14 Things Canadians Abroad Say They Miss Most
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14 Things Canadians Abroad Say They Miss Most
Ask a Canadian who's been away for a year what they miss and they'll say "my family," because that's the correct answer and they're polite.
Ask them again after a beer and you'll get the truth, which is much stranger and much more specific.
It's never the big stuff. It's the defaults — the thousand small things you never noticed were unusual until you stood in a country that does them differently.
Here are fourteen that come up over and over.
1. Ketchup chips The undisputed champion. Every list, every time, without fail.
They exist elsewhere in limited and disappointing forms, but the real thing is a Canadian institution, and finding a bag in a foreign import aisle at four times the price is a legitimate emotional event. People have cried. People have bought six.
2. Milk in bags
Not because it's better. It is objectively a strange way to store milk, and defending it to a foreigner is a losing battle you will fight anyway.
It's the snip. The specific ritual of the pitcher and the corner cut. Ontarians and Quebecers abroad miss it with an intensity that surprises even them.
3. Butter tarts
Runny or firm — a debate that has ended friendships — but the real problem abroad is that they simply do not exist. You can't buy them, most people have never heard of them, and describing one makes it sound worse than it is.
You will end up making them yourself. Everyone does. They will be fine, but they won't be your grandmother's.
4. Apologizing correctly
Canadians say sorry constantly, and it does not usually mean "I have wronged you."
It means: I acknowledge you exist. Or this is mildly awkward and I'm smoothing it. Or you stepped on my foot and I'd like us both to move past it.
Abroad, that same sorry is heard as an admission of fault, and you spend a year being told you apologize too much by people who don't realise you weren't apologizing at all.
5. Tim Hortons — but specifically the parking lot version
Not the coffee. Be honest. It's fine.
It's a cup in a car cupholder on a cold morning. It's the drive-through line at 7am. It's a place to sit for three hours in a small town where nothing else is open. What people miss is a piece of infrastructure, not a beverage.
6. The first snowfall
Not winter. Winter is long and by February everyone is done with it.
But the first one — the quiet that falls over everything, the light going soft and blue, the whole world muffled. People in mild climates never get that, and Canadians abroad discover they'd trade a lot of pleasant weather for one good snowfall a year.
7. Actual air conditioning
Canadians assume air conditioning is standard. Then they move to Europe, or the UK, or half of Australia, and discover that many countries have simply decided not to bother.
Thirty-one degrees in a building with no AC and windows that open four inches is a specific horror Canadians are not culturally prepared for.
8. Free public washrooms
You will get used to paying. You will never like it.
9. Understanding the money instantly
For about four months you do maths in your head every time you buy a coffee. Then one day you stop, and you don't notice you've stopped, and that's when you know you've settled.
It's a small relief and you'll miss the effortlessness of home for the whole run-up to it.
10. Everyone knowing what a toque is
You will say toque and get a blank look. You will say hat and feel like you've betrayed someone.
The same goes for double-double, two-four, keener, and the entire western Canadian population trying to explain bunnyhug to anyone at all.
11. Hockey at a reasonable hour
Every Canadian abroad has, at some point, been awake at 3am, alone, watching a stream of questionable legality, silently celebrating a goal so as not to wake their roommates.
It's a lonely ritual and nobody would give it up.
12. Not being asked about the cold
"Does it really get that cold?"
"Yes."
"Like how cold?"
"Cold. It's fine. You wear a coat."
You will have this conversation forty times a year. It's a nice conversation. It's also the fortieth time.
13. October
Not fall generally. October specifically — the particular quality of the light, the smell, the temperature that's exactly right for one jacket. Canadians abroad grieve October in a way that catches them completely off guard.
14. The default of it
The last one is the hardest to name, and it's the one that comes up most.
It's the ease of being somewhere that doesn't need explaining. Where you know how things work without thinking. Where your accent is invisible and your references land and nobody asks where you're from because it's obvious.
That's the one you can't put in a care package.
What we've noticed
Not one person has ever said they missed a landmark.
Nobody's homesick for the the CN Tower or West Edmonton Mall. It's chips, and a snowfall, and the way a stranger says sorry.
Which is either very Canadian or just very human. Possibly both.
Your turn: what's on your list?
Genuinely — put it in the comments. We read every one, and the good ones have a real habit of turning into shirts.
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Related reading:
The Homesickness Nobody Warns You About