There is no hope for my people.

[camwyn]

Today at my knitting group, I showed 'round the photographs from the first roll of film I took in Canada. We got to a photograph of one of the Mounties in dress uniform patrolling around the Parliament buildings.

One of the women in the group blinked at the sight and said, "What, no moose?"

"Um, that's Ottawa- you know, a city-"

"I would've thought he'd be riding a moose."

THERE ARE NO WORDS.

I mean, thank GOD one of the others glared at her and said, "Nobody rides moose!", but still.

Oh, and because I wasn't sure if I'd inflicted enough pain on myself... I happened to mention that this was just the dress uniform, and that most of the Mounties these days wear regular greyish khaki uniforms unless they've got some special duty. Sure enough, not one of the women there had any idea that the RCMP wore any uniform other than the reds.

I didn't dare tell them that most of 'em have, you know, cars these days.

Comments

[ocean-song.livejournal.com]

Just goes to prove that knitters are nutters. *nods*

[thekit.livejournal.com]

I don't know, we could shift some blame to due south (http://www.tvtome.com/DueSouth/). Never in cannon nor in fanfic (http://stormy-night.org/fiction/dsfic.html) does Benton Fraser ever get permitted a change of underwear, let alone a change of uniform, by CBS.

[camwyn]

Well, I could deal with the uniform part of it. I mean, it's not as if Mounties regularly turn up on TV in their everyday uniforms, the way US Marines are periodically photographed in their desert camo or what have you. But the rest... *twitch*

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Hate to burst your bubble, but Benton Fraser did occasionally wear the brown uniform on the show. What always baffled me about that series was that it was made by Canadians -- were they have fun messing with the preconceptions of Americans or what?

[camwyn]

I don't know, I really don't. But then... *ducks head* I only ever saw one half of one episode, so I couldn't really say.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

*weeps openly, shamed*

I spent an hour looking for news about Canada yesterday in six major newspapers. Not one item. Not one.

On the plus side, I think Vancouver is really, really purdy.

[camwyn]

Well, their election's over and they didn't even have to go to the Supreme Court to get the results settled! What use is reporting on a country like that? [/sarcasm]

Sorry. I get fairly regular news from them, but that's because most of my news comes from the BBC- has done ever since the Clinton scandal, when I got tired of hearing about that FRIGGING dress- and occasionally from sympatico.ca. If it were up to the newspapers I'd get Canada news once or twice a month, in those little sidebars that come straight from Reuters and AP Newswire.

[whobunkyboo.livejournal.com]

Vancouver Island is purdier.

I know.

I've lived in/on both.

*sneeeerk*

[ymfaery]

Well, to be honest, I never thought about Mountie uniforms either. Mainly because I don't think about them much anyway since I never watched "due South."

[kaikias.livejournal.com]

...

a MOOSE? Eru H. Tapdancing Iluvatar.

This is all.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

That must be the seriously best abusal of the lord's name I've ever heard. *wipes apple juice off monitor*

[kaikias.livejournal.com]

As much as I'd like to claim it, it's not mine - I stole it from a user on the boards at t-o-m-e.net. I've just taken it upon myself to popularize it.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I think I shall steal it as well. Except I'll have to practice a lot until I can say that with a straight face...

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Heh... my brother and me were quite disappointed to learn about mounties in "ordinary" khaki or navy uniforms instead of the beautiful red ones. We were also disappointed about the cars. But maybe you'll forgive us when I admit that I was 13 and he was 11 at the time... *coughs*
And we never believed they would be riding moose. Horses would have been fine.

[camwyn]

Hey, not a problem. Like I said, it's not as if they get photographed in their ordinary clothes. It'd be like getting a picture of an NJ state trooper. What's the point?

[derien.livejournal.com]

She must have been joking! Please?? Well, if moose could be domesticated to ride that'd be totally cool; I'd like to ride a moose to work. I wonder what a moose saddle would look like.

Is the woman on crack??

[camwyn]

It can be done. In the 15th century the Swedish military tried raising a number of moose ('elk', but the animal Europeans refer to as elk is Alces alces to my knowledge) for use as shock cavalry. They got ridable animals that obeyed saddle and bridle commands, but the problem with moose is that unlike horses, they haven't been bred to obey humans for the last few thousand years. It's hard enough to accustom cavalry horses to the smell of blood and guns. Moose? As soon as the moose were exposed to their first gunfire and cannon fire, they panicked and fled. I don't think there's a human being then or now who could control an angry, panicky moose.

The Russians keep trying to raise moose as dairy animals so that there's at least some agricultural options in Siberia. It's never worked very well.

[jjloa.livejournal.com]

Well, you could tell her that a good sized moose can take a car out in an accident any day if that'll help *L*

(actually, recently around my hometown one managed to send a greyhound bus off the road.)

Not that I'm recommending it - poor moose, only trying to escape the nasty blackflies, does not deserve that crap (oh yah - and injuries and death on the part of the people in the vehicles - but I stick with 'poor moose' more) - but it's true.

[camwyn]

The first Mainer I ever met heard me say something about wanting to see a wild moose. She asked if I'd ever seen what hitting a white-tailed deer could do to a car; I said yeah. She then informed me that moose are about eight times more destructive in car-v.-ungulate accidents, and to be REALLY careful if I ever visited her state.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I had friends who were stationed in Alaska while in the military--one of the hardest adjustments to make was accepting that "moose blocking road" was a legitimate explanation for the kids being late for school--no one argued, everyone thought that waiting for the moose to move was perfectly sensible. You didn't have to apologize, even. No one with a working brain messes with moose. My sister lives in Maine, and she simply gave up on driving on certain roads after dark in the fall--the blacktop was warm, and the moose found it a cozy place for a lie-down. Who's gonna say no? It's a MOOSE! They're fluorescent, too, per Making Light (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/000179.html), my favorite source for oddities of nature, like glowing moose and pygmy mammoths.

[camwyn]

Heh. Didn't know about the fluorescence. I'll say this about adaptation to the Alaskan environment, though... I was at a restaurant on the Denali Highway last September. Don't remember the name, but it was around Mile Marker 237 or so ("Mom, I'm staying at a hostel outside the park, and it hasn't got an address. Just a mile marker. No, I'm serious, there's no address no matter WHO you ask") and had some nice statues by local artists on display. There's a party going on at the table next to me while I'm eating my reindeer steaks. The following conversation ensues:

MAN #1: Yeah, so, last month we were having a barbecue outside, right? And suddenly there's this huge rumbling- I mean, the house is shaking.
WOMAN #1: I don't remember there being an earthquake around here last month.
MAN #1: There wasn't.
MAN #2: Oh, boy.
MAN #1: See, all of a sudden there's this bellowing, and around the house comes this young moose- I don't think he could've been more than a couple years old, his rack was pretty small. He'd gone and gotten tangled in the clothesline and pulled off part of the porch, that's why the house was shaking.
(Laughter ensues.)
MAN #2: Did you get any meat for your freezer?
MAN #1: Nah, he got away before I could get a gun.

The party was being held by a local computer company to congratulate its 15 or so employees on everyone making it through the year and being profitable, I should point out. It was all very matter-of-fact. "Moose ripped up part of my porch." "Didja shoot him?" "Nah, too slow." "Oh. Rats."

Unfortunately ...

[jjloa.livejournal.com]

it's true.

They've even been known to walk away from small car accidents (though unfortunately probably in many cases internal injuries would have occured which hurt them later).

The greyhound bus incident happened a month or so ago in Northern Ontario. One of the tricky parts of the roads up there is that it's all Canadian shield - so that in many cases, the roads have actually been 'blasted' out of the rock, so on one or both sides you have sheer solid rock walls.

So the greyhound driver hit the moose, and went off the road. Right into the rock. Man behind the driver was killed, multiple injuries in the passengers.

You learn at a very early age not to mess with moose up there - though you sometimes can't escape it because they're on the road trying to avoid the blackflies (and having worked in the woods and met blackflies, I can understand why. shudder. make mosquitos look like nothing those things do).

I can attest from personal experience though that once they're on the road - it's a pain to get them off of it. I was late for work at a job just on the outskirts of my hometown a time or two, back when I was in highschool, cause I'd come across a moose a couple of times standing in the middle of the road, and no amount of horn convinces them to move. They move when they're ready *L*

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Ohhhhh, yeah. I nearly plowed into a moose and her calf one night on a dark road in western Maine -- if she hadn't turned her head so that the headlight caught her eye, I wouldn't have stopped 10 feet short of her. *phew*

Re: Well

[camwyn]

Where in AK? I'm pretty sure you've told me before, but I've forgotten. *shamed look* I really enjoyed Fairbanks when I visited, but I only visited there, Denali National Park, and the stretch of the Dalton Highway that leads up to the Arctic Circle and back.

*uses icon of Susan Butcher's dogs in training*

Re: Well

[jjloa.livejournal.com]

heh.

Living 9 hours northwest of Toronto I was told by an american in the south that I lived in the arctic circle. And nothing I would say would convince them otherwise. Nevermind that you had to go many many many more hours to get to that level.

I would hate to see what they did to someone from an area further north - so I feel greatly sorry for you and feel your pain!! Sad though when it's technically part of their country - I mean, we canadians just generally now assume that we'll get our glee out of people crossing the border with skis in June (actually seen that. sigh. but the people just across the border in the states mock those ones just as much *L*), but you'd think they'd know better for their own country.

Re: Well

[camwyn]

I talked to a bus driver in Alaska who told me that he'd had a passenger once, a truck driver, who shipped a bunch of stuff up to Anchorage for a woman from Seattle. The woman asked him how he got his truck there; he said he drove. She stared at him and said, "Through the water?" Eventually she brought him an atlas and showed him a map... the one with Alaska and Hawaii in insets off the California coast. He sighed and found a globe among the stuff being shipped, and showed her.

She went into her house and didn't come out again as long as he was there. Too embarrassed.

On behalf of the SMART people, I should like to apologise for the rest of my country's population. Both to Canadians and to other Americans.

Re: Well

[jjloa.livejournal.com]

*L* no worries. Most of the americans who I am friends with are as scared by these stories as I am. So we canadians know that most of you are sane ... it's just the insane ones who don't understand such logic tend to be much louder!

Re: Well

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

By the way, what country is due south of Detroit, Michigan? :-)

Re: Well

[murgatroyd314.livejournal.com]

That would depend on where in Detroit you start from.

Re: Well

[akawil]

people crossing the border with skis in June

Well, that's perfectly reasonable, isn't it? I mean, look at the current weather. Today's high in Detroit is 71 degrees -- but right across the border in Windsor, it's only going to get up to 21!

Re: Well

[jjloa.livejournal.com]

*L* apparently that's where the confusion comes from a lot of the time. Which makes it more entertaining when our temperatures are in the minuses.

I have heard a comedian who did a whole bit about 'that's how they must have decided to put in the border ... 'a little to the left ... still warm ... still warm ... brr. there's the border'.

ahh well. what can ya do *G*

[blackraven9.livejournal.com]

*head desk, head desk, head desk*
A Moose? Is she nuts? Where have you EVER heard of anyone riding a MOOSE? God, need drink.

[camwyn]

Aside from the Swedes mentioned above? Closest we get is a couple of Russian experiments at harnessing them for farm animals (this does not work, and is even less successful than their attempts at making them into dairy animals). Well, that and the Duke of Bedford, but he only ever fooled with red deer, not moose. He didn't break them to saddle, but he had a carriage that was pulled by a team of harnessed red deer (essentially this is Cervus elaphus, from what I understand- Americans' 'elk' or 'wapiti').

But no moose. As much as I'd LOVE the chance to try.

it's not just Canada

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

I've found USians* to be generally ill-informed about groups of people who are "other". In my case this usually shows itself in questions like "but how can you be orthodox [Jewish] if you don't look/act like [Boro Park stereotype]?" or "how can you go to SF&F cons if you don't like/act like [geek or trekie stereotype]?" or (one of my favorites, heard from men and women) "how can you be that smart/educated if you're female?"

For all I know this knowledge of other people deficiency is common around the world - I'd be surprised if it wasn't - but because of geography I tend to deal mostly with USians...

Re: it's not just Canada

[jjloa.livejournal.com]

"how can you be that smart/educated if you're female?"

*cough* *choke*

Never heard that one up here in Canadia as of yet, thank goodness. Well ... okay. Gotten that gist from one doctor I ran into who was an immigrant from ... how to be diplomatic. A part of the world where women's rights isn't as forward as it is over here. No listening to the patient cause she was just a woman type thing. Didn't go back to that doctor ever again.

I admire your restraint in not doing damage to anyone who said that. I'd find that highly tempting. (though more in the 'withering sarcasm' way probably I admit ...)

Re: it's not just Canada

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

Never heard that one up here...

I don't usually hear that one explicitly so much as... There was the guy who hit on me until he found out I'd gone to a "better" college than he had (at which point he literally backed away), and at various times I've been the first or only woman to join an officially co-ed class (usually math or a religious topic in which women's education overall is still catching up with men's) and seen the men react with surprise that (a) I'm not there by accident and (b) I can keep up. I've also heard women say that they wouldn't be comfortable in co-ed classes 'cause they'd be afraid of the men raising the level above their heads, regardless of who the men and women involved were.

I think I've usually been nice about it, but yeah, the 'withering sarcasm' thing is tempting.

Re: it's not just Canada

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

I get, "You can't be from Texas, you talk like an educated person." Yet another gift our Hick-in-Chief has given us.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Hee! It's funny how many Americans seem to get their impressions of other countries from cartoons -- in this case, from Rocky and Bullwinkle, apparently.

So, I'm going to Ottawa (and Toronto) early next month. Anything you suggest I go out of my way to see?

[camwyn]

Take some time in Ottawa to get a tour of the Parliament grounds and Central Block. There are three main buildings to Parliament; the Central one is where they actually do the legislating. The grounds are quite nice and are littered with random sculptures of past Prime Ministers, including an exceptionally constipated-looking William Lyon Mackenzie-King with a bad combover. There's also a good sculpture commemorating a 1928 privy council decision that meant a hell of a lot to women's rights, and a very nice Eternal Flame thing in the middle of the grounds, but the library's under renovation.

You may also want a walking tour of the area in general- they've got a lot of memorials to various heroes, like Terry Fox- but I didn't take one myself. If you're a museum person at all, it's definitely worthwhile to head across the Alexandra Bridge into Hull, Quebec and visit the Museum of Civilization. The First Nations exhibits are amazing, and the rest of it's pretty damn impressive as well, though I didn't get to see the Postal Museum on the third floor.

As for Toronto, you'll probably want to see the Royal Ontario Museum before they completely cock it up with the weird new architectural expansions. The CN tower's a good view, too, and you get to see lots of international graffiti from all the various visitors. Some of the city parks are nice, and the oldest of the city's three Chinatowns is a very impressive place to visit if you're a Sinophile like myself.

[faeriethistle.livejournal.com]

you forgot "moose."
just being helpful, dontcha know.
and if there are no moose, look for polar bears.
~~smiles innocently~~

[camwyn]

There was a magnet for sale at the Ottawa Museum of Natural History, now that I think about it. It said THINGS I DIDN'T SEE IN CANADA and depicted a dogsled, a polar bear, an igloo, and I think maybe a moose. I nearly bought it.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Well, I do have a city tour lined up for Ottawa, so I think I'll be all right on the 'impressive governmental buildings' front. And I'm taking the ghost walk for Convention Alley, which should be an entirely different perspective for the city.

The Museum of Civilization sounds right up my alley, but can I get to it without a car? I'm staying in downtown Ottawa, but only for two days. The rest of the trip is either immersion in Convention Alley or Toronto.

Oh, I definitely want to go to the ROM. I get to be a museum geek! I will happily wander for hours in museums, especially natural history ones.

Do you know if you can leave luggage at the train station in Ottawa? Either in lockers, or check-in early or whatnot. I've an afternoon train to Toronto and am worried about lugging a suitcase around that day. Otherwise, I may have to be really light on my packing, and I'm horrible at that.

And, as a fellow knitter, any truly lovely yarn shops in either city?

[camwyn]

You can get to the Museum of Civilization on foot, yeah. There's two or three bridges that cross over to Hull, and the one I went over had pedestrian parts- and it's maybe two blocks from the bridge to the museum. Very easily done as long as the Quebecois aren't being exceptionally scary drivers.

There's a natural history museum in Ottawa, too, but half of it's closed down for renovations (we're talking ninety-year-old exhibits, here) and one of the available four floors is an exhibit of Creepy or Disgusting Creatures, aimed at children. For $4 it's not a bad way to kill an hour or two but it's not really vital. At least, not compared to the ROM.

I don't know about the train station in Ottawa, sadly. I took my train to Toronto, and the rest of my journeys within Canada were by car. And, also sadly, I can't say one way or the other about yarn shops. I didn't get to check when I was in Toronto last, and between seeing the Impressive Government Buildings and my Burger King-inspired case of food poisoning, I was in no mood nor condition to scope Ottawa's yarn shops during the day and a half I was there. There's a guy in the Chinese mall thingum outside Toronto who ran a yarn shop as of early January 2004- sells a lot of Sirdar- but I don't know if he's still there or not.

[camwyn]

Oh! I almost forgot. Toronto has a museum devoted entirely to shoes. The Bata Shoe Museum is devoted entirely to footware through the ages, has a stunning array of historically unusual or interesting shoes, and has some really neat special exhibits depending on when you go. I was there for an exhibit on the history of the high heel. The gift shop isn't a shoe store, it's a standard museum shop with an emphasis on shoes, but I guarantee you'll never find a wider selection of international variants on the Cinderella story unless you go directly to a folklore publishing house or something like that. It's really a neat place and you won't find a museum like it it anywhere else in the world.