Re: Visitors Guide to Vancouver

David Orchard wrote:

> Two shots, nice! 
>
>  
>
> Canadians generally do not consider themselves American, no more than
> Massachusetts or Californian residents pride themselves on being
> Alabamans or Texans.  And no more than Argentinian's or Brazillians
> consider themselves "American" because they live in South America. 
> Different political entities and all that.
>
Actually, I heard somewhere (so it must be true) that many members of
the, erm, Organization of American States have no problem calling
themselves American in the broader sense.  I do agree that usage trumps
strict logic in all matters linguistic.  Personally I try to respect the
Canadian/American distinction except when trying to wind up the
occasional Canadian.

>  
>
> Probably 99.99% of the world considers the term "American" to be short
> for "United States of America" rather than short for "North American".
>  Just to help a bit, there's a company called "google" that has this
> really neat map feature, it's at http://maps.google.ca/?hl=en.  If you
> take a look at the map, above the US states from Washington to Maine,
> there's a really big space that has the word "Canada" in the middle. 
> That's a whole 'nother nation in the continent of "North America", can
> you believe it?.  The meetings for WS-Addressing are in the very
> bottom left of "Canada", just above Seattle and with the "Georgia
> Straight" to the west.  There's also a country to the south of
> California to Texas, even though the map shows it as blank.
>
>  
>
> One tip that I can readily offer is that if you would like to "go
> native" in Canada, you can try a slightly different saying of words
> that contain "out", starting with "out and about".  It sounds almost
> like "oot", as in "oot and aboot".  Another trick is to periodically
> end sentences with "eh".  One thing not to do, is to wear a backpack
> with a big Canadian flag.  Apparently that's mandatory gear for
> Americans traveling to Europe these days.  But people can always tell
> the difference, because Canadians of course have a small Canadian flag
> on their back pack.
>
I read somewhere (so it must be true) that at least some backpacking US
college kids put a /Canadian/ flag on their backpacks in order not to
draw hostile attention (and most likely in the belief that chicks/dudes
dig it).  Personally, I've had no problems with anti-US sentiment
abroad, but neither do I wear a flag anywhere.

Be that as it may, I've never heard anything but nice things about
Vancouver (pig farmers aside) and from your description I'm very much
looking forward to it.  Beauty, eh?

>  
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave
>
>  
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* Rogers, Tony [mailto:Tony.Rogers@ca.com]
> *Sent:* Sunday, January 08, 2006 10:12 PM
> *To:* David Hull; David Orchard
> *Cc:* public-ws-addressing@w3.org
> *Subject:* RE: Visitors Guide to Vancouver
>
>  
>
> You really have to watch the Canadian spellings, too - most
> English-speaking countries have "straits", but they have "straights" -
> any bets that their "straights" are narrow?
>
>  
>
> :-)
>
>  
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* public-ws-addressing-request@w3.org on behalf of David Hull
> *Sent:* Mon 09-Jan-06 17:08
> *To:* David Orchard
> *Cc:* public-ws-addressing@w3.org
> *Subject:* Re: Visitors Guide to Vancouver
>
> Dave,
>
> Thanks for the writeup, and particularly the native's perspective.  A
> few questions come to mind:
>
>     * Do people speak mainly Canadian there, or will they understand
>       English?
>     * I notice that public parks are measured in hectares and speed
>       limits in km/h, but seawalls are measured in miles.  Are there
>       any other interesting non-metric measurements in use?
>     * Will my CDs still play in Canada, or will they have to be
>       converted to metric?
>     * Do Canadians consider themselves American, and if not, what
>       continent do they claim to live on?
>
> Seriously though, I still remember an incident from fifteen years or
> so ago at a service counter somewhere in the bowels of YYZ.  I was
> coming back from the Netherlands and had plenty of time to make my
> connection.  The gentleman ahead of me, also from the US, was not so
> fortunate.  Growing ever more irate, he told the clerk that he had
> been at the gate N minutes before departure (I forget what value of
> N).  The clerk informed him that he had need to be there N+k minutes
> before departure.  "No," the gentleman said, "the FAA regulations say
> N minutes."   "Sir," the clerk said, "it's N+k minutes," and then,
> with a perfectly timed pause and icy politeness, "You're in a
> different country, sir."
>
> David Orchard wrote:
>
>I've written up a Visitor's Guide to Vancouver at
>
>http://www.pacificspirit.com/VancouverGuide.html.  
>
> 
>
> 
>
> 
>
>Hopefully this will provide some useful information for visitors.  Let
>
>me know if you have any comments, criticisms, suggestions.  Bear in mind
>
>I've been somewhat time constrained of late :-)
>
> 
>
> 
>
> 
>
>Huge, Mark, can we get this linked to from the w3c wsa registration
>
>pages?
>
> 
>
> 
>
> 
>
>Cheers,
>
> 
>
>Dave
>
> 
>
> 
>
>  
>
>  
>