Our second day there, Sunday (our first full day there) was filled with miniature adventures and little errands. We'd established ourselves with the rental car, the hotel room, and the family homestead -- and now it was time to get some stuff done around the area.
This included doing an actual grocery trip to get some actual foods, hitting up the Walmart and Giant Tiger, and then -- in the evening -- getting a poutine for dinner at the truckstop with Daisy's aunt and uncle (who conveniently live next door to the grandmother at the family homestead).
And, of course, Tim's.
Tim Hortons is not just a perk of travel, it is a necessity and it is a daily pilgrimage when we are in Canada. Brandon needs his double-double to function when running on very little sleep on an incredibly hard and thin hotel mattress. Daisy, not to be outdone, usually got a large coffee with oat milk and vanilla syrup, which would fuck up her stomach almost every day -- but the coffee there is good and worth it.
Each day I would also get one or more different donuts, and we would get a donut or pastry to take to Daisy's grandmother too, as she so loves them.
Anyway.
We were able to get some good groceries -- my favorite Canadian bread and swiss cheese, and a bunch of the vegan turkey I love, as well as a good amount of stuff for Daisy and a ton of ketchup chips for both of us, but everything else we sort of struck out on compared to the usual. Giant Tiger was very disappointing this time around; I got a pair of shorts for $4 or so, some candy bars, and two shirts. I also picked up a David Sedaris book I hadn't gotten the chance to read yet, but really not much else. I think Daisy found about the same amount of small things, but nothing really striking as something we absolutely needed.
We fared better at Walmart -- consistently the best Walmart I've been to in the entire province -- where we both got new hoodies and I found 5-6 pairs of shorts for $3 each on clearance (it's fall in Canada now, after all -- who's wearing shorts?) and I was able to find a pack of the Monster Ultra Gold (pineapple) that I haven't been able to find in the states in literal years; I think they stopped making it here. It's still alive and running strong in Canada, though.
I must take an aside at this point to mention a variation of the same thing I say every year -- in rural Atlantic Canada, it often feels like time stands still. A few little things change here and there from year to year, but by and large it really continues to feel like the 90s in Canada, from product availability in stores to the design and decor of homes and public places. Everything is simpler and more nostalgic, and I wonder if in the actual 90s it felt like it was still the 80s or 70s.
For example, the Walmarts in Canada...most of them remain unchanged from their 90s appearances; the one in Port Hawkesbury that we went to above is legit like stepping back into 1995 or so. The store hasn't been updated or redesigned, and while it carries all the new stuff any other Walmart would, the layout of the store is almost identical to the Walmarts of 30 years ago, with the only real difference being that there's now a larger grocery section in the middle of it. However, if you walked in there and I told you it was 1995, you'd likely believe it if you just glanced around. This would be reinforced even more when you looked around and found stuff like Fruitopia, which hasn't been available in the states in over 20 years but is still everywhere in Canada.
The cars are all new (it's rare that you see anything older than the mid-90s, and if you do, it's usually someone caravanning/traveling across the country, or a classic car that's been very well-kept) but everyone is dressed plainclothes; very few people have visible tattoos or oddly-colored hair, and almost all males wear baseball caps -- either plain ones or with various unobtrusive logos on them. Nobody seems to want to stand out or look/be unique in these port towns or rural areas; they are all very working-class, modest folk. Either that or they're Asian/Indian/Sikh -- Nova Scotia (and a large chunk of Canada) has a large and thriving immigrant population that seems to have integrated so much better into Canadian society than a lot of those groups have here in the states.
Everything just seems...slower, more peaceful, up there than it does down here. Now, mind you, the states is a garbage fire right now, and the places we go when we're there are very rural and not comparable at all to the noise, traffic and hustle-bustle of Omaha, but still, I notice a very definite difference in attitudes, politeness, and general flow of life when I'm in Canada. I do not have stress when I'm in Canada. It does not appear that most people do. They're... just living their lives every day without feeling crushed, oppressed, and burdened by bills and responsibilities? They have free healthcare and a system that (mostly) works really well for it? I can only imagine what it's like to live that way as the standard, and not the exception.
Plus, they have Rush and The Tragically Hip. And poutine whenever they want it. And Tim Hortons. And hockey that outside of a select few, everyone cares about, instead of the opposite. It's like a dream world for me. It's really like visiting another planet, or a parallel universe where everything's just better.
Something I did notice this time around was that if I thought Canada was pro-Canada before, they are wildly so now after all the political stuff with Trump, the tariff debacles, and the "51st state" stuff. Almost every product is marked multiple times with "made in Canada" labels -- and those labels are especially prevalent on items where the parent companies are based in the states (Heinz ketchup, Lays chips, Pepsi products especially -- Pepsi stuff is marked "proudly bottled in Nova Scotia") but also on everything else possible -- everything on a shelf up there is very clearly marked if it's 100% Canadian made/grown/manufactured/etc. And don't worry, if you missed the labeling on the packaging, it's marked on the shelf itself too.
The stuff that's not marked as Canadian? Like stuff that is very clearly from the states and wasn't made in Canada? It is not marked, and it very literally gathers dust on the shelves while all of the Canadian products around it sell like crazy. I wouldn't necessarily say this is anti-American, but I would absolutely say it's wildly patriotic of Canadians. I noticed all of this last year when we were up there, but this year it's been ramped up so hard. Watching local TV and seeing commercials for local restaurants and the like, they are always very clear to mention in the commercials that they use "100% Canadian ingredients" and/or are "100% Canadian owned."
For those of you who unfortunately live in the United States, like myself -- when was the last time you saw a commercial, or a label on a product or on a shelf that said "100% American ingredients" or "100% American owned"? Because I'm not sure I've ever seen a label like that, and if I did, it would feel wildly jingoistic. Why? Because US Capitalism™ sources its owners, workers, ingredients, parts, pieces, and overall grunt labor from whoever and wherever will do it the cheapest. Take a look at a bottle of juice off the shelf in a Walmart the next time you're there, or a bag of frozen fruit from the freezer section and read the fine print about where all the fruits come from. Chances are that you'll see they come from 3-4 different countries and are blended and packaged in yet another country before being sold in the US. It feels somewhat exploitative. It is also a wild and stark contrast to what I see in Canada, because yes, I pay attention to that stuff.
Canada does have the snack market on lockdown, though -- and I mentioned this before. Here's a few pictures I snapped this year:
Notice the shelf/packaging labels?
Note, I did not try any of these while I was up there; I've had a couple of them before on previous trips. The chicken chips are disgusting to me (though we do have family up there who love them) and the "bacon" flavor in any potato chip up there is just basically liquid smoke and MSG. Ruffles also makes a "Poutine" flavored chip in Canada that I found disappointing when I tried it a few years back.
Meh, it is what it is.
Upon returning to the family homestead on Sunday night, we met up with Daisy's aunt and uncle for a dinner of poutine at the truckstop at the bottom of the hill.
I will mention -- and have said it here before multiple times -- that I have had many poutines in Canada over the years from many different places. This truckstop, the Irving Big Stop & Restaurant in Auld's Cove, Nova Scotia (if you ever wanted to look it up) makes, consistently, the best poutine I've ever had. It is perfect every time, and it never changes. It's the perfect amount of food; it is wonderfully seasoned, the gravy and cheese curds are always great, and the fries are always perfectly crisp.
"So they've changed the poutine here," Daisy's aunt said, when I was already halfway through my meal. "Did you notice the gravy is much saltier now, and the fries are no longer crinkle cut but straight cut?"
Last year when I was up there they must have been in the process of the change -- the first poutine I had still had the normal crinkle cut fries. After that I absolutely noticed the next one had straight cut fries. It didn't bother me in the least, but I did find it interesting.
"I noticed the fries last year," I said. "But now that you mention it, yeah, this gravy does seem saltier."
And it did. It didn't taste different, per se -- like, it's really hard to fuck up a basic poutine gravy -- but it did seem saltier than it did before. Did it change my enjoyment of the poutine? Absolutely not.
I did, however, notice that the prices on a lot of their menu items shot through the roof over the course of the past few years -- every time we visit, a poutine costs more than it did the last time. It's not prohibitively expensive, but when it used to be $11.99 and it's now $17.99 that is absolutely a big jump.
Still, that's like $12 American, so I'm fine with it.
After dinner we had a nice quiet evening watching the news with Daisy's grandmother before returning to the hotel and winding down for the night.
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