Travel allows us to appreciate our home area and to find fascinating differences in the place we visit. Canada certainly has similarities to America in language, TV and brands at the grocery store.
Unique offerings of Canada include marvelous street crosswalks, bunnies throughout the town of Canmore, healthy trees and golden Larch evergreens, and a mix of European and American customs with their bridge of all cultures.
The best part of travel is meeting the local people.
“The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:34 NIV
Native and Immigrant Views:
I heard stories from a woman who grew up homeschooled with the Inuits in the “Forest”. First she taught me that Calgary is pronounced Cal-Garry. She mentioned there are four areas in Canada: Cities, Plains, Mountains, and Forest. She has lived in three of them and hates cities. She asked me, “What is a conservative in America?” The Canadian media portrays Conservatives as Right Wing crazies. It was a great conversation during a facial treatment at her spa.
She also stated that there are many Filipino immigrants who live in Worker’s Hotels crammed into one room working at lower level jobs in the mountains. We had noticed many Asians, not only as tourists, but as servers. Can you imagine moving from Singapore to Banff, Canada?
The immigrant was British and married to a Canadian. She could not work here when she arrived, so she went to school to be a Massage Therapist and get her work visa. We spoke of cougar attacks on dogs in the mountains, the signs to remove the fruit from their backyard trees to decrease bear – human encounters. Owners are fined $1000 Canadian dollars if they do not remove the decaying fruit from their backyard trees.
Religion: The blend of European and Canadian was felt strongly in the St. Michael’s Anglican church which we attended. The prayers included a prayer for the Queen as well as local population needs. The service was a mixture of Anglican with modern American Christian songs. People were very friendly, and they had both coffee and delicious tea after the service. The bells beside this old church told the town that st. Michael’s is still meeting over one hundred years after its founding.
How do you interact with local people when you travel? Is language a barrier or does language help you in understanding their lives?