10 Things You Should Know Before Moving to Canada

Hey guys, I'm Dan from The New Travel and today we're going to be talking about, you guessed it, Canada. Specifically, I want to tell you guys 10 things you need to know if you're planning to move to Canada. Some of these you probably already know, sorry about that eh? But hopefully a few of these are new for you or at least give you a more complete understanding of what it is that makes Canada the country that it is. So let's get started and let's get one really obvious one out of the way. Yes, Canada is cold. If you were hoping for a white Christmas, you got your wish. I haven't seen like this before in my life. You want to know how cold? Well, I grew up in a city called Winnipeg and it's not uncommon to get to minus 40 degrees. And if you want an idea of what minus 40 is like, it's so cold that if you take a pot of boiling water and throw it in the air, it will freeze before it hits the ground. Okay, we have a cup of boiling water. Hurry, it's cold! And because it's a random clip from the internet, you know it's true. So yes, Canada is cold but I want to point something else out very important. There are times when Canada gets very hot. For example, Winnipeg, the city that gets to minus 40 in the winter time, can also get to plus 40 degrees Celsius in summer time. Which is crazy. I don't know anywhere else that can do that but it happens. And somehow we live with it. Number two, languages. We do have two official languages in Canada and those are English and French. We don't all speak French. A lot of people like me who speak French but only a little bit. Generally speaking, the further west you go, the less French there will be. So by the time you get to British Columbia, where I live now, not a lot of French people made it this way. Number three, friendliness. Are we as friendly as people always say? Those polite Canadians up there, eh? How's it going? Okay. Boy. People will help a stranger on the street. If you're lost and you're looking at a map or you've got a flat tire or something, people will help. My question to you guys is why, eh? In bigger cities, less so. In a place like Vancouver or Montreal or Toronto. Big cities, you get in that mentality where everyone's go, go, go. So not everyone's going to always be nice to you. And speaking of people not always being nice to you, number four, racism. I need to tread lightly here because I don't want Canada to come across too poorly. But yeah, there's definitely racism. Especially against the indigenous people. Again, I grew up in Winnipeg where there's a high indigenous population. And these people don't get treated too well. They get looked down on. They have a harder time finding jobs. So I don't want to give you the wrong impression and scare off any people who are visible minorities into thinking that Canada is like super racist or whatever. We're not that bad, but we could definitely strive to be better. On the note of multiculturalism, Canada is a very multicultural place. There was someone from Toronto. I'm going to totally butcher this story, but basically there was like an art student from Toronto who wanted to see if they could find someone from every country on earth. And they did. Like they met someone from every country on earth in the streets of Toronto. Despite what I said about racism, we're pretty welcoming. Yeah. At least I like to think so. What else we got going on? Oh, food. Yeah, so people like to always say that we eat poutine and put maple syrup on our breakfast cereal and stuff like that. It's not really the case. Like for me, poutine is great drunk food. I'll have it when I'm wasted. And maple syrup is great on pancakes. But I don't have either of those every day. What I have every day is an assortment of delicious treats from Korea, from China, from Spain, from France, from Italy. Like with diversity and with multiculturalism comes some pretty awesome food. So yeah, that's what Canadian food means to me. Not so much the cliches you always hear about, but the great diversity and the ability to get great food from all kinds of different countries. Okay, next up on the list of things to know about Canada. We pay too much for things like this and things like this. It's just a fact. Compared to pretty much any other country you can find, our cell phone rates are ridiculous. Canadians love their wireless phones. All 26 million of them. The bills that follow, however, aren't as popular. So expect to pay as much as like $80 or $100 a month. When it comes to drinking, we have pretty high alcohol costs as well. This is Canadian beer, right? And like here's a regular top and you open it, right? That is one thing that I would definitely like to change about this country. But yeah, what can you do, right? Which brings me to point number eight, which is that generally speaking, Canadians are pretty outdoorsy. We like to hike. We like to bike. We like to ski. We like to tree climb, climb tree. We like to do things outdoors is what I'm trying to say. We don't have the craziest nightlife around, but people do like to get out and drink some beers in the woods. Let's put it that way. Now, after you've had a few beers in the woods, you might want to get home. And because you don't want to drive home, you might want to take a bus. But you probably can't take a bus because of point number nine, which is that our public transit sucks. We need better trains. We need more buses. We need to just embrace public transit more as a culture. Canada is a place where a lot of people like cars. I had a car when I was 16. You just grow up in cities that are wide and spread out. That's one thing. If you're moving from a place that has a very good subway system or something and then suddenly you're in Hamilton, Ontario, it'll be an adjustment. Oh, yeah. And the last thing, do we use sorry and a like people always say we do in every internet joke ever? Well, yeah, we do. I mean, come on. We're Canadian, eh? Like, what do you want from us? But we don't say a boot. Americans have this thing where they always say we say a boot. Canada, a boot, eh? No, I say about, not a boot, about a boot. Sorry about that, eh? So, yeah, that's my list. If you got any more questions about Canada, put them down in the comments. Of course, I'm Dan from The New Travel. See you guys next time. I think that was like our best show ever.