Speech pattern and typographical variations across Canada

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by JHikka

Had a conversation with someone yesterday and they were adamant that Maritimers were the only people in Canada that referred to paper used in school or binders as loose leaf. I remember hearing some Ontarians refer to it as line paper but i'm not sure how accurate this claim is.

I definitely remember some or maybe most teachers back in the 1980s calling it loose leaf here in Timmins when I was in elementary school. I also remember one teacher who called those longer lined sheets "foolscap." But I think by high school in the 1990s almost everybody called it lined paper.

The Hilroy packs of 200 sheets were labelled as "ruled sheets."

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Is "shitbaked" actually a local term? I could've sworn I've heard that everywhere?

http://www.narcity.com/stjohns/12-sl...hear-st-johns/

I'm pretty sure I've heard it used by African-American rappers as well. Mainly the ones who are into marijuana of course.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Loco101

I'm pretty sure I've heard it used by African-American rappers as well. Mainly the ones who are into marijuana of course.

Really? Do you have any songs you can think of? I listen to a lot of rap from a lot of different artists, and this forum is still the first time I've heard the term.

[Pinus]

Loose-leaf is still used commonly as a term for paper and binders, although filler paper (never heard of this term until I looked something up on the internet) is also used as well. Part of the American culture creep and the ultimate Americanisation of Canada in the long run

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by Pinus

Loose-leaf is still used commonly as a term for paper and binders, although filler paper (never heard of this term until I looked something up on the internet) is also used as well. Part of the American culture creep and the ultimate Americanisation of Canada in the long run

It's AmericaniZation lol

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

Really? Do you have any songs you can think of? I listen to a lot of rap from a lot of different artists, and this forum is still the first time I've heard the term.

Wiz Khalifa has used it: http://www.scoopnest.com/user/wizkha...13465867223040

But I think it's more commonly used in Newfoundland, especially in St. John's from what I can tell.

[SignalHillHiker]

Cape Breton's accent fascinates me. I would definitely peg these two as Newfoundlanders if someone showed me the video without context (and it wasn't about Cape Breton, lol). I couldn't place the town, and there are some things a little off (closer to mainland than most people here would say it) so I'd guess south coast. Anywhere from Placentia to Ramea.

They even use frig and right the correct way. And the... flow... is the same. They go up and down in the correct places. It's disorienting. The only obvious difference is someone here with an accent that thick would definitely pluralize more words than they do "Americans thinks'der comin' to town", "You sees us up'er freezin", etc.

And when buddy says is "he ever hard-lookin' too" - the way he says "too" is just... it's how I'd say it if I was mocking a Canadian accent. Very strongly... not here.

• Video Link

[ue]

Haha yeah, I was surprised with how Newfie the Cape Breton accent is when I was thre. Was a pleasant surprise, but a surprise nonetheless! I expected the accent to be the same as Mainland Nova Scotia.

[SignalHillHiker]

I'm not surprised. In Canada's censuses in the 1920s/30s, they actually recorded the percentage of the population that was "Foreign-born; Newfoundland". And it's up to 10+% of most of the towns on Cape Breton Island. And that's only the ones born in Newfoundland, not their kids, or grandkids, and I'm quite certain many of our cultural traits survive at least that far.



But it's so weird to hear someone that... pulls your guard down, makes you immediately warm and friendly like they're family because you think they're from your home, and they're NOT. That's bizarre. If we were separate countries and Canada needed to spy on us for any reason, just send Cape Bretonners, we'd tell them the works.

[ue]

Ok, but you can understand how someone from a completely different part of the country and unfamiliar with the nuances, would be surprised, eh?

So is it directly due to Newfoundland immigration or did the Cape Breton accent develop similarly to yet distinctively from Newfoundland? I assumed the latter.

[SignalHillHiker]

Oh, I can understand. I was surprised first going there, as a teenager, too. Sorry, not sure what part of what I said was dismissing your statement in that way. I only discovered the immigration thing post-joining SSP. I think perhaps I should've said, "I'm not surprised, anymore".

I've no idea what caused their accent to be so close to ours. It definitely wasn't an accent that could've come from Scotland. And even their flag in that video, despite the Scottish symbolism, is still Irish green.

[ue]

Perplexing, indeed! Perhaps someone from Cape Breton can shed light on this. I didn't know about the large Newfoundlander diaspora going back decades in the Sydney area, though I guess it makes sense with the ferry and all. The only places in the Maritimes I did see Newfoundland plates were in Cape Breton and in Halifax. In fact, Halifax seemed to be the only place with a true nexus of the Atlantic provinces. Moncton and Saint John had some of all three Maritime provinces, PEI had similar, but Cape Breton didn't seem to have any PEIers, and instead had more (albeit subtle) Newfoundland presence. Halifax had all 4 it seemed.

[SignalHillHiker]

Definitely. Most people here don't really seem to know New Brunswick exists. They might go to PEI as tourists. But Nova Scotia in general, and Halifax in particular, is universally well-known. In fact, the farther west you go on the island (of Newfoundland), the more Halifax replaces St. John's as "going to town". People in, say, Port aux Basques, or Stephenville, or even Corner Brook, are surprisingly likely to have been to Halifax several times in their lives but never to St. John's.

Halifax is the Atlantic Canada capital, so to speak. Now, it's important - not just for bitchiness, but genuinely for accuracy, to note that while this includes much of Newfoundland, it doesn't really include St. John's. We're truly isolated, simply too far away, and doing our own thing. But Halifax is the natural place to think of when wanting to move to "the city", or go to university, or even take a shopping trip, in many western parts of the island.

And I'm not saying we're equal on the other side. Halifax's influence is Edmundston NB to probably Deer Lake NL. Ours only goes as far as Gander. But, despite we're smaller, and all of that, it's still genuinely, actually separate.

[ue]

That's strange to me because Halifax is a lot further from Corner Brook or Grand Falls-Windsor than St. John's is. Not to mention the whole shared Newfoundland identity. I get that due to the types of highways, cross-island traffic is slower than through the 3 Maritime provinces, but still. I'd assume Memorial has a higher Corner Brook diaspora than Dalhousie or St. Mary's. I could sort of see the argument for Sydney and Cape Breton as a whole, because it's a lot closer due to the ferry, but Halifax is another 4 hours from Sydney on top of a 7 hour ferry!

[SignalHillHiker]

It just doesn't feel that way when you're there. I went to College in Stephenville and I did the DRL (the bus across the island). It takes 12 hours to get to St. John's. And it's just a straight rip across the north-middle of the island that doesn't go handy to most communities. So it's 12 hours of nothing. It's demoralizing, draining. It got so bad my parents paid to fly me from Stephenville to St. John's instead (45 minutes only).

Going to Halifax isn't as mentally exhausting. 2-3 hours to the ferry, then 5 hours to Halifax. It FEELS shorter, even if it isn't.

I hope Trevor3 stumbles across this thread. I think in the past he's indicated that Halifax was the natural "going to town" for him, and he's from Stephenville.

[Trevor3]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

It just doesn't feel that way when you're there. I went to College in Stephenville and I did the DRL (the bus across the island). It takes 12 hours to get to St. John's. And it's just a straight rip across the north-middle of the island that doesn't go handy to most communities. So it's 12 hours of nothing. It's demoralizing, draining. It got so bad my parents paid to fly me from Stephenville to St. John's instead (45 minutes only).

Going to Halifax isn't as mentally exhausting. 2-3 hours to the ferry, then 5 hours to Halifax. It FEELS shorter, even if it isn't.

I hope Trevor3 stumbles across this thread. I think in the past he's indicated that Halifax was the natural "going to town" for him, and he's from Stephenville.

Yup. There's a more natural flow from the west coast to the Maritimes than to St. John's, and it's really just a matter of convenience/travel time. When I was a kid, Stephenville had upwards of 5 flights a day to Halifax and maybe one to St. John's. In high school, our band did an annual trip to Halifax for the Atlantic Band Festival. A lot of kids finish high school and go to CBU, ST. FX, Dalhousie, MSVU, UNB, or STU (lots of NL plates in Fredericton by the way, largely because of UNB and STU, and I ran into a bunch of west coast NLer's up there).

When you think about it, St. John's is an 8-9 hour drive from home in the winter or a $700 round trip flight. Halifax is 4 hours of driving and a boat ride - and when we get off the ferry it's only a hop, skip, and a jump down the highway, or a $500 round trip flight ($300 in the summer with Porter). And if you've grown up in a small town and want a change of pace, the Maritimes is more appealing because you can go to 5 little cities for weekend getaways, go to PEI for a trip, and there's generally more on the go in Halifax than St. John's on account of being larger. St. John's is really isolated, and there's a townie/east coast identity that is entirely different than what we have on the west coast.

Just for comparison, in terms of the actual distance you travel: Stephenville is closer to Sydney than Grand Falls-Windsor. When I go to Google and search for X nearest to me, the radius tool they use gives me results in Charlottetown, Halifax, and Moncton before St. John's. Given the distance to go either way, I'm more likely to drive down to Port-aux-Basques, drop my car at the ferry terminal and go to Cape Breton for a weekend and visit friends than go to St. John's to do the same thing.

I like going to St. John's for a weekend, but you lose 2 days just in travel - 8 hours each way wipes you out - so you only get 1 actual day out there from a 3 day weekend. Whereas I can leave home at 8pm on Friday and be in Halifax well rested by lunch time on Saturday, leave Halifax after supper Sunday, catch the boat, and be at work Monday morning.

On the Cape Breton thing: There was a ton of work in the 20th Century in the steel industy and coal mines. NLers always travel for work, so they went to and settled in Cape Breton. My mom's family is from Glace Bay but the family originated in Placentia Bay before that. My great-grandfather was fire chief in Glace Bay, his father left Placentia to works in the mines. Plus a lot the businesses in Cape Breton also held interests in NL. The limestone quarry and mining operations at Aguathuna on the Port au Port peninsula were operated by DOSCO, along with the Bell Island mines, to compliment the steel plant in Sydney. http://www.hiddennewfoundland.ca/agu...mestone-quarry There were also a few retailers in Sydney that opened second locations in Stephenville during the base years. Even the first settlers in Stephenville came from Cape Breton. There's always been a free flow of people and goods between NL, especially the west coast, and especially before the completion of the TCH in 1966, and Cape Breton just based on proximity and ease of travel.

EDIT: Just another example of all of this: On Boxing Day my friend group decided to have a keg party and beer pong tournament for a little throwback night to when we were youngins' fresh out of high school. There are no local breweries so we ordered one from the closest one: Breton Brewing in Sydney. Had one of the boys pick it up on his way to the boat as he headed home for Christmas.

[SaskScraper]

Growing up on The Prairies, you get the perspective that the Maritimes and Newfoundland are compact provinces and so therefore must be easy to get around but by doing a quick google maps driving distance search, one actually finds that it takes quite long to drive across these provinces anyway.

TCH in Newfoundland is a 9hr drive, in New Brunswick its 4.5hr, Nova Scotia from Sydney to Yarmouth is 7hrs. In comparison to the 5hr drive across Alberta & 5hr in Manitoba, 6hr drive across Saskatchewan on TCH and all on divided highway. Doing weekend trips to Calgary or Edmonton from Sask is usually by driving and relatively easy hop as compared to say 22hrs to drive across Ontario on mostly single lane each way TCH.

Up until visiting Halifax a couple years ago I had no idea that Cape Bretoners had a Newfie accent.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by SaskScraper

TCH in Newfoundland is a 9hr drive, in New Brunswick its 4.5hr, Nova Scotia from Sydney to Yarmouth is 7hrs. In comparison to the 5hr drive across Alberta & 5hr in Manitoba, 6hr drive across Saskatchewan on TCH and all on divided highway. Doing weekend trips to Calgary or Edmonton from Sask is usually by driving and relatively easy hop as compared to say 22hrs to drive across Ontario on mostly single lane each way TCH.

This is a bit of a strained comparison. Yarmouth to Sydney is just about the longest possible driving trip in Nova Scotia, not a representative trip. Part of why it takes 7 hours is that there is no direct route; Sydney and Yarmouth are only 530 km apart, and Yarmouth is a comparatively isolated small town.

Most people in the Maritimes live in the central part (Central NS, Southern NB, and PEI) and the longest common driving trips are around 5 hours. Newfoundland is a different story. It is somewhat larger and much less densely populated, so there aren't a lot of convenient roads. St. John's is 500 km from Port-aux-Basques but the road is 900 km.

Likewise not many people do regular road trips from Toronto to Thunder Bay.

[esquire]

^ I've been to Atlantic Canada a few times but only really roadtripped around NB/PEI/NS once. I was pleasantly surprised by how close everything felt in that area. By contrast, I was a little surprised by how far away NL was... my mental map at one point lumped NL into the same region as the Maritime provinces but when you really stop and consider the distances involved when using surface transportation, you begin to appreciate why that's not really accurate.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ I've been to Atlantic Canada a few times but only really roadtripped around NB/PEI/NS once. I was pleasantly surprised by how close everything felt in that area. By contrast, I was a little surprised by how far away NL was... my mental map at one point lumped NL into the same region as the Maritime provinces but when you really stop and consider the distances involved when using surface transportation, you begin to appreciate why that's not really accurate.

A lot of Canadians don't have a clear idea of the difference between Newfoundland and the Maritimes. The image of outports on ironbound coast has replaced everything else. But most Maritimers live in agricultural and historically industrial areas (along small rivers) similar to what you find in coastal New England.

Sometimes people argue that the Maritimes are part of Appalachia (implicit corollary: populated by primitive hill people) but that is obviously mostly untrue if you look at a map. The northwestern part of New Brunswick is an extension of the same mountain range, but southern NB and most of NS are coastal lowlands like eastern Massachusetts and Long Island. Areas like the Annapolis Valley and PEI have some of the best farmland along the east coast.


Source

The green parts of that map are where most of the people live in the Maritimes.