A word on Canadians. Specifically Vancouverites.

(They love to dress up. Halloween is nearly too much for them. I dressed up as a Canadian for our work Halloween party. They asked me where my costume was..)

1. They don’t do last minute.
Spontaneous they are not. They have every bank holiday and long weekend planned months if not years in advance. For example, you might find yourself discovering that there’s an upcoming long weekend and decide to take off out of the city only to discover that every resort, hotel, camp ground and hut has been booked out for the past six months. None of your last mintue get aways, unless you think deciding something four months ahead is last minute.
Also, when someone says “meet you at six for a drink” they mean that literally, or you tell someone to come over for dinner around 8ish, they will be on your doorstep at 8. On the button.


2. They get to the cinema while you’re still at home deciding what film to see.
They don’t do reserved seating over here so as a result they all get to the cinema a good hour in advance it seems. They’re also huge fans of reserving an entire row of seats for their buddies. Once again, it kind of throws last minute plans out the proverbial window.

3. They love to line up. (That’s queuing to you and I)
They’ll think nothing of standing in line for an hour or two. It’s sort of a national past time. They love a good line up. Outside restaurants, bars, musuems, shows, you name it there’s a line up. And its not an Irish line up which is just a collection of people pushing in the same direction, survial of the fittest style, over here it’s a neatly organised, single person line.

4. They don’t go to a bar to banter with strangers (or rather they can’t)
Most bars have a person greet you at the door, find out how many are in your party and seat you at a table accordingly. This presupposes that you know exactly how many people will be joining you whereas back home you never knew who would make it out for a few drinks and at what time they might show up. If you have a table for five and a sixth person shows they get a bit fussy. (how dare you have more than your specified amount of companions in this public house).
Once seated you then have an appointed server who does table service meaning you have no real reason to chat to anyone else because everyone is sort of incubated at their respective tables. Nobody stands around and chats. I think this is one of the reasons that it can be hard to get to know people over here, bars are not structured to incur a bit of banter and chat. It’s quite formal and organised.