hour.
Realistically, it doesn’t make much sense, especially considering it’s actually the equivalent of a quite pedestrian 62 mph. But that sensation was just one of many head games I found myself falling victim to this weekend as I crossed the Canadian border.
I’ve been out of the country only a handful of times all of which were to Canada but I always assumed that visiting our North American neighbors should be unlike any other out-of-country excursion.
In my mind, there shouldn’t be the culture shock that would be expected when touching down in England, Australia or Japan. After all, it takes more time to cross the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey to Manhattan than it does for the Friendship Bridge from Niagara Falls, New York into Niagara Falls, Ontario. While I don’t mean to downplay Canada’s identity or individual cultures, the proximity and our countries’ many similarities lead me to believe that travel between the two countries shouldn’t feel like a big deal.
However, for the one day I spent perusing the Niagara Falls area of Ontario on Saturday, I really felt incredibly detached from the United States, even though I could turn my head to the side at any moment and see my homeland.
I guess it’s no big leap to say the immigration process has something to do with it. Given security concerns, I have no complaints about answering a few questions about my plans for the day. But it also leads to a few uneasy moments, akin to waiting on the teacher to call on you for comment on the reading assignment from the night before. Even if you read the selection beginning to end, there’s always that doubt that your answers will be considered correct. It’s that same concern at the border that sets the tone for the rest of the stay, knowing that you will go through the same pop quiz on your way back to America.
But I think it might be the little differences that really made me feel like I had become worldly in one afternoon. First, there’s the bilingual packages, appeasing both English- and French-speaking customers. Just like anytime a well-known brand changes its logo or packaging here in the United States, its equally strange when you see extra phrases in another language slapped onto otherwise unaltered labels. At least I now know how to ask for a bottle of water in French. (Boutielle d’eau for those wondering.)
Then there’s the currency situation. I don’t know how far this extends into Canada, but in Niagara Falls at least, all retail locations offer you prices in both Canadian and American funds. So something that costs $10 Canadian, only costs approximately $7.50 American, but if you pay for that same item with a U.S. $10 bill, rather than receiving $2.50 American in change, you’ll get back a little over $3 Canadian. And Canada doesn’t have dollar bills, so you’ll actually get back one $2 coin, one $1 coin and assorted small change. I defy you to try to figure how much you’re actually up or down in U.S. currency while gambling at Casino Niagara.
But the thing I found strangest also may be the thing I most enjoyed about my stay with our neighbors to the north. They just love hockey. I walked into a near-capacity Boston Pizza sports bar Saturday night, figuring to watch a few minutes of the night’s sports action. There were numerous baseball games going on at the same time as Game 1 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals between the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers, and Game 7 of the NHL’s Eastern Conference Finals between the Philadelphia Flyers and Tampa Bay Lightning.
There must have been 20 large monitors scattered throughout the bar and every single one was tuned to the hockey game. No baseball. No basketball. Just hockey. Come to think of it, Canada’s blue $5 bill even has kids playing hockey on the back.
The crowd oohed and ahhed with each clutch goaltender save and cheered appropriately each time the leading Lightning squad cleared the puck out of the defensive zone. The bar patrons enthusiastically exploded as time ran out in Tampa’s 2-1 victory, applauding the team’s first-ever trip to the Stanley Cup Finals. The love of the game was refreshing, especially given the fact that Tampa and Ontario are geographic strangers.
But not long after the game came to a close, I hopped back in the car, passed my figurative immigration test and was back in the United States.
On the drive home that night, I picked up a bottle of Dasani, but it made no mention of eau. I stopped for gas, and while I paid an exorbitant price, all my change was green with George Washington’s face on it.
And as I pulled back onto the New York Thruway, I managed to catch WFAN on the AM radio just in time for one of its sports flashes, where the day’s sports results are recapped. Only after the reports from the Mets’ and Yankees’ games, scores for every other Major League Baseball contest, recap of the Pacers’ Game 1 victory, and a commercial break and just prior to Arena Football results did the announcer mention that the Lightning had made it to the Stanley Cup.
Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe our countries really are quite different.
Steve Feitl is the managing editor of The Lawrence Ledger. He can be reached at [email protected].