Wrong side of the tracks
I'm getting used to the driving in Canada now. The driving rules are a bit odd here. Apart from being on the wrong side of the road, in Ottawa all the road signs are in English and French (when you go over to Quebec though, they're just in French. Typical). Rather helpfully the French are backwards and so street names are Avenue Queens, or Promenade McArthur for Queens Avenue and McArthur Drive. This is useful for the Ottawa street sign writers as they can put the French part then the name then the English part, for example 'rue LAURIER street'. It's also good for Sarah and I as I'm sure we'll be fluent in French just from reading street signs and food packaging.
One of the Canadian driving rules that took some getting used to is turning right at traffic lights. Over here you can turn right when a traffic light is on red, provided there is no traffic coming from your left and, this is the crucial bit could be costly, that there are no pedestrians crossing the road you are turning into. This rule was particularly scary to come across both whilst driving and walking. It's even worse as the rule seems to be voluntary, as we've moved to walk across a road several times and cars have just turned right at the red light and then had to swerve round us. Oh, and one last point about driving in Canada. In the UK we have signs above motorways that tell you which road you are on. Confusingly for me, the signs above the motorways here tell you which road you will be on if you take the next exit. I've had several panics where I thought I was on completely the wrong road with no hope of getting off for the next 100 miles!
Lastly for this message, I have to let you all know that Canadian radio is awful. There's virtually no choice as every station plays safe-middle-of-the-road adult ROORRCK (rock). Not my type of music so on the journey to work I listen to a French station that seems to consist entirely of prank phone calls. Though being French they can't do this normally so it's not the presenters that make the prank calls but the listeners. They phone up the DJs and pretend to be from some company or other by putting on a strange voice and the DJs laugh hysterically.
One of the Canadian driving rules that took some getting used to is turning right at traffic lights. Over here you can turn right when a traffic light is on red, provided there is no traffic coming from your left and, this is the crucial bit could be costly, that there are no pedestrians crossing the road you are turning into. This rule was particularly scary to come across both whilst driving and walking. It's even worse as the rule seems to be voluntary, as we've moved to walk across a road several times and cars have just turned right at the red light and then had to swerve round us. Oh, and one last point about driving in Canada. In the UK we have signs above motorways that tell you which road you are on. Confusingly for me, the signs above the motorways here tell you which road you will be on if you take the next exit. I've had several panics where I thought I was on completely the wrong road with no hope of getting off for the next 100 miles!
Lastly for this message, I have to let you all know that Canadian radio is awful. There's virtually no choice as every station plays safe-middle-of-the-road adult ROORRCK (rock). Not my type of music so on the journey to work I listen to a French station that seems to consist entirely of prank phone calls. Though being French they can't do this normally so it's not the presenters that make the prank calls but the listeners. They phone up the DJs and pretend to be from some company or other by putting on a strange voice and the DJs laugh hysterically.
posted by Ian @ 9:11 pm
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