The Ugly Canada Thread

[niwell]

The Ottawa valley is just as, if not more redneck than the worst of what Alberta has to offer. I have a number of friends from there who have... stories. It's the home of the Lanark Landowners Association which should tip you off.

These are pretty common west of Ottawa:


Ottawa Life Magazine www.ottawalife.com

[O-tacular]

Interesting. I wonder if they're even more vehemently anti government because the Feds are right on their doorstep?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by niwell

The Ottawa valley is just as, if not more redneck than the worst of what Alberta has to offer. I have a number of friends from there who have... stories. It's the home of the Lanark Landowners Association which should tip you off.

These are pretty common west of Ottawa:


Ottawa Life Magazine www.ottawalife.com

I try not to speak French too loudly when I go out that way.

Hey, just joking! Kinda...

[O-tacular]

Just saw another bag with dog poop in it tossed onto the grass of my townhome's green space. Why even go to the effort of bagging it?!? Are they trying to preserve the poo? At least left out it bio degrades. I saw another one hanging from a tree branch in Edworthy park last week too. Fuck I hate people sometimes.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Interesting. I wonder if they're even more vehemently anti government because the Feds are right on their doorstep?

Could be.

It's in that area that there was "Freedom to Measure" gas station that sold by the gallon back in the day, to protest metric conversion.

http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/mps-protest-mandatory-metric-system

[SignalHillHiker]

A pet peeve one this week - incompetence/corruption.

First, the incompetence one. I'm not sure how it works in other cities, but in St. John's the city is unable to do construction during off-peak and overnight hours. The unionized workforce just won't have it. So we regularly have lane-blocking construction during both morning and evening rush hour.

It's especially bad right now because they're working on basically all major routes at once. Over the past few days, it's taken me over an hour to reach my parents' place in Mount Pearl, when normally it's about 15 minutes. On Wednesday evening, traffic was literally parked from downtown to Mount Pearl heading west, roughly 9km. That's unheard of here.



Heading east, in the above photo I'm only about 1 km from bringing up solid in the parked cars heading that way too. I cut off to Team Gushue Highway, and went to the Outer Ring Road, which was also under construction. Yesterday Dad took a bunch of renovation shit from my house to the dump and said it took him an hour and half to get through the city, and he went around Quidi Vidi Lake, everywhere, trying to find a route that wasn't under construction.

Someone needs to just tell the workforce: sorry, work overnight or find another job. Are they allowed to do these things during the day in your city?

*****

And now the corruption. As usual, the province sold an abandoned school building for pocket change (and it wasn't advertised, of course). $189K for a prime site in the centre city area.

Just a couple of months later, the lucky man who was given it is now re-selling for $1.89 million.

[Proof Sheet]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Could be.

It's in that area that there was "Freedom to Measure" gas station that sold by the gallon back in the day, to protest metric conversion.

http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/mps-protest-mandatory-metric-system

Wow, I'd forgotten about those imperial holdouts. Honestly, who these days still mentally converts back to $/gallon. Going to the USA seems like such a step back in time, degrees fahrenheit, inches, feet, miles, gallons etc.

The 'git off my land' people are pretty active in areas between Ottawa, Kingston, Peterborough. However, I'm sure if their land was flooded, ice storm blocked the roads or knocked down power lines etc they would want the heavy hand of government to help them out.

I recall once being in a bar in Carleton Place frequented by the 'git off my land folks' and some guys at the bar were railing about 'g-d immigrants etc,'. I told these guys 'hey I'm an immigrant myself' (teenager from UK) and their response was 'yeah, but you're one of us, you're normal, you ain't no towelhead'.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

A pet peeve one this week - incompetence/corruption.

First, the incompetence one. I'm not sure how it works in other cities, but in St. John's the city is unable to do construction during off-peak and overnight hours. The unionized workforce just won't have it. So we regularly have lane-blocking construction during both morning and evening rush hour.

It's especially bad right now because they're working on basically all major routes at once. Over the past few days, it's taken me over an hour to reach my parents' place in Mount Pearl, when normally it's about 15 minutes. On Wednesday evening, traffic was literally parked from downtown to Mount Pearl heading west, roughly 9km. That's unheard of here.



Heading east, in the above photo I'm only about 1 km from bringing up solid in the parked cars heading that way too. I cut off to Team Gushue Highway, and went to the Outer Ring Road, which was also under construction. Yesterday Dad took a bunch of renovation shit from my house to the dump and said it took him an hour and half to get through the city, and he went around Quidi Vidi Lake, everywhere, trying to find a route that wasn't under construction.

Someone needs to just tell the workforce: sorry, work overnight or find another job. Are they allowed to do these things during the day in your city?

Just an impression without facts but road crews here seem to start work very early in the morning (7 am, sometimes 6) in the summer and finish around 2 or 3 pm. The reason being is it's too hot in the late afternoon. The construction industry seems to do this as well.

[SignalHillHiker]

Timely update from jeddy.



Main highway around city is closed, and you can rest assured the streets he's being funneled to are also under construction lol.

Even that sounds like an improvement, Acajack.

[GlassCity]

Here they tend to do work throughout the day if it's not too disruptive and relatively quick, just like a typical 9-5 day. However, major roads and highways are always done throughout the night, say between 10pm and 5am.

[SignalHillHiker]

One more, also via jeddy. Now I don't know what he's on about not understanding them - they're common enough. But suicide lanes are still pretty stupid.

[eemy]

You'd have a stroke if you visited KW. LRT construction has meant that major roads have been closed completely, major cross-streets blocked, and closures happening seemingly at random. It's like the entire region has been sliced in half and the only roads bridging the two halves randomly change every few days.

[Acajack]

Now that I think of it, a lot of our road work zones have lane closures whether there are workers there or not because it's torn up for a few months. You have to deal with that during rush hour of course.

But they won't close off lanes to randomly do road work during rush hour here, unless it's an emergency like a water main break.

[MolsonExport]

paving the road always means digging up the most recent pavement from just a few days ago, then digging it up again, then leaning on shovels, leaving manholes raised for an extraordinarily long period of time, then the inevitable redigging to fix a pipe, or whatnot.

pylons, pylons and fucking pylons again.

What the fuck???? It ain't rocket science. Can't the crews EVER get it right the first time? I swear to God and sonny Jesus, it must be a mathematical impossibility!

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You're surprised? I am pretty sure Timmins, North Bay, Sault Ste Marie and Thunder Bay all have country music stations. As do some of the smaller towns and cities.

Most places in the southern part of Ontario would also have at least one country station within "earshot".

The Ottawa area actually has two.

No more country station in Timmins. I think it has been at least 15 years since we had one. I am thankful for the way it is now lol.

And PLEASE don't mention Shania Twain!

Hmm, since this is an ugly thread, here is something I can't stand seeing when returning to Timmins: https://www.google.ca/maps/@48.4088451,-...RIu2-HgUJtXofy9FdcZcA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
It's a horrible photo of her now but the photo that used to be on the sign was even worse. That sign has been vandalized a number of times as well.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Loco101

No more country station in Timmins. I think it has been at least 15 years since we had one. I am thankful for the way it is now lol.

.

Thanks for that. Yeah, it doesn't have one.

I checked and it's the only major city in the north without one. And in the south they are all over the place.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Thanks for that. Yeah, it doesn't have one.

I checked and it's the only major city in the north without one. And in the south they are all over the place.

Funnily enough rural southern Ontario is probably more stereotypically redneck/country or whatever you want to call it than the North. I've had to travel around the province a decent amount and I feel more at home in Sudbury or Thunder Bay than I do in the rural south.

[Acajack]

I was curious and did a check for country music stations in Quebec. There are three of them.

Two of them are English language community radio stations on aboriginal reserves. One is at Listuguj in the Gaspésie near Campbellton NB.

The other is on the Mohawk reserve at Kahnawake south of Montreal.

The third is a French language AM station on the south shore of Montreal at St-Constant. Not too far from Kahnawake in fact. It seems to be a bit of rogue, unstable station. They go on and off the air it seems. Part of the format is country music, the other part is weird talk radio. It's a French language station.

Stations here and there across Quebec may have country music programming once a week, often for a couple of hours on Sunday. Our local talk and sports radio station on FM here in Gatineau does this on Sundays.

But the dearth of full country format FM stations in Quebec shows that it's not really viable to program country all day all the time here.

[mcminsen]

Ladies wearing full face covering sun visors. I've been seeing this for a number of years in Vancouver but more so lately. Occasionally downtown but more often in the Kerrisdale neighbourhood on the West Side where I go every Thursday. I finally took a moment to take some pics today.

I find it especially disturbing when vehicle drivers are wearing them because as a pedestrian I can't establish eye contact with them before crossing in front. And I think it's illegal for a driver to have their face covered because if there's an accident or a hit and run then witnesses need to be able to identify the driver. In this car both the driver and passenger had these visors on. It's just bizarre to go to use a crosswalk and look over and see two robots sitting in a car looking at you, or maybe they're not looking at you.




West Boulevard in Kerrisdale neighbourhood, Vancouver, Sept.15 '16, my pics

[SignalHillHiker]

I don't feel bad anymore . I want sure but was kind of hoping that would be the result.

Haven't seen that visor thing here yet. I don't think we get enough sun that people own these. It's kind of like no one owning an umbrella because it's too windy and misty than rainy.