Going to Canada eh ?

Over here everything (lorries, articulated lorries, and pick-ups) seem to be called a truck. On the oil patch the pick up truck sized truck is a vital tool however in the city they can take on the air of the Chelsea tractor.

Once behind the wheel many drivers assume super human powers. They can drive at high speeds irrespective of the road conditions. They have no need of road signs and are able to manouvre even the tightest turns in reverse whilst holding a mobile phone.

All these attributes can also be applied to mini cab drivers in the UK but over here with the roads like glass on some days they become a little more worrying. Especially when they pull out in front of you and skid all over the road because they have accelerated too hard on an icy patch.

Lin’s most alarming incident to date, involved a post office van who decided he could best get to where he wanted to be, by reversing towards a school bus whilst in the fast lane of a 3 lane carriageway.

Driving in this weather presents its own set of problems. To ensure starting it is best to plug the car’s block heater in overnight. It is recommended to do this on a timer but this doesn’t help if you want the car during the day, so we leave the power on permanently. A popular feature is the remote start which allows you leave the car idling for 10 mins warming up before you get in it.  No risk of it being stolen as the engine is cut if the car is put into drive. It can be very unsettling to walk past a parked car as it starts up with no one at the driving wheel.

If you don’t have remote start then you have to get dressed up, to go out and start the car, then come back inside for 15 mins.  This also means you run the risk of having your car stolen. What would be useful is some sort of fan heater that runs from the mains supply and can be programmed to warm up the inside of the car 15 mins before you want to leave in the morning.

When the block heater is on, you get curious effect of a lump of ice forming on the bonnet (hood) where snow has melted and then frozen again as ice. I am just wondering how many people drive away forgetting to unplug the heater lead.

Road surfaces vary a lot depending on how busy the road is. The major highways are ploughed and sanded regularly and can be quite  clear. Town and city roads will have a surface of frozen slush mixed with grit and furrows cut into the surface. This gives a tram line effect as you are forced to follow the tracks of all the others and can make turning awkward.  When Lin is driving the bus all 6 wheels are wider, and usually drives with 1 wheel in and 1 wheel out. In places they will use a grader which scrapes away all the muck and throws it to the left. This gives a good surface but can only be used on single carriage way roads otherwise the fast lane would collect all the spoil from the slow lane.

When driving it helps to have a good memory of what the roads looked like before the snow fell because otherwise it is sometimes difficult to see where the kerb should be. At least once I have turned into what I thought was the car park at work and then wondered if I wasn’t driving across the front lawn.

We now realise why most stop lines at junctions also have a road sign with an arrow pointing into the snow.  This seems superfluous in the summer, but is now vital in the winter.

We have now experienced -30 and have learnt a few things.

After minus 20 David starts to do things you tell him to. Like” put your hat and gloves on” or “do up your coat”.

Around minus 25 any exposed skin starts to freeze, not good for the sinuses. By minus 30 the ends of your fingers are numb, even inside gloves, inside the car.
So far the worst consequence of the bad weather for us was when some one crashed into our garden fence. I am not intending to re build it until spring otherwise I can see it happening all over again.

Some does and don’ts for this time of year.

Don’t buy bottles of drink at lunch time and leave them in your car while you go back to work for the afternoon unless you want bottled ice.

When you are trying to unlock the car and you find yourself juggling keys, gloves and shopping, and you need a third hand don’t let it be the car keys that you grab with your teeth.

When taking the rubbish (trash) out don’t leave the black sack outside the door to put in the bin later. It freezes to the deck and may still be there in the spring.

The other morning we were worried when the power went off at 2am. Although the heating is gas fuelled it still needs electricity to blow the air around.  There is a heater on the in-coming water main to prevent it freezing up and when the water failed as well, we thought the worst had happened. Fortunately the power came back around 5 and the water not long afterwards. We think the power cut had affected the pumping station, because all of the town was affected.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q What brought you to Canada ?

A  An Airbus A320

Q Why did you leave England ?

A Too many immigrants (The irony of course is that very few people in Alberta were born in Alberta)

and us to them

Q Is this as cold as it gets ?

A Just wait and see

The other day Lin’s car broke down on her way home from work. She called me and managed to tell me where she was just as my phone ran out of credit.

When I got to her we called the AMA using her phone and tried to tell them where we were hoping her phone wouldn’t run out of credit in the process. We got through explained the problem and they asked where we were.

“The C and E trail ” We said.

“What road number” They asked “It must have a road number”

“We don’t know, all the signs say C and E Trail”

This is an example of the syndrome where the people who put up the road names are not using the same script as the people who draw the maps.  Early on navigating around Red Deer we were stumped when the map called somewhere xxSt but road displayed a name like Nagel. We were never sure if this was a deliberate plan to annoy and confuse visitors or a cunning ruse by the local branch of Relate to drum up business because of the ensuing arguments.

Meanwhile back at the breakdown we managed to agree on the directions: “Go north on 2A and turn left on to Central Park road, we are where it crosses the C and E Trail”.  Apparently, now we had given a road with a number everything would work so we settled down to wait.

It was fortunate that last week I had followed the advice of one of the other girls at work and bought car blankets as these helped keep us warm. After about 90 minutes the tow truck arrived and took Lin’s car to our local garage where we dropped the key through the letter box with a note explaining the problem.

Note left with key, “possible broken fuel pipe, and a strong smell of petrol under the bonnet” caused much amusement and translates to “broken fuel line, and strong smell of gas under the hood”.

The car repaired the next day (you’ve guessed it - broken fuel line) but we were very thankful that a few weeks ago we had joined the AMA (like the AA but T total).

Ok not strictly about Canada but I didn’t get to see it until we came over here. I found the Discworld series of books quite late in their life, most had been written so I went on a crash course of reading to catch up. I was disappointed when it was Sky who filmed the Hogfather as we were unable to watch it at the time, but it was better that they made it than no one.

We were in the video rental store looking for discs to entertain David when I saw this in the children’s section. This surprised me a bit, not because viewer discretion is advised as they say over here but because the concepts in the story are a bit abstract.

TP (as the fans call him) has been writing about wizards long before a small boy with a funny scar and John Lennon glasses made them famous, but it has taken a lot longer for his books to be made into films.

The film itself was very well made but without prior knowledge of Bloody Stupid Johnson or a narration if you hadn’t read the book you would not understand the dangers involved in the Chancellor using the bathroom he designed.

For me the funniest line was when death, played by the late Ian Richardson said ” You may think that but I can’t possibly comment”. The line was of course borrowed from one of Ian’s other characters Francis Urquart in House of Cards. A reference that would be lost on audiences over here.

The bonus features were a big let down. OK I only rented it for the film, but the interview with TP was so cringeingly awful I switched off. It was filmed very amateurishly. There was no microphone on the interviewer so her voice was some ghostly intervention from a body unseen. At times I thought the camera was hand held because of the shakes and juddering zooms. The editing was so bad that at one point TP gave the answer to the same question twice.

It seemed totally incongruous that such a professionally made film was packaged with such an amateurish interview.

The local library has come up trumps with a copy of Nation (TPs latest book) so I shall have some good reading over the holidays.

In the UK it had always caused amusement when Americans had to qualify place names by refering to the country or state as well. For example why did they have to say London England ? We all know where London is !what are they ? stupid ?

Now we are over here we can understand a bit better as we can see there is a London Ontario, Birningham Alabama etc. But this doesn’t change our opinion of people south of the line. I had some fun when people asked where I used to work and I would reply Surrey, then you would see the cogs whirring as they tried to decide if that was Surry BC or Surrey England.

There is a fir tree in the back garden which looks like a giant outdoor Christmas Tree. We decided to decorate it with lights and bought a job lot second hand from the Thrift Shop in Lacombe. (NB Thrift shop is the equivalent of a Charity Shop in the UK)

At first we tried borrowing a neighbours ladder, but it was too long or the tree too short. There was no way it would have been safe to climb. Next weekend I borrowed a step ladder from work. The good news was it was short enough to fit in my car. The bad news was the tree was much taller than the step ladder. However by standing on the ladder I was able to throw one end of the string of lights up to somewhere near the top. We were then able by plugging one string into another, to wind the lights round and round the tree.

While we were doing this another neighbour appeared and offered us a long stick. Then by taping two screws to the end of the stick in a V shape we improvised a clothes prop and were able to push the strings of lights higher up the tree.

The whole effect was very satisfying and we had enough strings left to stretch down one side of the trailer.

Next time I think it would be easier to start with small tree. Fix the lights to it and add cable each year as the tree grows up.

It looks much better in real life…honestly..it does……really