Do Canadian babies have crooked backs and other issues I'm wondering about

Today, my dear readers (yes - I know it's called "followers" in the blog-world, but let's be honest here, it's basically my parents and a couple of other loyal friends reading this blog, and if I called you followers, my mom would think I've started a cult, so readers it is!),

So - today, my dear readers is a day of another list. I've noted down a few things that are puzzling me about life in Canada and Newfoundland, and I wanted to share them with you. Many of these issues I've already discussed with our Canadian friends, or heard being discussed, so I might have sneaked in some comments made by others into the text as well.

1. Do Canadian babies have crooked backs?

One of the things that has puzzled me the whole time since we moved here, is how babies are transported around the city. What I find very good, is that a lot of kids are simply transported on their parents' backs in different types of babycarriers until they are about 2 years old. This is understandable looking at the conditions of the sidewalks in the winter, where a stroller is a no-go 4-5 months of the year. 

However, what puzzles me the most, is that newborns and up to 1-year-olds are taken around in strollers, where the parents have simply attached their car seat. Here's a picture of what that would look like:

There is no bassinet in the stroller where the kid can lie down and sleep, but the babies are kept in the car-seat. I do know this construction from Finland, where you have to take your car everywhere and parents would use it to go to the supermarket. Here, however, it seems that this is the way children are taken for walks on a general basis, as I have not seen any other kind of strollers for smalle babies. In Denmark, a completely other extreme is in use, see an example here:

I used to call these Danish monstertrucks. It's like a bed on wheels. Difficult to put in your car, but if your baby is sleeping outside much of the day (like Danish babies do), you get why this cat-proof version is a good idea.

I'm wondering if the "studies" that are quoted to us parents in Europe, where they tell us not to let our kids sit in the car seat for longer than 45 minutes at the time, have not reached Canada? Or have they been proven wrong here and parents here are actually better educated than the European parents, who are hysterical about not letting their kid sit for too long in a sitter or car-seat out of a fear of giving their kids a bad back or, what's worse, lack of oxygen? Happy to hear your insights about this, as it's really something I'm wondering about.

2. Why doesn't everyone microwave their bacon?

I have learnt the most amazing thing from our friend JC - you can microwave your bacon! Not that I eat a lot of bacon, but whenever I'd like to, I don't, because of the discusting amount of fat that's left over on the frying pan. You can just place your slices of bacon on a piece of kitchen towel, cover it with another one and put it into the microwave for two minutes. Crispy bacon and all the fat is left in the kitchen towel! Genious!

3. What do the people transport in their trucks?

Living in St. John's, you see lots of trucks on the streets. Well, we'd call them pick-ups, but here it's just "trucks" in general. All kinds of people have one, and I've heard some women discuss this as well, just saying "Oh, I'd love me a truck". "What would you do with it?" "Just have it to drive around! It's so cool!". Quite a contrast to the favourite car of all women in Denmark - the Volkswagen Up. So, I'm wondering: what is it that they are transporting in their trucks? To be fair, the trucks here are so big, that you have a back seat, where your kids can go and often the trucks even have four doors. I've seen ski-doos being transported on them (fair enough), I've seen dogs on the back (not cool!) and I've seen all kinds of construction equipment (again, fair enough). But the majority of the trucks have nothing at all at the back. Is it a status symbol? Again, happy to hear your thoughts.

4. Were all the Canadians born with a cup of Timmy's double-double in their hand?

I know it's a cliche, but Tim Hortons really is one of the most Canadian things, I've learnt. There is one in most corners of the city, and they always have a drive-in. Yes - drive-in coffee!!! Have you ever heard about that before? However, most people I talk to never confess going to Timmy's. The coffee there is simply unbearably bad, if you're used to anything like a barista-made coffee. But: on an average day on the street, every second person you meet is carrying their large Tim Horton's, and I've now learnt that the most beloved way to drink it is: double-double - two sugars, two creams (shout out to Ms SF for explaining this concept to me). 

I have scientific proof that this is correct. This spring, while cleaning my garden, I found (without exaggeration) 25 lids of Tim Hortons' cups in the bushes. 25! This is not, because people throw them in my yard, I have to say, but because it is VERY windy in St. John's and on a windy day, you can easily lose your cup of Timmy's to the power of the wind. But, each lid has a marking on the top showing what whas in the cup, and it was lots of double-doubles, I can tell you! There was also one with 4s 4c, which I'm afraid might mean four sugars and four creams. I wonder if the person is still alive...?

Anyhow, I've recently read in The Overcast that the reason why people go to Tim Horton's in St. John's is not their coffee, but the convenience, which makes it easy to drop by and get a cup on the way to work, as you're driving past it anyway. This means a) that people always drive to work (true), that b) people are too lazy to get out of their cars for getting their morning cup of coffee (true), but also that c) Tim Horton's has been very intelligent in the way they've placed their shops and obviously know how Canadians think about their coffee - it needs to be fast and easily accessible. It does not need to taste like good coffee, just give me my caffeine.

5. Finally: Why isn't Newfoundland more of a holiday destination

The best tourist season of the year is upon us and the first icebergs and whales have landed in the coasts of Newfoundland. There has even been a polar bear on Fogo Island!

This is a perfect place to experience natural wonders like nowhere else. Last week, I drove 10km from our house, hiked about 500m and saw this:

Isn't that just unbelievable? I know St. John's isn't the most easily accessible place on earth in terms of prices of tickets, but there are plenty of nature lovers in this world who've got the money to spend on flights to get here. I know the province is trying to reprofile itself as a holiday destination, but I think there is still a long way to go. How many of you have heard about the East Coast Trail so far? (if not counting from us!) Or that we get icebergs? And we have whales right off the coast? I know, not many of you had ever heard about this place before we moved here. I'm hoping we'll be able to spread the word, as seriously, this place is full of amazing nature to explore. We haven't even started yet, properly, so I'm very excited about the summer coming.

6. And a final remark: what's up with the beards, dudes?

In Denmark, many men have recently grown out their beards in an attempt to look more viking-like. It works very well and there's a limit to the beard - you cut it, when it gets too long. Here, though, I have a feeling that the concept "the longer, the better" is now in fashion. Yesterday I saw a chap jogging in the city with very normal jogging clothes on, but his beard was seriously 15 cm long. It was swaying in the wind while he was jogging. Is it a kind of a "return to the man from the logging community"-thing they've got going on? It's like a play-off beard, if the play-offs were VERY long. I need to follow up on this when the weather gets warmer and the NHL season is over. We're due to have 16 degrees tomorrow, so I'm sure there will be a bunch of bathing suits, shorts and t-shirts visible. Are the beards gone when it gets hot?

Nova Scotia for beginners

Finally it came, our first trip off The Rock, and my first flight since November! We had decided to visit Nova Scotia, one of the four Atlantic provinces (with Newfoundland & Labrador, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island - also known as P.E.I - remember L.M.Montgomery?).

It's an hour and a half flight from St.John's, pretty much like CPH-BXL, one of my previous frequent routes, and you can choose between Air Canada (think: SAS) or WestJet (think: Norwegian). And just like back home, the bigger name doesn't always equal better service or reasonable quality-price ratio - we were amazed to find out that luggage for free is a thing of the past also with Air Canada. Note to self: buy more carry-on size luggage and spare the $25.

Newfoundland from above

We flew to and stayed in Halifax, which is the biggest city in Nova Scotia and although not a huge city, very much more so than our small and cosy St.John's. A shopping street with more than 5 stores? Check. A cinema in the city? Check. A beautiful library? Check!! The Halifax Central Library was a very interesting piece of design right at the heart of the city. Opened in December 2014, it looked like a piece of another world, but it fit very well on its space. Interesting that, unlike in Copenhagen, the library was not placed at the waterfront, but on the main street of the city.

A daylight look of the new Central Library on Spring Garden Road

I liked the way the sunset reflected from the windows - a bit like with the Black Diamond in Copenhagen

We had received an excellent 'best of'-list from the lovely HR & JC, former long-term dwellers of Halifax, and we set about following the list and liking most of what we saw!

Colourful houses and doors in downtown Halifax

This wonderful café came with the recommendation: "trust me, don't try to eat their chocolate croissant alone!"

The above was also true for their cookies, none of which were finished that day - or the next! The fireplace was a welcome source of warmth on a chilly day.

Another recommendation (but from a different source) had been Cow's ice cream, which is supposed to be the best in the world according to a vote by travellers all across the globe. Unfortunately for us, there was more ice outside than inside the shop, so we will have to leave the tasting to another time in the future.

Just by chance, we saw a poster for a world-class sports event taking place in Halifax just during our visit: the World Men's Curling Cup 2015! We checked out the programme and realized to our amazement that Finland was playing Italy that same night. What else was there to be done but buy tickets and go support our blue-white guys towards victory against Italy? (and for those interested: Sweden won the cup against Norway, Canada was third and Finland - at that time world nr. 14 became sensationally fourth!)

Finland's skip Aku Kauste securing victory over Italy

Lucky for me, I had already had the chance to watch one or two games of curling in Newfoundland and understood some of the basic rules, but I'm still to learn more of the vocabulary before I can call myself fluent in the language of curling. As a sidenote I can tell you that the first ever olympic medal to Newfoundland is from curling, where Canada beat Finland in the 2006 final of the winter olympics. So curling is big here!

Apart from sports, we spent a lot of time just walking around the city, as most shops were closed due to Easter. Halifax has got its fair share of snow this year (much more than St. John's!) and it was easy to see that the winter had not been friendly towards the locals.

How to find a water pump in the snow?

The Carrot Community Grocer in Halifax

On our last day, we rented a car and drove out of the city heading southwards to the South Shore, which is the beautiful coastline showing pictoresque Nova Scotian fishing villages, lighthouses, ships and coastlines. We were not in luck, as it was pouring down with rain much us the day - hence very few pictures. Some of the sights included the tiny fishing village of Peggy's Cove, with a well-known scenery of rocks and a beautiful lighthouse - packed with tourists in the summer but with us and two other people this time of the year. This is what it looks like when it's pretty!

We drove through Mahone Bay and ended up in Lunenburg, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and would you believe it, also all of these things: National Historic District, Communities in Bloom's Most Beautiful Small Town and winner of Prettiest Painted Places in Canada, Port City of the Year and Society of American Travel Writers' Award recipient. But when it's foggy and grey, much of these awards are irrelevant and what you want is a good coffee and a nice piece of cake. We did find that! What caught my eye more than anything in Lunenburg, were the wonderful decorations in the electricity poles!

The three churches of Mahone Bay in the fog - one Anglican, one Lutheran and one United.

This was just a very quick taste of Nova Scotia for us and I have a feeling there's much more to it in the summer. I had hoped for a bit more spring in the air for early April, but I have now learned my lession and will do like the locals do next year: head for the Caribbean when April hits and the snowbanks are still towering high.

Most photos are my own, but there are also a few here that I nicked off my dad, Mr S! Thank you!

Marble Magic

Last weekend we got our first chance to really get to see more of Newfoundland and to exit the Avalon peninsula for the first time: we were able to trick a group of our Newfie friends to take us along on their traditional skiing trip to The mountain in Newfoundland: Marble.

Just a word of warning before you scroll any further: this post is very picture heavy as it's the first travel diary-entry in this blog.

The conditions for a skiing holiday could not have been better - Deer Lake, which is close to the skiing hill, has got 560cm of snow this year - so far. Here in St. John's, we've also got our share, and this was just last week:

Our door and deck following the latest snow storm

Canada-style, it wasn't just a two-hour drive to the nearest skiing hill, but a respectable 650km trip to the other coast of the island. Drive or fly? That was our question! We ended up with a compromise - some of us took the plane to spare the little Miss E from sitting in the car for hours, and others (aka me, myself and I) took the car. Timewise, I wasn't the one who won the bet...

Thanks to my brother-in-law FK for sending me this picture!

...but after I saw the plane that had transported my husband and daughter across the island in the wind speeds typical for this part of the world, I was happier to have been on the four wheels!

18 seats and no door between the cabin and the flight deck. No cabin personnel. Puuuh.

Marble Mountain is not the only attraction on the West Coast of Newfoundland, which is also home to the UNESCO World Heritage site Gros Morne National Park. We have plans to make a longer trip there in the summer, so we wanted to get a taste of the park before making any further plans. Gros Morne is a candy store for anyone interested in geology and it has a lot of very interesting hikes and day-trip opportunities the rest of us too. It did not seem too accessible in the winter conditions, though, so we ended up taking a short walk on show-shoes to the Lobster Cove Head lighthouse, which overlooks Rocky Harbour. 

Lobster Cove Head lighthouse in Gros Morne national park

Rocky Harbour with the Tablelands - half frozen, half open in mid-March

View of the Tablelands through a very dirty car window

After Gros Morne, it was time for the really fun part of the weekend - finding our enormous cabin in Humber Valley and putting on the ski boots for the first time in a long time! Marble Mountain is not an enormous skiing centre, but reminded me of the hills I know from back in Finland. It was wonderful!

Well, they say 30 slopes, but not quite sure if that's right...

We were unbelievably lucky with the weather and had to keep on taking off layer after layer as the day went on, but luckily the snow stayed in good condition and it was pure joy to ski. Our crew of 7 adults were all on the slopes much of the day while the kiddos were taking lessons or doing crafts at the childminding centre at the bottom of the hill.

No queues in sight even though it was Saturday and the weather was perfect!

Views from the Marble Mountain

More views off the mountain towards Humber river

The lovely ladies JS, HR and HK enjoying the ride up the hill

 

The "cabin" where we stayed was luxury, Canadian style (well, I'm not sure if the Canadians considered luxury, rather than standard, but nevertheless). With five en-suite bedrooms, two sitting rooms, a large kitchen and a deck the size of our own house, it was really the biggest house I have ever been to. And there was a hot tub on the deck. You know those advertisement about skiing holidays in Canada where you see people sitting and relaxing in hot tubs after a long day on the slopes? This was it. Starry sky during the night? Check. View over the river and to the mountains? Check. Nice company, good wine and beer? Check. Although I didn't take a picture of the hot tub without people in it, I do have a picture of the tubs in one of the bathrooms, just to give you an idea.

A place to relax

 And here is a view from the deck towards Humber river:

 

Driving in Newfoundland can be very dangerous due to the moose - it is said that, as with pigs in Denmark and sheep in New Zealand, there are more moose than people on the island of Newfoundland. While I did find out that this was not technically true, there are a lot of them (120,000) and they do venture out on the highways. I saw signs for moose accidents last year (12) and this year (1 so far), but luckily the only moose I saw during my 1300km of driving on the Trans-Canada Highway, also known as T.C.H. was this one at the Marble Lodge.

The drive home was beautiful, sunny and straight, and I look forward to making the trip again next year. I hope we manage to trick our Newfie friends into taking us along again another time - you never know, as we did beat them in the unbelievably funny game of Cards Against Humanity. That just goes to show what nice people the locals are - it's impossible to make them seem like the Horrible People you have to be to win this game :-). We love it here!

Sunrise over the Trans-Canada Highway at about 570km mark.

 Once more, the picture credits should be placed where they belong: with JK.

Monday morning amazingness on the Signal Hill

Today, my dear readers, is an exceptionally beautiful day in St. John's. The sun is shining from a blue sky, there is no wind at all, and it's nicely crispy with -6 C. The time had finally come for me to hike around the Signal Hill!

The Signal Hill is the landmark of St. John's and overlooks the entry to the city's harbour, The Narrows. It's a notoriously windy place and every attempt to walk there longer than 30 minutes has been so far doomed by the wind or bad visibility. Not today!

I started walking around George's Pond towards Cuckold Cove and was happily surprised by the nice condition of the trail. I had not brought my snowshoes this time, but had my poles and my traction cleats, which have proven to be essential in this city.

Here is a small photo diary of my hike. I should mention that the Northhead trail, where I walked much of the way, is closed until 30 April, so don't tell anyone I was there! 😉

For those of you who know the area, my route was: George's Pond, Ladies' lookout, Cabot Tower, Northhead trail to The Battery, Battery to Signal Hill climb and then scrambling in the snow to the Visitor Centre. 2 hours of sun, snow and happy thoughts!

The Atlantic is gathering quite some ice around here

View towards Cuckold Cove

On the Northhead trail towards the Battery

Canadian navy leaving town with the whole crew waving onboard

At the Battery

Upwards on somebody's backyard

The last steps before the scrambling in the snow began

On power and not having any

Before the winter began for real (well, it hasn't really ever begun, but let's say snow means winter)- yes, before winter came, we received a flyer from the city of St. John's' electricity provider: what to do in case of a power outage.

This winter readiness update, as they called it, explained how the company has everything in place now to tackle the island's challenging winter conditions.

The Outage Safety Checklist has been attached to our fridge door since then, without me really looking at it.

I had expected the power to go (if it was to go at all) on a stormy night with tons of snow and blizzard conditions. This morning, sunny, almost without wind, no snow fall and temperatures close to 0, I heard that all the schools in the city were closed due to power outages. Say whaaat?

The NL Hydro says that due to technical problems and an oil leakage they were not able to produce enough electricity for the grid, which is why they had to initiate rolling outages (we cut your power for a bit to save electricity, then we cut from the suburb next to yours, etc). You get the picture. Or?

A bit of background information is necessary. Last winter was tough in Eastern Newfoundland and it was tougher for the electricity grid. Starting with rolling blackouts, the whole grid went out on Jan 4 2014, and with a hashtag of its own, #darknl, the province stayed in the dark for days. For our street the outage was apparently 7 days long. Difficult to imagine, isn't it, unless you're living in a developing country? They say that the electricity provider's generating capacity is generally low.

Until now, the blackouts I've experienced in Europe have been caused by flooded basements, falling trees or lightnings striking in the wrong places. Power outages caused by too much use and too little production tell me that there's quite a lot of work here in the province in terms of, not necessarily electricity production, but limiting electricity consumption. 

The NL households use third most electricity in Canada (after Prince Edward Island and Alberta), with an average of 111 gigajoules per household (you can check out the stats from Statistics Canada here: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-526-s/2013002/t004-eng.htm.)

The power in our house didn't really go out today, so I can only imagine what a fun day this school-free day with nice weather has been for all the kids that got an unplanned-for day off. Poor parents, is all I can say. 

I have had another look at the power outage checklist, though, and we now have a small reserve of potable water in our basement. 

Snow fun

Last Thursday it finally happened: we got snow! And not just a little bit, but a whole 45cm in a day. That kind of snowfall combined with windspeeds exceeding the name of this blog meant that the whole city was shut down for the day - the schools, day care, offices and even the roads were closed. Not that I would have wanted to go out anyway, as the risk of a) being blown away by the wind or b) being hit by a car not seeing you or c) being buried in flying snow was very high.

So, we spent the whole day indoors watching our neighbours car being buried, cm by cm, in snow. At the end of the day it looked like this:

Once the city had dug itself out of the snow on Friday, it was time to finally enjoy! The winter sun, that I have previously written about, showed itself once more both on Saturday and Sunday and we had the chance to try out our new toys that had just arrived by post:

I had been snowshoeing before a couple of times but being here by the wonderful hiking paths of the East Coast Trail and all the other walks made us decide to buy showshoes of our own. This time we had a sick kid at home so it was not possible to venture into the wilderness for a whole day right away, but instead we went to the Pippy Park campgrounds, which are 7min drive from our home.

There is a trail for snowshoeing and groomed, free cross-country skiing trails for a few kilometers. The best part is that they also have equipment rental and they are open in the evenings with lit trails!

I was a bit suspicious at first at the "campground" concept, but having stayed at Canadian campgrounds before, I knew that they were normally not open plain grassfields like you often see in Europe, but in the forest and with beautiful settings. So is this and the only things reminding of the campground were the entrance and some picnic tables scattered here and there.

 

Snowshoeing was a lot of fun, even on a track like this! You felt like being in the forest and in the middle of the nature, even though the city was just by your feet. I look forward to exploring some of the paths a bit further away from home as well, in the hopes that the snow will stay for a few more weeks. Right now it looks like this: 

 

On Sunday I decided to try out the cross-country trails and my own skiing condition (NOT GOOD!). For 5 bucks an hour I got an OK pair of skis, boots and poles, and went around the different loops of the campground. It felt almost like being in Finland! The sun was shining the whole time and there were lots of people out an about. Here are some impressions from the trails.

Here I felt like in Ylläs! Except for the big building on the left, which is the provincial government's seat, the Confederation Building.

In some parts there was no trail for classic style, but that was more an exception than the rule.

I do have to mention that the weekend was also somewhat characterised by endless checking of news from Copenhagen and Denmark, and while going around in the nature I spent a lot of thoughts to our old hometown. I still am.