Canada. Part II. Roads and signs

Map

June 14–25, 2006

Riding the railroad was not part of my plan, although the octahedral carriage did pique my curiosity.

Not only had I never driven a convertible, I had never so much as sat in one. That’s why at the car rental place I picked a convertible without a second thought.

It goes without saying that this was a big mistake. I should’ve just sat in the convertible for a bit, then hired a regular car to drive around in. Convertibles are shit. You’re buffeted by the wind, dust gets in your eyes, you can’t hear the music properly, if it starts raining you can’t put up the roof while driving, and so on and so forth. More importantly, there’s nothing particularly great about driving a convertible. It just looks cool from the bystanders’ point of view — but I’m sat behind the wheel when I’m driving.

The roads in Canada aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Some of them are like this:

An excellent example of the road pavers’ handiwork:

Some parts can only be accessed in a dinosaursquasher:

The traffic lights in Canada are highly diverse and surprising.

In Quebec they’re mainly horizontal and have two red signals (safety first and all that).

You can drive at 120km/h on the highway, no sweat (they use the metric system in Canada, thank god), although the speed limit is actually 100. At nighttime everyone does 140. In the daytime they fine you for such brazen behaviour.

It was just my luck to get caught in the municipality of Temagami. The copper never got around to saying: “Leave a tip so the officer can get a beer later”. He wrote out a ticket for 115km/h, instead of for the 130 I was actually doing (apparently they always knock off a few kilometres to avoid getting bad karma) and issued a fine for 118 Canadian dollars and 75 Canadian cents (ballpark one hundred US).

There are lots of different roadside warnings. This sign means: “If you litter we’ll fine you one hundred dollars”.

By the way, Quebeckers put the dollar sign after the figure, not before like Ontarians and Americans do (colonial legacy, it can’t be helped). Also Canadians use degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit. Thank the stars.

In the province of Ontario cars usually have number plates both front and back. Meanwhile, in Quebec they’re only on the back. (While we’re on the subject, in the US having a front number plate is also optional — especially if it ruins the design). That’s why you might see a car dealer ad or a picture of some doggies on the front bumper.

Freshly installed road signs are prefaced by a “new sign” sign.

They take their roadworks signage very seriously here. No incident on the stretch of road being repaired — that’s the Canadian road workers’ motto. There’s a sign depicting a road worker holding a “slow” sign as you approach.

Further down the road there’s an actual worker holding a “slow” sign. There are in fact two workers by each stretch of road being fixed — one on each end. It’s vital work.

In the north of the country there’s nothing save for logging. You constantly come across “lumber truck crossing” signs and logging trucks do indeed incessantly drive out from behind them.

In the quiet residential neighbourhoods they try to frighten you with “this could be your child” signs.

This next sign prohibits parking kerbside between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. from 1 November until 15 April. Not because a scary monster with a trunk will come and get you, but rather because of the snow removal.

Judging by the “dig out fire hydrant here” signs next to the fire hydrants it would appear that they do get a lot of snow here.

What really took my fancy was the green circle on the road signs. It means “you may proceed”. Back home (and in Europe) we only get red circles, which mean “you may not proceed”, as you’ve probably guessed. The red circle is either there on its own (you may not proceed under any circumstances), or it has a picture in the middle (showing which particular vehicles may not proceed). But here they’ve got green circles. It’s a shame that not all of my readers will get as excited about this as I did. This combo means “you can turn either left or right, but there’s a dead end straight ahead”.