When Canadians Say 'Eh?'

Before I moved up here, I didn’t know all that much about Canada: the standard stuff: hockey, ‘Eh?,’ maple leaves. ‘Tukes’ had not penetrated my consciousness, even though I went to college on the U.S. side of the Canadian border just south of the Saint Lawrence River. Maybe they hadn’t taken to wearing them in the 50’s: I don’t know. One of our early trips across the border from Point Roberts to Canada (and indeed the only even mildly unpleasant border experience I’ve ever had going into Canada) involved my stopping first at the Point Roberts post office where there was an unexpected package for me from a friend, and which I picked up and put in the back seat of the car. Then I proceeded to cross the border to do some mild shopping. ‘What’s in the package?’ inquired the Canadian border agent. “Got me,” I replied. “I just picked it up at the post office.” “Do you think you can bring a sealed package across the border when you don’t even know what is in it? Take that package home before you cross the border. Do you not understand that Canada is a different country?”

Of course I did, in a sense. I mean Canada had already refused to let me live there permanently, so it apparently wasn’t the U.S. where I do get to live permanently. But in a larger sense, he was probably right. Canadians were just us, but they said ‘Eh?’

Yet another of life’s truths that I had wrong. Canadians are really quite different from Americans but they don’t, at least as far as I have heard, say ‘Eh?’. Maybe you hear it on Canadian TV, radio, or movies, when it’s used quite self-consciously; and maybe you hear it in Eastern Canada, about which I know nothing. But you pretty much don’t hear it in B.C. Hockey? Yes, all the time, everywhere. Maple leaves? Plenty of those, too, whether the real ones or iconic ones. But no ‘Eh?’ What you do hear, though, is a flat a in all Latinate words that, pretty much, Americans pronounce with a broad a. So, you go to dinner and they serve you pasta, the first syllable of which rhymes with ‘fast.’ Or you join them at a concert where a cantata is being performed. And the second syllable of cantata rhymes with ‘fat.’ Across the board, they use that flat a instead of the broad a that Americans would use. Only after 16 years, do I find myself asking for a little more pasta, rhymes with fast-uh. But it still sounds weird to me, even when I say it spontaneously.

Another thing about Canadians that is very different from Americans is that they know the relative and actual value of the U.S. and Canadian dollars. Of course, knowing what it is—and right now, for the first time in decades, the Canadian dollar is worth more than the U.S. dollar: i.e., one U.S. dollar will buy you only 95-98 Canadian cents—doesn’t make it possible for you to do much about it. But it significantly affects where you buy what you buy. A few years ago, before the Bush Administration destroyed the U.S. economy, the U.S. dollar was very strong: one U.S. dollar could buy $1.50 Canadian. If I deposited a $1,000 U.S. check each month, say, to cover my expenses in Canada, my bank account would get $1,500 Canadian dollars. Now, it gets about $960 Canadian dollars. So everything in Canada has become much more expensive for me and I buy as little there as I can, but everything in the U.S. has become much less expensive for Canadians, and they are pouring over the main U.S. border to enliven the shopping malls. This is a zero sum game, I suppose, but now I am on the down side of the curve; before, they were. They're vacationing in California; Americans are not vacationing in Vancouver.

But it is one thing that makes Canadians different and, now, I am different like them: I’m acutely aware of the value of the U.S. dollar and how it affects my every day life. That’s something, eh?