Are you going to Whistler, Vancouver or even Victoria for the Winter Olympic Games? Tourists typically do some research ahead of their trip unless they’re more risk takers who’d prefer to travel by whichever way the Canadian wind carries them. When Calgary hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics, I was working in the tourism and hospitality industry.
Many tourists researching about whether or not to visit Canada and attend the Olympics were calling long distance from the US and also from Europe. On my watch, one American caller from Florida asked me if he could drive up to Calgary in just a few hours. I told him it would be impossible but then asked him what made him think that it could be done. He explained to me that when he had outstretched his hand over the map of North America, his palm to his index finger made the distance from Miami to Calgary very short. So, for him, it had looked drivable in a few hours.
Nope. Maps (and we did sell maps) show the roads, highways, mountains, and cities as little tiny specs and distances that are not measured by an American’s, or anyone else's for that matter, palm size. In fact, to drive across America’s north and then West until Calgary, depending on your choice of highways and roads, might take a whole month! He said that because of that, he and his family would boycott coming, calling Canada’s distance from Florida “ridiculous”.
There were also recreational questions such as "If you don’t know how to curl what’s there to do in Canada?" I explained that I don’t even know how to curl and had never even set foot in a curling rink which isn’t at every corner like people might think.
Yes, we do have running water and indoor plumbing unless you’re at some outdoor beer fest 'n feast where portapotties rule. And although we love PEI, we don’t all share a fanatic love for Anne of Green Gables out West. We do, however, sell perfume and even deodorant in great supply and caribou is not in our staple diet. Most of us live in houses and not igloos (though two years later in Quebec we had our first ice hotel in all of North America).
Now with the world making Vancouver, Whistler and Victoria (as the nearest metropolis to get away from the Olympics) more etched on the map, there is the Vancouver Protocol Book for 600 city workers deployed for service in various Olympic venues.
The guide details that staff is requested to have their socks match their pants, to bring extra shirts as dress shirts stain easily, to not jangle their pocket change, to avoid talking about their personal lives, and to never say, “This is not my job”.
First impressions are important for these public ambassadors to the world. And one thing we were all trained to do was to smile even when you didn’t feel like it. And in the 141 page protocol book for the Vancouver games, it says to make the Canadian smile sincere and gentle “but not too much otherwise it will look suspicious.”
Monie
41 / Female
Comments: 5
Posted on May 22, 2010, 8:08 pm
why does America have such a problom with Canada, I think canadians are wonderful ppl and im an Australian
