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Well, let's see. My best friend just got back from Cuba. My other best friend is in Viet Nam. My sister has just recently returned from Spain and my niece just got back from Africa. My nephew is going to Greece right after his exams.
Nobody goes to the US for milk.
You've never heard of cross-border shopping? Believe me, there are plenty of Canadians living in or near border towns who will proudly tell you that they do most, if not all of their shopping across the border (incredible, I know).
I hope your relatives enjoyed their recent travels abroad (I'm envious). But I'm sure I don't have to tell you that MOST Canadians (and Americans) do little, if any, travelling oversees. Come on, now.
What I'd like to know is, what travelling IN Canada have your relatives done?
Did I say that travel is about butter and gas? I think ya kinda missed my point. I said that, very often, that's what Canadians use their passports for. Most are NOT travelling abroad (incidentally, when I lived in Canada, I was never a cross-border shopper either. Never understood it, and I still don't).
I also don't make any excuses for low rates of travelling abroad for Americans OR Canadians. I'm a big believer in travel as a great leisure and educational experience. I'm only saying that Americans don't need passports to get to their second homes in Florida in February as Canadians do. And trips to the US comprise the bulk of the travel that most Canadians do.
I've lived in both countries, and I can say unequivocally that Americans are FAR better travelled in the US than Canadians are in Canada. It's a rite of passage for many middle-class families to tour the nation's capital, and I've known countless Americans who've seen most of the country (I've known few Canadians who've been to even a couple of other provinces, let alone most other provinces). Moreover, millions of Americans think nothing of travelling across the country by plane, train, or automobile for the holidays. It wouldn't even occur to most Canadians to do that.
So, no, my point about how little travel Canadians do within Canada (using Nfld as an example) is NOT a moot point.
…back up a little. The point about passport ownership DOES show you which country's citizens are better travelled because BEFORE Canadians needed a passport to enter the US Canadians having a passport was much higher. Canadians didn't need a passport, except in the last few years, to go to their holiday south of the border.
Now that passports are needed that percentage is of course higher than before, but the percentage of Canadians using their passports for travel to other points other than the U.S. is still higher, percentage wise than Americans having passports.
Still 13 years after 9/11 33 percent of Americans have passports, up significantly before 9/11. Canada has 65 percent of it's citizens having passports.
As we both agree travelling is also about educational experiences and someone travelling to their 2nd home in Florida is not getting an educational experience in the sense I think we both mean. So going on about how Americans travel within their own country in relations to travelling for a truly foreign experience makes no sense to me if you are arguing..
"Canadians so often use comparative rates of passport ownership as yet another criterion to confirm that they're more sophisticated than Americans."
If by sophistication you mean a month in Bali rather than Orlando.
You've never heard of cross-border shopping? Believe me, there are plenty of Canadians living in or near border towns who will proudly tell you that they do most, if not all of their shopping across the border (incredible, I know).
I hope your relatives enjoyed their recent travels abroad (I'm envious). But I'm sure I don't have to tell you that MOST Canadians (and Americans) do little, if any, travelling oversees. Come on, now.
What I'd like to know is, what travelling IN Canada have your relatives done?
Location: Where Sunday shopping is banned in the USA
334 posts, read 438,502 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by weltschmerz
Well, let's see. My best friend just got back from Cuba. My other best friend is in Viet Nam. My sister has just recently returned from Spain and my niece just got back from Africa. My nephew is going to Greece right after his exams. Nobody goes to the US for milk.
They do actually at a Costco near a border town in Washington State. It's dominated by Canadian drivers and customers so much so that the people and employees created a petition and put on the news to have a day for American shoppers only
It's on youtube
You've never heard of cross-border shopping? Believe me, there are plenty of Canadians living in or near border towns who will proudly tell you that they do most, if not all of their shopping across the border (incredible, I know).
I hope your relatives enjoyed their recent travels abroad (I'm envious). But I'm sure I don't have to tell you that MOST Canadians (and Americans) do little, if any, travelling oversees. Come on, now.
What I'd like to know is, what travelling IN Canada have your relatives done?
Most of my family and practically all of my friends have travelled all over Canada. I have travelled a fair bit within Canada as well, most of B.C. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, southern Ontario and souther Quebec.
I haven't been to NFLD or the Maritimes yet. It's on the list, but when I have the money and time, the south of France calls.
My grandparents were also extensive travellers, traversing the world. My aunts and uncles have all been to Europe and parts of asia, My niece lived in Germany for a few years.
If I am sitting in a cafe in Vancouver and strike up a conversation with someone, 9 times out of 10 they have been somewhere outside of North America.
I can't say the same for Seattle from folks I meet in Seattle. Most of them haven't even made the effort to visit Vancouver.
Location: Where Sunday shopping is banned in the USA
334 posts, read 438,502 times
Reputation: 57
OP...
Many wealthy Canadians would then move to the US for lower taxes, cheaper housing and warmer weather while many low income and poor Americans would move to Canada for their national healthcare and social welfare. More Americans would benefit from opening border than Canadians actually. If I could live in Canada I may have most likely moved even though I'm middle class... Canada took the best of Europe and America and they have Quebec which I love
…back up a little. The point about passport ownership DOES show you which country's citizens are better travelled because BEFORE Canadians needed a passport to enter the US Canadians having a passport was much higher. Canadians didn't need a passport, except in the last few years, to go to their holiday south of the border.
Now that passports are needed that percentage is of course higher than before, but the percentage of Canadians using their passports for travel to other points other than the U.S. is still higher, percentage wise than Americans having passports.
Still 13 years after 9/11 33 percent of Americans have passports, up significantly before 9/11. Canada has 65 percent of it's citizens having passports.
As we both agree travelling is also about educational experiences and someone travelling to their 2nd home in Florida is not getting an educational experience in the sense I think we both mean. So going on about how Americans travel within their own country in relations to travelling for a truly foreign experience makes no sense to me if you are arguing..
"Canadians so often use comparative rates of passport ownership as yet another criterion to confirm that they're more sophisticated than Americans."
If by sophistication you mean a month in Bali rather than Orlando.
While I'm one who winters in Florida, My wife an I obtained our first passports in 1967 and used them extensively to tour throughout the European countries and the British Isles for decades before bcoming adventurous enough try Southern American destinations. The Caribbean and Mexico were more or less simply vacation in the sun for us for years before tiring of the whole crime and poverty begging in the streets thing, along with always returning with some illness or another.
Now we confine our travels in retirement to those destinations that are less challenging to aged travellers during the summer with our winter destination being good ole reliable Florida.
To say that Americans have a right of passage to tour Washington might be somewhat accurate, but I'd be willing to lay a sizable bet, and give you good odds, that before most Americans saddle up and travel to Washington to visit the Capital and the absolutely amazing Smithsonian, that their suitcases have Disney decals on them first.
Having been to Disney near Orlando once in the 90's; our American friends cannot understand why we absolutely refuse to join them when they wish to make a foray into that silly place, being we're just an hours drive from it. They'll go there every year like it's a tradition and we'll saddle up and head to a historic site anywhere else.
They do actually at a Costco near a border town in Washington State. It's dominated by Canadian drivers and customers so much so that the people and employees created a petition and put on the news to have a day for American shoppers only
It's on youtube
Me neither, but we're speaking anecdotally. There are those who do do it; in spite of the fact that neither you nor I know any personally, doesn't mean that some do it.
But I would suggest that such shopping is not as widespread as some think. It seems to me that it will be done where it is convenient: Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, for example. A correspondent in Blaine, Washington has indicated to me that he sees many BC plates in supermarket (and other stores) parking lots, and they are not there to take advantage of Blaine as a vacation wonderland. I would imagine that the same occurs with Windsor and Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario; and along the Niagara River. But after that, we're looking at smaller and smaller places: St. Stephen NB may be right across the river from Calais, ME, but I doubt that the small population of St. Stephen is buying up all the milk in Calais.
My point is that such shopping is convenient, in terms of time and gas, for Vancouverites and the others who live right on the border, and who have US shopping facilities close to the US side of the border. It is not necessarily convenient for the rest of us to whom the distance to the border is measured in hours, not minutes: Calgary is three hours north of the border, Toronto is two hours away from the border, Regina and Winnipeg also measure their time in hours, and I believe we've already heard about Montreal.
As I mentioned, there is also the distance from the border to a US town or city that has decent shopping: Calgary then becomes a five-hour drive from Great Falls, MT. This is less of a problem where US border cities are numerous--along the Niagara River, for example--but a Torontonian is still looking at four hours of driving and a tank (or more) of gas to get there and back. For many of us, it is not worth making the trip for milk and groceries, though it may be for big-ticket items.
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They do actually at a Costco near a border town in Washington State. It's dominated by Canadian drivers and customers so much so that the people and employees created a petition and put on the news to have a day for American shoppers only 
