O'Canada

On the left, an Irish pay telephone. On the right, a Canadian one. Eircom in Ireland and Bell in Canada used to be the only phone companies but now things are broken up and there are competitors in both countries. If you’re wondering about “telefón,” that’s Irish for “telephone,” nothing to do with the Charles Bronson movie.

Canadian payphone provided by Bell Canada. Like many of them, it's out of order.

Irish payphone provided by Eircom

There are sculptures by English artist Henry Moore in both Dublin and Toronto, but Toronto wins this round. The Henry Moore Sculpture Centre at the Art Gallery of Ontario in downtown Toronto has more than 900 of his sculptures and works on paper. Large Two Forms, at the northeast corner of the gallery at Dundas and McCaul, is one of Toronto’s landmarks.

"Reclining Connected Forms" in Library Square inside Trinity College, Dublin

"Large Two Forms" outside the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

On the left, the Irish tricolour of green, white, and orange: green for Roman Catholicism, orange for Protestantism, white for the peace between them. It was first adopted in 1919.

On the right, the Canadian Maple Leaf, simple and memorable, adopted in 1965 and seen around the world on the luggage of Americans.

Canadian flag flying at half-mast on Remembrance Day, 11 November.

Irish flag flapping gently in the wind

Dublin, Ireland, on a Friday evening. Doheny & Nesbitt is one of Dublin’s oldest and most popular watering holes. These pictures show that early in the evening it’s doing a pretty steady trade, and by later on there is a hefty throng of people drinking and smoking outside — so much so that pylons are in place on the road to remind patrons not to migrate too far out in front of the establishment.

Doheny & Nesbitt, early Friday evening during August, Dublin.

A big part of the reason for crowds to congregate on the streets outside Dublin pubs (especially in the evening) is that this is the only place folks can smoke. So they take drinks outside and have a fag and a smoke and a natter. Rumour has it that many a new friendship or indeed relationship gets struck in this way!

Doheny & Nesbitt, late Friday evening during August, Dublin.

Meanwhile, in Canada, things are rather different! Canadians, like the Irish, are not allowed to smoke inside pubs. But if they need to have a smoke, they will take it outside, but their drink remains behind! We think this is because laws pertaining to drinking in public property are far stricter in Canada, than they are in Ireland. But it’s also probably partly a cultural thing.

It’s a Friday night. First let’s see what’s happening at the Wolf and Firkin, Friday night at 8.

Empty sidewalk outside the Wolf and Firkin, one of a chain of low-quality fake English pubs.

Down the street to the Queen and Beaver, a very nice place with good food. It was filled with people drinking, eating, talking, and laughing … but nothing was happening outside.

The pub was crowded and noisy inside, but outside, nothing.

Finally, in the Annex, around 9 pm, to Harbord House, where our quest ends.

Two lonely smokers grab a puff outside Harbord House in downtown Toronto

The authors, have noticed some amusing differences in exit signs, between Ireland and Canada.

An exit sign, typically found in buildings in Ireland (note this isn’t necessarily an emergency exit sign!) is shown left. It stirs up a sense of urgency, and conveys a “run for your life” type of message. You’d better hightail it out of here, don’t even think of strolling or ambling, exit and exit fast, mate!

In contrast, the Canadian exit sign (shown right) is a whole lot less alarmist!

Exit sign in Ireland

Exit sign, Canadian style.

In Ireland, if you need to go to relieve yourself, and were in a restaurant or pub etc., you’d ask where the “toilets” are. If you were feeling the need to be posh, you might say “bathrooms”, but you’d not say “washrooms”.  If you were at home, with people you know well, you might speak in terms of “the loo”.

In Canada, everyone talks about “washrooms”, that’s the common lingo at home and while out. I guess there is a preference to focus on the washing that goes on, while you are engaged in your personal business, rather than the other aspect of it. And fair enough, seems discreet, reserved, and inoffensive, and perhaps, rather Canadian.

This certainly merited a photograph, we thought. It's taken in Portmagee, a beautiful village on the Ring of Kerry. And they have such fine public toilets, that they won an award.		If you gotta go, look for this kind of sign in Canada.
While Portmagee, won an award for best public toilets, Bar Pinxto, a tapas bar in the Temple Bar area in Dublin, might deserve at least a notable mention, for its toilets.

Purchasing alcohol looks quite a bit different in Ireland and Canada, with Quebec being a bit of an exception, and closer to the Irish way of doing things.

In Ireland, you can purchase alcohol very easily and in many places. That’s not to say they don’t ask for ID in these places; they do. Also a Canadian visitor friend of mine, who wanted to buy some whiskey to take home, noted that you can’t purchase any alcohol in stores before 11 a.m. – seems reasonable enough! But in Ireland if you want to buy alcohol you can go to a supermarket, a local grocery store, or an off-license. Off-licenses sell alcohol only, a bit like the LCBO in Canada, except they are not government owned, but rather private enterprises. Sometimes off-licenses are stand-alone affairs, and other times they are attached to a pub, as shown in the picture below, or may form part of a store.

In Canada, the sale of alcohol is closely regulated, and (except for Quebec) it can only be sold in a few locations. In Ontario this is called the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario), a crown corporation, and the only other place you can buy alcohol is The Beer Store, a privately owned chain of retail outlets. While the Beer Store is privately owned, the nature of government regulations for the sale of alcohol, means that the Beer Store commands a near-monopoly on the sale of beer in Ontario. In other provinces there is a similar set up, though because each province has it’s own control board, the names differ. The only exception to this tends to be retail establishments owned by wineries, where they have a license to sell their own labels.

So in Canada, you’ve got to be organised, when you need alcohol. You can’t just decide on a statutory holiday, that you’d like a bottle of wine, or very late on a Sunday evening, ’cause the LCBO and Beer Store type of establishments are going to be closed. Also depending where you live, you may have to walk a bit. In contrast, in Ireland, the grocery store type affair stays open late, and some supermarkets, e.g. Tesco, are open all night, in some locations. Also given the range of options for purchasing, a drop of the hard stuff, is never far away.

A A pub called “The Malt House” in Dublin with off-license attached. This is quite a common site in Ireland.	The Liquor Control Board of Ontario regulates the sale of alcohol in Ontario and the LCBO is the only place where you can buy all types of alcohol. Similar regulatory boards exist in other provinces.
Here you can see wine for sale in a Spar, a common chain of grocery stores in Ireland.	The Beer Store, also government regulated in Ontario, sells beer from all over the world, as well as stocking many varieties from Canadian microbreweries.	When you enter a beer store in Canada, this is typically what you'll see. The actual beer itself, isn't on shelves, but the brands available are clearly viewable. You then ask for what you want, and it gets retrieved from a back storage room.

In Ireland, that would be rain, thank you very much, and lots of it! And well, yes, you guessed it (it wouldn’t take Einstein), in Canada, there’s no shortage of snow in the winter, though they tell me there’s far less of it in Toronto these days, than there was, say, for example, in the 1970s.

A pretty common site (almost all year round) when you look down in Ireland - wet pavement, wet road, wet cobblestones (well cobblestones, there are less of, though Trinity College Dublin and Temple Bar do have 'em).	I like this picture because it shows how much snow you can get in Toronto (this is a particularly bad dump!). But it's dumped all over the patio furniture and barbecue. And due to the hot summers using the barbecue a lot is pretty common! Not so in Ireland.
This is a fantastic YouTube video Sophie Bury’s brother dug up, showing how wet and wild the Irish weather can be! Also demonstrates Irish humour in action, as these lads film a fake promo for the Irish Tourist Board, encouraging tourists to visit and enjoy the weather!	Graffti and Icicles - Winter in T.O.

If you’re having a cup of tea of coffee you’re probably going to want some milk and sugar. Or cream and sugar. Or maybe just milk. Or just cream. Or just sugar. Or maybe you prefer an artificial sweetener, the fake sugar stuff. You get the idea.

In Ireland in cafés and restaurants you’ll often see a little jug of milk out on the table. They just leave the stuff out on the table for people to use! How can do they this? Because Irish people drink so damned much tea. (According to the Global Marketing Information Database, Canadians spent $9.70 per capita on tea in 2008 but the Irish spent €25.3 or $40 at today’s exchange rate. I couldn’t find current tea consumption figures in GMID but we’ll dig into it.) The Irish are sloshing down so much tea, usually with milk, that the little jugs empty quickly and it’s not just sitting around going bad. Also Irish people must worry less than Canadians about people sneezing and coughing in their public milk.

In Canada there are two ways of getting milk into your tea (or cream into your coffee) at a coffee shop: frpm cartons, which are usually housed in a metal container to keep them cool, or annoying tiny little plastic containers that hold about 5 ml of liquid. If you like a healthy dollop of milk in your tea you’ll dump about five of the things into your cup and throw out a messy handful of dribbling plastic. Probably one of the things will explode when you open it and get milk all over your shirt.

A lovely jug of milk, a small selection of nice sugar, and some flowers. You know this will be a nice cuppa.

Milk and sugar in plastic containers, soy milk in cartons, different sugars and sweeteners in packets, all on a grotty table with spilled liquids and a gaping garbage hole. Get away quickly.

There’s a line in one of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder novels that I never forgot. It goes something like: “It’s a fake Irish pub. You know how you can tell it’s fake? They serve food.”

In Ireland people go to the pub to drink. (Usually Guinness.) In Canada they go to the pub to drink and to eat. Going down to the pub after work means eating dinner. Canadian pubs (which are more commonly fake English than fake Irish) have large menus with lots of options, while at Irish pubs you’re lucky if you can get a bag of chips (“packet of crisps”) or some peanuts to let you take on some ballast.

As evidence we offer an Irish pub menu and a Canadian pub menu. The Irish pub is Gaynor’s in Leenane in Co. Galway in the west. Leenane is a very small town, but if you’ve see The Field (1990, with Richard Harris and Sean Bean) then you’ve seen Leenane and Gaynor’s. It’s now also called The Field Bar. The menu offers homemade vegetable soup, “ham, cheese, tomato, onion” sandwiches (I’m not sure if that’s four different kinds, one kind, or you can pick and choose) which you can have plain or toasted, scones, and tea, coffee, and Irish coffee to drink. Just enough to keep you going through an evening of enjoyable drinking and talking.

The Canadian pub is The Duke of York in Toronto. It’s just north of the University of Toronto and used to be my favourite pub, but has gotten larger and more corporate over the years. (My favourite pub now is Harbord House.) The menu is oversized and encased in plastic. A few of the many options: curried chicken rolls, nachos, calamari, several kinds of burgers, a club sandwich, Portuguese sausage, linguine, beef bourgignon, chicken wings, and the usual bangers and mash or fish and chips. Notice the menu also offers you a Cosmo or a “Cinnamon Toast” as special drinks to try. Why? I was there last week and all I wanted was a cheese and onion sandwich, but no.

The large, unwieldy menu at The Duke of York. This is a pretty standard menu at corporate fake English pubs in Canada.

The simple menu at Gaynor's. For Irish pubs this is a big menu.