Because, hey, Canada needs some love as well.
Now, then, as a Yank to the Canadians, what has Stephen Harper done as Prime Minister, what were the top parties and how did the general election turn out this year?
That's a good reminder to have.
Also, while the initial expense and outlay are too much for a country of Canada's size or lack thereof, geographically and population-wise respectively, a bullet train could be a huge benefit if and when the technology gets there and the costs come down.
edited 8th May '17 1:34:19 PM by Unsung
I'm not saying that a single bullet train route would be a viable, but a few smaller ones would be nice. The obvious one is one along the St.Lawrence coordinator, so from about Toronto to Quebec City, maybe with a small feeder route going to Moncton. Another good route would be across the Prairies, hitting all the major cities in the southern half of those provinces. An interior one in BC could also be worth considering.
With regards to Montreal: English will get you along just fine if you stick to the city core/obvious tourist spots but if you can't speak at least passable French make sure you initiate conversations in English.
Also, in addition to the traffic oddities mentioned above, the city in general is not pleasant to drive in period.
edited 8th May '17 1:48:25 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.I'd love it if we had bullet trains. Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City would be a great route because it has the highest population density, and a fast train from Calgary or Edmonton to Toronto could cut down on a lot of flights. The trains aren't used much because they're old and slow.
But even in their old and slow state, the trains cost as much as flying, so I don't see how we could make new bullet trains affordable.
Note that this doesn't apply over short distances. For me to catch the train home (so, about two hours driving) it costs about 40 bucks, depending on the time of day, how long the trip is, etc. A plane ticket is at least 250 bucks. A bus would be 30, and in a small car the gas would cost maybe 20 dollars.
Canada's very different from Europe though, in that there's these great big distances between everything, even with most of the population concentrated near the border.
(That combined with the cold, and the fact that we're not the greatest when it comes to energy consciousness means that we use more energy per capita than even the US does. But there's still 6 other countries that use more, and we produce a lot of hydropower, so we can still feel smug, I guess.)
The local trains kind of suck too, unless it's GO doing it. And even GO tends to half-ass it a lot of the time. VIA, the big company, does run a train from Niagara to Toronto twice a day, except that the morning one leaves here at like 9 a.m. and the evening one arrives at like 11 p.m. No one wants to commute on that because they'll be late to work every single day and they'll have to hang around in downtown Toronto for hours every single day.
GO, on the other hand, does have a train...but it only runs to Burlington on a regular basis. You have to take the bus the rest of the way, and the bus and train schedules aren't synced up at all.
There is an initiative for a new train system...completely separate from both GO and VIA, and it's supposed to supplement the TTC in Toronto, while again being separate. We're going to end up with like 5 competing and overlapping transit systems in the GTA.
I have heard of a train that does leave from Niagara Falls on a regular basis, but it's an express train to Windsor, for some reason. There can't possibly be more of a demand for consistent train travel from Niagara to Windsor than there is for Niagara to Toronto.
edited 8th May '17 6:40:14 PM by Zendervai
Round-trip, it's over $200 for a 5-hour train ride between Ottawa and Toronto, versus $250 for a 1-hour flight. Factor in travel points (which I can't use on Via Rail), and the latter was cheaper.
Flying is far, far cheaper than the train if you want to travel a longer distance, like from Ontario to the Atlantic provinces.
Don Meredith has resigned from the Senate over having a relationship with a teenager.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/don-meredith-resigns-senate-1.4106901
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, prick.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.And that didn't make him the Governor-General, or at least Speaker of the Senate? Hn, Canadians are weird.
Also:
Cools said, even if it had come to a vote, she would have never endorsed his expulsion. "I will never vote to put any senator out of the Senate."
Probably a bit of that, and a bit of not wanting to create a precedent for expelling Senators for speaking out and saying something unpopular. Because the ability for them to speak the truth, even when its unpopular or hard to hear, is one of the most useful abilities of the Senate.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.I didn't know how much it might go off topic, so repeating here, but what did this refer to?

So, I'm gonna be heading to Montreal later this month. Anything I should know?
edited 8th May '17 1:26:44 PM by FireCrawler2002