Those of the current readership who dip into this verbal tosh from time to time will no doubt be convinced that the recent resurrection of 'The Blokeblog' has sadly been neglected, withering by the wayside as no profound witterings have been produced for the last few weeks.
There's a very good reason though as I've been on my travels, namely to Canada; more specifically to British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies. SWIMBO and I set off at the end of May to partake in a driving tour of a smallish section of BC/Alberta which included several well known towns and cities (Vancouver, Victoria, Tofino, Whistler, Jasper, Banff etc) at the same time passing through a couple of truly spectacular chunks of of the Rockies.
To say Canada is large is a gross understatement; the country is vast with a capital 'V' and even on our very moderate three week tour, we managed to clock up a respectable 1780 miles. Unlike Europe, there's no comprehensive passenger rail network which means that you need to drive everywhere so that every other day, I was behind the wheel for hundreds of Km, the longest distance being 489 Km (304 miles) from Banff to Kelowna.
The title though, of this entry is one that in any self-respecting Canadian's viewpoint is liable to earn me a damned good flogging, if not at least a severe online admonishment! Over the course of the trip, I thought long and hard about it and to my mind, the influence of the USA in this part of Canada is almost overwhelming. It would be churlish to offer a figure but I'd say 80% isn't far off.
Here's a few examples. In the above image, the hotel in Lillooet (where we stopped for lunch), with a line up of Harley Davidson motor cycles parked up outside could be anywhere in the mid-west of the USA. The language spoken, to this British ear, is almost identical with perhaps subtle nuances that can be detected. The road system follows the same pattern as the USA (this of course is to be expected) and the vehicles on the roads being identical to those across the border. There's a huge preponderance of enormously powerful 'trucks', many with four driving wheels on the rear axle. I'm six foot tall and the bonnets (hood) of these things came up to my shoulder level; one I saw with a raised suspension had a bonnet level with the top of my head! It's very disconcerting as you're pootling along and some good ol' red necked boy in a 5.7 litre Dodge Ram comes tearing past on the inside lane! One last example is the food; it's almost entirely how you'd expect to dine in the USA with ubiquitous fast food eateries being the norm. That said, it's not dissimilar now to the UK.
To look at the reverse side of the coin, what makes the visitor aware that he's in Canada? The most striking example is the French influence, even in BC. All road signage (and it's not nearly as good as the UK, even if the road surfaces are generally much better) is in English and French. Another example is the traditional Canadian fare of 'poutine' (chips, gravy and cheese curds)...
...which I studiously avoided, much to the derision of my son. The pic above shows a typical eatery in Sun Peaks, a little skiing resort where we stayed for a couple of days. As a side note, I visited the eastern side of Canada in the early 70's and I found the influence of 'la belle France' far greater.
The Canadian Rockies have been well documented with articles and photographs beyond number; any casual search on t'interweb will bring up an avalanche of information, but one of the highlights for me was seeing a bear ambling across the four lane highway whilst driving to Banff. With some cunning driving which was entirely unintentional, I managed to get to within 2 metres of this bad boy....
A controversial post without doubt and one which might earn me severe criticism, if not a damned good flogging as previously mentioned!
Did I enjoy Canada and BC though? Absolutely.
Would I do the driving again?
Absolutely not.
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