You remember the Television game show 'The Price is Right'? In Canada the price certainly is right. Gas (petrol) as cheap as 72cents a litre. That's around 33 pence a litre and less than half the cost back home. Incidentally - a conundrum. If the Canadians call petrol gas, what do they call gas? Answers again to Marie Curie accompanied by a £5 note.
Accomodation and meals costs are also around half that in the UK (I know that depends where and what it is and so on), but I reckon it is a good enough generalisation. Canadians who have spent some time visiting rellies in the UK, work on the basis of paying £1 for something, which in Canada costs $1. Now you can get just over $2 for every £1. That's good enough proof for me. QED, or as Euclid had it, Quad Erat Demonstrandum (hope I remembered the spelling).
"So what's the problem Ted?" I hear you ask. Ah, I haven't told you the whole story. "What's there to tell?" Quite a lot, and it would occupy a book to go into all the regulations governing the matter. OK, if you insist I'll try and simplify.
Some years ago the Government introduced a Goods and Services Tax - GST for short. Proved about as popular as Mrs Thatcher's Poll Tax. In the UK we went out on the streets and caused, in polite terms, a rumpus, causing the whole idea to be abandoned. What did the Canadians do? Moaned, groaned and put up with it. They simply pretended it never happened.
So, when you see a price in Canada, say on a menu or on goods displayed in a shop, the actual price you pay is different - the GST (currently 7%) is added. In addition there is also a provincial tax (usually around 8%), so you end up paying around 15% more than the displayed price.
Now you understand where the title of this educational piece came from. Everything's big in Canada including this remarkable piece of delusion. Or is it they don't wish to remind themselves of a defeat?
Ted's a brightish lad with brass. Yorkshire upbringing and all that. Ted by dint of hard research discovered that, as a visitor, it is possible to reclaim the GST on certain purchases in certain circumstances. Please don't ask me to elaborate further. So off Ted trotted - receipts in hand - to the duty free shop in Sault Ste Marie right at the entrance to the bridge between Canada and the USA. Ted, optimistic as ever, hoped to get a refund in Canadian readies. Sorry, Ted. Canadian beaurocracy won't allow that. You aren't leaving the country till next month. Although most of your receipts qualify, there' s no readies.
Help was at hand. Delightful and efficient, Diana took my case on board. She even went through a forest of receipts accumulated over 7 weeks and totted up what I was due. Helped me complete the inevitable forms and I've now submitted a claim to the GST Refund Office on Prince Edward Island. Well, at least it keeps the natives there busy and prevents a rumpus on the streets. Thanks for your help Diana.
Shortly after visiting the duty free, I spied something which Canada seems short of, and that's moose.
Right outside the Casino is this big white moose covered in green horseshoes and four leaf clovers. I'm told it was a good luck thing. The punters go and touch it before a spot of throwing money away.
They'll need more than horseshoes and four leaf clovers to beat the odds. I know. I read Scarney's monumental work on gambling many years ago. Believe me, you'll never get me in one of those places and certainly not at 10am on a beautiful sunny morning. Amazing, the locals were streaming in and I always thought gambling and casinos to be a night thing.
Talking of big animals reminds me of the huge stainless steel goose on the outskirts of Wawa (see picture at top). Big attraction there now that the iron ore mine has closed. A mine still operational is the huge gold mine at Hemlo, thirty or so miles east of Marathon and immediately adjacent to the Trans Canada Hwy.
More sensible I thought was to take a boat trip. A nice relaxing and informative two hour trip through the locks and back, and a gentle sail on Lake Superior. Had a chat with Pauline, sales manager for Lock Tours Canada who run the cruises.
You even get alongside a real working steel works complete with blast furnaces and such like ironmongery. Just the same East Moors, Ebbw Vale and Llanwern in Wales before the stiff cold winds of competition from the Far East extinguished the furnaces.
Canada is still full of surprises. I was ambling around the Roberta Bondar Park (commemorating the City's most famous daughter, the first Canadain astronautess) in Sault Ste Marie early Sunday afternoon. My musician ears locked onto something normally heard north of Hadrian's Wall. Bagpipe-ish and fiddle-ish sounds led me to the 10th Annual Celtic Review presented by the MacLeod Highland Dance Studio in the open air pavillion.
Kilts weren't a half swirling in this super Scottish dance show by some fifty or so youngsters trained by Catherine Macleod. Great to see such a professional and enthusiastic presentation from some of pre-school age. Catch 'em young I say.
Enough of the serious stuff. I was told Canadians are not competitive. I just don't believe that after seeing the intensity in ice hockey and baseball games. But - this one takes the biscuit. I read in the daily newspaper 'The Chronicle Journal' that the local heat of - wait for it - The Million Dollar Challenge Screw Driving Contest had been held in Thunder Bay the day before I arrived. Task is to screw five 1&5/8th inch screws into a piece of wood in the shortest possible time.
You think I'm pulling your leg? Honest I'm not, otherwise 300 competitors wouldn't have turned up. Fastest time so far this year - 10.8 seconds. Last year's winning time? An incredible 6.7seconds. Has all the makings of an exciting Olympic event. Remember you read it first on Teds Travels.
Click here for more weblog entries.
