It was a standing joke among my friends after I graduated high school in 82 that I'd chosen to continue my education in Canada rather than remain in the Reagan-controlled US, where none of us were certain Ronnie wouldn't push the Big Red Button every morning.
How I sigh for those innocent days....now we have a President who's done everything but push the button when it comes to ruining the country.
Anyway, I was a resident of Canada for many years. I worked there seasonally until 9-11 took away that privilege for good with tightened border restrictions and long, expensive paperwork-filled visa applications. I lived in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan from 1982 to 1991 with time off for good behavior when I'd come back to the States to eran some good ol' US of A cash (much appreciated in those days when the Canadian dollar was weak - now it's our dollar that's weak), and again from 1994 to 1997.
Things I enjoyed about living in Canada:
-Inexpensive health care. Imagine walking into a clinic and being charged only $20 to see a doctor when you have bronchitis, including the lab fee.
-Beer. Although I'm now an MGD man, Molson's was my preferred brand for many years. Never cared for Labatt's or O'Keefe's. Great Western Breweries is passable although somewhat watered down. Kokanee was my treeplanting drink. Keep 'em cold in the nearest creek to camp.
-Hockey every Saturday night (2 games) on TV. More than that if you spoke French and could follow the play-by-play on Radio-Canada.
-Odd names for domestic cars (Dodge Polara, Pontiac Laurentian, etc. Falling out of favor now that there's less domestic production. Kingston is Canada's Detroit).
-If you don't like the government, you can vote it out of office w/a vote of no-confidence. This happened last winter, when Paul Martin was deposed as PM in favor of Steven Harper. Elections are called w/very little time to campaign, compared to US politics: a few months being average. An extremely unpopular PM might lose his position w/in a few months if he isn't careful. Think what the US gov't might be like if citizens possessed this ability.
-Medical marijuana. (We allegedly have this here in Motnana too, but the Federal gov't recently scotched one's right to this).
Things I didn't enjoy:
-Thirty below weather (without the wind chill). Wind chills in Canada are not, as you might expect, calculated in degrees but in an index ranging from 1000 (tolerable) upwards. These numbers express heat loss in joules. The expected joke was that if the wind chill was higher than 2500 you stood a good chance of freezing off your joules.
-Summer, though pleasant temperature wise, was full of mosquitoes and blackflies, and only lasted a bare 8 weeks, roughly last week of June - mid-August. "Indian summer" fell in mid-Sept. Snow was likely any time after Sept. 1 up to early June. July is the only month I never saw a snowfall in Canada, and one year while treeplanting we were hit with such a blizzard in June we were called down to camp early, in order not to be marooned on a mountainside.
-Taxes. Especially sales taxes. Canada has a national sales tax (7%) and most provinces add their own (in Sask., 9%). Income taxes are also quite steep. Canadians do get something of a refund if they happen to be low-income, but resident aliens (as I was) get nothing for their refund.
One benefit I took away from Canada (besides a typical Canadian Prairie accent, most noticeable when I say "about"): being able to sing all the words to "O Canada" at Bruins games. (Never did learn "The Maple Leaf Forever", though).
