Canada, the BIG country

Canada is bigger. Bigger than most other countries (in fact, all except Russia). But Canada is also much bigger than other countries. At least that’s what we noticed in the 5 months we spent in Canada. Here are some of those things: Cars. When we bought our Hyundai Santa Fe we thought: okay, that’s already a big car. But next to one of those huge pickup trucks, our SUV looked like a toy. Some pickups already have a hood that is chin-high. But for some people, that’s not enough and they give it an extra lift. That would all be kind of funny, but these huge hoods can be a deadly danger for children, as they simply disappear behind them. What’s more, the fuel consumption of these pickups is absolutely catastrophic.

Pack sizes. We’re not quite sure why, but many products are available here in normal supermarkets in pack sizes that you would only get in a cash & carry here.2 kg of cheese? 5 kg of yogurt? 4 liters of milk?Sure, that’s ideal!Of course, there are also often smaller units. But they are much more expensive per gram of product.For example, 4 liters of chocolate milk sometimes only costs about 3 times more than 0.5 liters.

Distances. This is of course somewhat obvious in a country as large as Canada. Nevertheless, “near” and “far” have completely different meanings here. We have also adapted to this somewhat – 1 hour by car? That’s just around the corner! 7 hours to the next town? A day trip! 800 km of gravel road to the sea? Let’s go! Roads. For bigger cars, you have to have bigger roads, of course!

Properties. In a country with so much space, you can afford to be generous with the space. Many houses, for example, are only built on one level and without a basement, and often have a spacious garden and/or a large garage or workshop. Away from the cities, plots of less than 5000 m² are practically impossible to find and many have many times that amount.

Cities. Of course, compared to Switzerland, practically every country has large cities. But what I mean by that is more the size of cities than the number of inhabitants. Here, everything is simply built bigger and so cities quickly take up huge areas. Big cars, wide streets, spacious houses. It seems as if the population density of Canadian cities is lower than that of European cities, which at least these figures seem to confirm. Sandwiches. Well, that’s actually part of the pack sizes. But still, has anyone ever seen a sandwich this big?!?!?!?!?!

Jenga. With so much forest in Canada, Canadians can afford to make only about two Jenga blocks from every tree they cut down. Perhaps Canadians play Mikado using cranes!