Pining for home yet?

Today I was emailed by a friend from home who asked:

How are you getting on with the Canadians, pining for home at all yet?

I replied:

I don't mind it here too much, I miss the countryside and heritage of England, it's totally barren here on both those fronts.

I also miss proper chips (as opposed to over-salted fries), proper beer, watching footy down the pub, proper pubs, pub quizes, proper nightclubs, cheap recreational drugs, proper bacon, proper sausages, cheap air-travel, and TV and Radio without adverts.

Apart from that it's OK.

I will elaborate on those further because some of them have been bugging me for some time.

• Countryside and Heritage - one of the things that I love about England is that wherever you are you are not far away from somewhere else. You can drive through the English countryside visiting castles, abbeys, churches and beautiful small towns, stopping off along the way for the obligatory pint in a country pub. You never know what delightful scene is around the next corner. In Edmonton I drive around knowing that there will never be anything delightful around any corner, and it's quite a drive to get to anywhere outside Edmonton that could be described as quaint or beautiful.
• Chips - in Canada a chip is called a a fry and crisps are called chips. I miss English chips of the type that you would cook at home or get with pub grub - big fat things. In Canada chips tend to be thin crispy things that are encrusted with salt sometimes to the point of being almost unedible, a bit like McDonalds fries but served on a plate. Here's some fish n chips that I bought from what I hoped would be a reputable dealer:

• Proper Beer - I have grown accustomed to the beer in Canada, and people that know me would refute the fact that I don't like it based on the sheer volume that I put away. My favourites are Sleemans Original (or Honey Brown), Okanagen Spring Pale Ale, Big Rock Traditional (a Calgary beer that is widely available in Edmonton) and Shaftsbury Cream Ale (which isn't actually a cream ale at all). However, all Canadian beer is extremely fizzy and served ice cold so as to numb the flavour. The English beers that you get over here (John Smiths, Boddingtons and Bass) are usually pretty bad because Canadian pubs do not clean their lines. The best English pint in Edmonton is the Boddingtons served at the Atlantic Tap & Grill, although the Bass at the Elephant and Castle is sometimes OK, though more often than not, as with most English beer served down Whyte Av, it will give you the squits.
• Watching footy down the pub - I do miss going for a pub lunch and watching the footy. It can be done in Edmonton but invariably the games are on early in the morning (Edmonton bars can't serve alcohol before 10am!) so there's not a lot of atmosphere.
• Proper pubs - Canadian pubs aren't great it has to be said. Sometimes it's the buildings themselves, which are often devoid of character and open-plan, but the biggest problem is the clientele. Unlike England the pub is not the centre of the community in Canada, indeed most communities don't even have a 'local boozer'. Canadians don't tend to go straight to the pub after work but instead they have people around to their home and then get a taxi to a pub. In England it is the reverse, people go to the pub and then have whoever is left standing around to their home, or they go on to a nightclub. Because of this Canadian pubs don't tend to have regulars/locals, and the tradition of table service, as opposed to regular visits to the bar, means that there can be little mixing of the disperate groups within the pub, and hence a poor atmosphere.
• Pub Quizes - I enjoy a good pub quiz on a weekday evening, but Canada just doesn't have them. Presumably because their pubs don't have enough locals to form regular teams.
• Proper nightclubs - if you don't like Country or R&B and Hip-hop then just don't bother going to a Canadian nightclub. They are years behind England in music and the clubs have no money expended on their interior design. Clubbing is not a huge multi-million pound industry like it is in England, and hardly anyone takes drugs, which means that Canadian clubs have sticky carpets and smell of puke. I love clubbing, but in Canada I don't bother anymore.
• Cheap Recreational Drugs - Canadians like to tell you how good their drugs are but in reality there are only three widely used drugs; cystal meths, weed and mushrooms. Unfortunately it's nigh on impossible to get mushrooms and you almost never see acid or ecstacy so I'm now a drug tea-totaller.
• Proper Bacon - Canadian bacon is just long strips of salty fat, you wouldn't want to make a bacon butty with it. In order to make it edible it has to be cooked until the fat is driven off and it is shrivelled and crispy.
• Proper Sausages - it's strange that a country that has successfully adopted so much British culture and food has almost totally eschewed the great British banger. Try finding a Lincolnshire or Cumberland sausage in Canada and you will fail. The Canadians do have lots of sausages available to them but they are practically all hot-dog style or German/East European bratwursts; these are nice in their own right but they are precooked, vacuum-packed things that just don't compare with a juicy succulent English pork sausage. I'm absoltely positive that the Canadians have no idea what they are missing.
• Cheap air-travel - in England we take it for granted that we can hop on a aeroplane and fly anywhere in Europe for next to nothing. In Canada air travel cost a small fortune. Given the vast size of Canada you might be mistaken for taking this as read, but it is actually cheaper to fly to England than it is to fly between some Canadian cities. Canada really only has two airlines so there is practically no competition. It should be a national disgrace but the issue doesn't even seem to register with most Canadians that I talk to.
• TV and Radio without adverts - Canadian TV and radio is so annoying that it's actually hard to enjoy, but I've been through this before.

So although I don't pine for home, there are occasions when my heart hankers for England. I have no doubt that Mrs Toque, a proud Canadian, will have something to say about these matters, I'd better hide the rolling-pin :-)