The last time I visited British Columbia and presumed to mock Canadians in this space, I was corrected by Eastern Canadians. A whole lot of them. BC is not Canada, they uniformly told me. That's like us visiting the Ozarks and generalizing about all Americans.
Fair enough.
And so I visited the Canadian Ozarks last weekend, and from the moment I left the States to the moment I returned, I found myself using the kind of English spoken by Americans in Italy. It's just like normal English, only because the listener doesn't understand, it's screamed.
"Where do you want us to leave our bags?"
The obtuse clerktard waved her hand in the general vicinity of a teetering, unattended pile of luggage in the corner of the room.
"HUH? WHO DO WE LEAVE THEM WITH?"
"Me." She wasn't moving from behind the counter.
"DO WE GET A TICKET OR SOMETHING THAT PROVES THEY'RE OUR BAGS?" Mike tried.
"Yes." She still wasn't moving.
"HOW WILL YOU KNOW WHICH BAGS ARE OURS?" I tried.
This continued for several minutes. I was considering putting on hand puppets to explain the situation, but finally, seemingly without provocation, the clerk walked across the room and asked us which bags are ours so that she could tag them.
This is every person I've ever met from BC. Even dealing with a street vendor is a 10 minute exercise in shouting painfully-enunciated English at a 5th grade reading level, then eating a hot dog handed to you with bare, visibly leprous hands. At about hour three in BC, I so swell with patriotism that I can't wait to sit in the Customs line.
Moving southward, we sat in the Customs line for 90 minutes. Northward had only been 15. The disparity is no doubt due to an exodus of refugees with hoarse voices.
And after our 90 minute wait, we were greeted at the Canadian-American border by a Mexican border patrol agent. Ah, home.