Wine and Cheese in Port Moody and Émigrés Compare Notes

This after­noon Pam and I took the Sky­train out to the Lougheed Town Mail sta­tion, where Matt picked us and fer­ried us up to a Wine and Cheese Party at Oanna’s house up the hill (about a 15 minute drive, and a great help). It was a bright, sunny day, and a lit­tle cool, but gen­er­ally pleas­ant. We saw lots of patches of melted snow as the car climbed the small moun­tain where Oana’s house was.

We had a really nice time, meet­ing a lot of her friends and Oana was par­tic­u­larly help­ful in giv­ing many guests a proper intro­duc­tion so we knew of where inter­ests might inter­sect. Some­times we also learned of other coin­ci­dences that only arise after a bit of con­ver­sa­tion, like the fact that the small town of Wait­s­field, Ver­mont was also fre­quented by one of the other party guests, who often vis­ited there from Mon­treal(!). Oana had assem­bled a great vari­ety of cheeses includ­ing Sage Derby, Aged Gouda, Wens­ley­dale with Mango, Tiger Blue (which is a BC bleu cheese that is quite good). and sev­eral oth­ers, and Matt also con­tributed some fiery (and even more fiery!) sal­sas. We brought some Bril­lat Savarin, a lit­tle Salt Spring Island Chévre and some Mimo­lette, which were also munched on along with the rest of the ‘cheesy comestibles’, as the Monty Python sketch goes.

It all Depends on Your Point of View
We also met another cou­ple of Amer­i­can émigrées. Cecily and Larry moved here from Cal­i­for­nia at about the same time we did. They were retired from work­ing in IT with a daugh­ter in col­lege, and are now liv­ing in Bel­carra, an area on the east side of Indian Arm (a north­ern fjord of the Bur­rard Inlet), about an hour or so from down­town by car.

After each of us told the other our sto­ries ? which were sim­i­lar enough; We’re all escapees of Bush’s Amer­ica, even though were were safely sur­rounded by friends and rel­a­tives who were in blue states ? we got to com­par­ing the dif­fer­ences that we noticed between where we were now and what we remem­bered of the US.

Mass Tran­sit: They felt that it wasn’t done right here, mainly because there weren’t park­ing lots near some of the key Sky­train hub sta­tions, mak­ing a ‘park-and-ride’ strat­egy incon­ve­nient or down­right impos­si­ble. In addi­tion, they said that they sus­pected that a lot of peo­ple didn’t pay the fare (it is on the honor sys­tem). I’d have to say that we didn’t expe­ri­ence this at all, since we don’t have a car, and I never gave a thought as to whether there was ram­pant cheat­ing on the part of pas­sen­gers (since we were so care­ful that we thought we’d be caught if we ever didn’t pay and never asked anybody).

Roads: They felt that Cana­dian roads were not main­tained as well, nor were they as wide or fast as Amer­i­can free­ways. Again, with­out a car, we had no way of know­ing. In fact, when we have dri­ven up to Van­cou­ver from Seat­tle, we’ve noticed that the road appears to get bet­ter after you cross the bor­der, but this is just one high­way, and we just don’t have expe­ri­ence with the rest of the roadways.

Cost of Liv­ing: We both agreed that some things were much more expen­sive: our biggest com­plaint (no sur­prise) was wine. Com­ing from Cal­i­for­nia, they par­tic­u­larly missed good, cheap wine. Here wine is nei­ther good, nor cheap. Oddly enough, they felt that there was less vari­ety of fruits and veg­eta­bles in the mar­kets, where we, com­ing from Boston, had observed exactly the oppo­site. That’s not all that sur­pris­ing. I was happy to learn that their expe­ri­ences so far regard­ing med­ical care (they had got­ten cov­er­age the begin­ning of this month, just like us), was that it was just as good as what they had under the HMO back in Cal­i­for­nia, and that the wait for a doc­tor here was, if any­thing, shorter than the one they had under the pri­vate med­ical sys­tem of the US.

How ‘Wired’: Pam and I noticed that our Inter­net ser­vice here is far bet­ter than the best that we could get in Boston. Larry and Cecil were blessed with a phe­nom­e­nal (and quite atyp­i­cal) fiber-optic link directly to their house­hold back in the states, which is some­thing I know is way above the norm.

‘Cana­dian Demeanor’: We both agreed that Cana­di­ans were far more polite and friendly than we found Amer­i­cans to be. I was actu­ally sur­prised to hear this, since I assumed that my per­cep­tion was skewed by the fact that Boston is reputed to be the very rud­est city in North Amer­ica. Nev­er­the­less, we both found our­selves sur­prised and pleased at the cour­te­ous­ness of our new neigh­bors. Larry was now a Fresh­man at the Emily Carr Insti­tute, and found that he was quite pop­u­lar and accepted by his class­mates (many, I expect, who would have been his daughter’s age).

Movie the­atres: Here we both shocked each other. I was impressed at how many there were and how nice they were. They felt that they couldn’t find any any­where. I think this says that movie the­atres here in BC are more clus­tered within the city, and the con­cept of a mul­ti­plex in a sub­ur­ban mall is less com­mon (although I’ve been to a pretty huge one at the Metro­town mall, but maybe that’s not far enough out to qual­ify as truly suburban).

Those were a few of the things we talked about. The biggest dif­fer­ence between us is prob­a­bly our work sit­u­a­tion (we’re not retired yet) and where we set­tled (after a brief period rent­ing not too far from us on False Creek South, they moved out to rural Bel­carra and we stayed in the city). They still drive every­where and have a dog. We have no pets and no car. Do these things affect the expe­ri­ence of Canada vs. the US? Prob­a­bly a bit. Cecily and I both noted that the News media in the US has become a drum­beat of vio­lence and sen­sa­tion­al­ism, which is some­thing you don’t get up here. This makes for a very dif­fer­ent pop­u­lace and a very dif­fer­ent life, in the end. It was fun to com­pare and con­trast, and I bet I’ll get the chance to do it again, per­haps with more Bush-dodging Americans.

One more bit of evi­dence of how small the world is: I also met Karen and Zhongxi, who both per­form on the tra­di­tional Chi­nese mouth organ, the Sheng (I believe that’s the one). I also found out that by coin­ci­dence, Karen had stud­ied piano at Ober­lin Con­ser­va­tory with none other than an old fam­ily friend of ours, Peter Takacs. Those coin­ci­dences just keep com­ing, don’t they?