Driving around all my old haunts yesterday, I was thinking
about some expressions that are uniquely
Canadian, deriving from some "made in Canada" event or issue or
commercial product.
Since there's quite a collection of present- and ex-
Canucks on FoRK, I thought I'd try these out on you as a quiz.
Extra points for correct responses by
Yanks or other non-Canadians. Also, can anyone else come up
with other such expressions which are a unique part of
contemporary Canadian language?
What is the significance of, or to what do each of the following refer:
Crappy Tire.
Armadillo beer.
Loonies and Toonies.
Clicks. (as a unit, e.g. "5 clicks").
Distinct Society.
Poutine.
Bulroney.
"The Zalm"
The Big Blue Machine (not quite so contemporary - a bit dated now)
RRSP Season. (When is it? What causes it to be a 'season'?)
The 905 belt.
Driving around,
I noticed that Ontario is, like many US states, moving to 7 character
license plates - 4 alpha, 3 numeric in Ontario - that's good
for about half a billion combos, so should hold them for a while.
California, of course,
was forced by its car culture to do this decades ago, and states
I've seen it in recently include Ohio, Virginia and NY.
So where are all the Y2K style cries as we chew up area codes
in the North American dialing plan (used to be middle digit
had to be 0 or 1, no longer), and move from 6 to 7 char license
plates, and various other "running out of namespace" issues?