How we spent our Canadian vacation (was "soda" in Mpls)

[Tom Kysilko]

The juxtaposition of amateur/Russian/Southern Ontario in Don's message
reminds me that a report is long overdue.  In May my wife and I drove from
Niagra Falls back to MN by way of Toronto, Bruce Penisula, Manitoulin Is,
Sault Sainte Marie, and Thunder Bay.  I tried to keep my ears open.

We did not speak to anyone until the north suburbs of Toronto.  To this
amateur the bank where I changed currency may as well have been in upstate
NY, the laundromat in Hong Kong, and the fast food restaurant in Russia.
Bi- and tri-lingual signs were everywhere (English/Russian/Hebrew or
Yiddish, not French).  My favorite linguistic scene was of two competing
Russian language bookstores right next door to each other.  One was named
Knigymania.

NW of Toronto we immediately started hearing the "Canadian raising", in
particular the raised nucleus of /au/ (Do I have that right?).  On
Manitoulin we heard and saw "camp" for cabin.  However, we did not hear the
Canadian "eh" until Sault Ste Marie.  That included ferry passengers, motel
clerks, gas station attendants, waitresses, fellow diners, and librarians.
But West of there it was ubiquitous.  In a cafe in Marathon our fellow
diners were straight out of The Great White North, but the waitress was,
indeed, straight out of Fargo.  That was pretty much the high point.  West
of there the flavor that we had come to think of as Canadian was gradually
replaced by tones that were more familiar to our ears.  By Thunder Bay the
only thing left was "eh".  (Tip to motorists: avoid motels with large
parking lots; they will be full of idling trucks by morning.)

At 11:11 PM 8/11/2002 -0400, Don wrote:
><amateur opinion/impression>
>
>All exaggeration aside, the characters in "Fargo" sound like nothing
>in small-town Minnesota I've ever heard (stops at gas stations, telephone
>calls--admittedly not extensive contact) as much as they do Southern
>Manitoba Mennonites (six years in Winnipeg, I'm a Russian Mennonite
>myself, though from Southern Ontario).  My take on the movie was
>that basing it in Minnesota made it caricature, but had the action been
>shifted a hundred miles north across the border it would have been
>very realistic.


  Tom Kysilko        Practical Data Services
  pds at visi.com       Saint Paul MN USA