We Canadians (or us Canadians, as we also sometimes call ourselves) do enjoy making fun of our non-Canadian friends for having no concept of how big Canada is. We smile inwardly in a very self-congratulatory way whenever an American shows up to southern Ontario in July and wonders where the snow is, or when we meet a German biker on the Trans-Can who thought that he could cycle from sea to sea in a week flat. The righteous among us say its sad, but no one thinks that it's sad. We all absolutely love it.
Kirsten remarked to me the other day that the days here are extremely long--longer than either of us had ever known. Google Maps confirmed what we had suspected: being in the south of England as we are, we are at the same latitude as southern James Bay, indeed the furthest north that either of us have ever lived. That's a weird for a Canadian to get his head around, but not too surprising.
But the part that jarred me was when I discovered that when we lived in the south of Spain, we were at the same latitude as Virginia Beach. It seemed impossible that when we moved from Spain to England, we travelled the same distance as almost-Carolina to almost-Nunavut's southern isles.
Why was this so surprising? Was it because, as a Canadian, I tend to think of every country in Europe as a Huron-County-sized blip on the map, no matter how much I might know better intellectually? Perhaps the thought never occurred to me that any distance in Europe (which is still a little bigger than Canada, after all) could be that far. Silly, yes. I know better, yes. And I'm willing to bet a lot of American skiers and German bikers know better, too. They suddenly don't seem so ridiculous to me.
And a part of what is disturbing is realizing that you cannot take a two hour flight from southern Ontario to James Bay for $50, and even if you could, that's as far as you could go. And you wouldn't even be a half of the way to the southern part of mainland Nunavut, neither would you be a quarter of the way to the northern-most point in Canada. And that's not something that we think about a lot, because we don't really have any concept of how big Canada is, either.
Kirsten remarked to me the other day that the days here are extremely long--longer than either of us had ever known. Google Maps confirmed what we had suspected: being in the south of England as we are, we are at the same latitude as southern James Bay, indeed the furthest north that either of us have ever lived. That's a weird for a Canadian to get his head around, but not too surprising.
But the part that jarred me was when I discovered that when we lived in the south of Spain, we were at the same latitude as Virginia Beach. It seemed impossible that when we moved from Spain to England, we travelled the same distance as almost-Carolina to almost-Nunavut's southern isles.
Why was this so surprising? Was it because, as a Canadian, I tend to think of every country in Europe as a Huron-County-sized blip on the map, no matter how much I might know better intellectually? Perhaps the thought never occurred to me that any distance in Europe (which is still a little bigger than Canada, after all) could be that far. Silly, yes. I know better, yes. And I'm willing to bet a lot of American skiers and German bikers know better, too. They suddenly don't seem so ridiculous to me.
And a part of what is disturbing is realizing that you cannot take a two hour flight from southern Ontario to James Bay for $50, and even if you could, that's as far as you could go. And you wouldn't even be a half of the way to the southern part of mainland Nunavut, neither would you be a quarter of the way to the northern-most point in Canada. And that's not something that we think about a lot, because we don't really have any concept of how big Canada is, either.
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