For my British friends...

I just saw this on the teevee...



=:-o

For my British friends...

For my British friends...

I live in an apparently 'Little Britain' type city in Canada (Victoria, BC) although it's usually only called that by people who have not been here, have not been to Britain or by people who market the city as a tourist destination.

Yes, there are some nice Victorian homes but step away from them and the contrived 'British tea rooms' (none of which are owned by British people) and it's just a very west coast Canadian city: lots of greenery, lots of mountains, lots of water, lots of people from somewhere else, lots of Native Art, lots of homeless people and lots of guppies, yuppies and hippies.

To underscore my point, ages ago Neil posted a photo of red phone box on his blog. I thought it would be a snap to find one or two locally since it's apparently so British here. I have tried to find some British phone boxes in 'British' Victoria. I even asked at the tourist office. Nope, they didn't know where one might be... eventhough photos of them are on tourist brochures. (excuse me while I roll my eyes).

I stopped thinking about it until I was just flipping through some of my photos from the wild west city of Cowtown, Alberta and wouldn't you know it.

For my British friends...

Not the greatest angle for the photo but trees, mailboxes and the wrong camera lens... and I don't get to that side of town often so this will have to do. In Victoria, BC:

For my British friends...

For homophobic follicles:



I don't use this stuff but I do giggle whenever I see it on the shelves here in Canada. Not my photo; swiped it from here.

For my British friends...

From when I lived in Calgary. Winter, obviously.

For my British friends...

In Victoria, BC...

For my British friends...

In Calgary, Alberta...



...where only the brave order the all meat pizza!

For my British friends...

More for my British friends...

My friend Simon over in England emailed me this link.

Canada tourist video shot in Northumbria

The sea was blue, the beach was gold and the children skipping through the sand dunes seemed a testament to the healthy joys of holidays in the Canadian province of Alberta.

Tourist officials and the national government in Ottawa were delighted with the promotional clip, part of a £14m attempt to offset controversy over oil extraction in Alberta's beautiful wildlands.

But hours of sleuthing by a puzzled sailing enthusiast, aware that Alberta has no coastline, have revealed that the idyll was filmed 5,000 miles away across the Atlantic. The girl with the flying hair and her friend were romping on the sweep of sand at Beadnell Bay near Bamburgh, Northumberland, where the North Sea rolls in from Lindisfarne...

etc... follow the link.

Sometimes this goat rodeo of a country is just too embarrassing...

For my British friends...

I lived in Perth, Ontario for brief moment last autumn and this was right around the corner.



You might have to click on the pic to make it bigger.

For my British friends...

An older photo from a Calgary phonebook, from when I lived there.
(I wasn't looking for it!)

Do check out Mog's blog post about sod too.

For my British friends...

Shaganappi Trail is the name of a main road in Calgary, Alberta. I lived in Cowtown for a few years when I was about 12 to 16 years old and again for a year after my five years in England. I've been familiar with the term 'shaganappi' since I was 12; it's a Cree word meaning twine made from rawhide, but after being in Britain for five years, whenever I see the word the oddest imagery enters my head... as I'm sure you can imagine. Sorry about that. ;-)

For my British friends...

For my British friends...