Driven to reflection

As I sit in the local Chevy dealership awaiting the sting in the tail - those little extras that mechanics always seem to find wrong with my aging SUV during its service – my mind wanders and I begin to marvel about driving in Canada.

Initially, ‘marvel’ is perhaps not the best verb with which to describe my thoughts because I’m recounting how many miles I’ve traveled and hence how many services my not so trusty car has had in the ten months since my arrival in Haliburton. I’ve tried to avoid these precautionary pit stops, believe me. I ignore the sticker, so kindly stuck to my windshield, which reads “next service due in … kilometres”, and I speed quickly past the dealership for fear of an accusatory finger wag from Norm and his mechanics. But, with another 10,000 kms under my fan belt, here I am sitting waiting for judgement time (receiving the bill) again.

I’ve racked up a good 50,000 kms since I moved to Haliburton. This may not sound a particularly high rate of clicks to the seasoned Canadian motorist but coming from a land where car manufacturers advise a service every 18,000 kms or once a year, which ever comes first, it’s quite an achievement. And, to a fellow who hadn’t owned a car for a decade before moving here, it may as well be to the moon and back!

You see, I believe it’s all about perceived distance: what you think is a long drive; where you think far away is; how long you’d travel for an hour’s visit with your grandma. The answers given by English and Canadian folk would be worlds apart, I guarantee.

To give an example, my mum often pops for coffee with her friends back in Blighty; it’s a five minute, 5 km drive. Popping over for a coffee with a friend in Haliburton County can mean driving 50 km each way!

My English friends gasp when I tell them of traveling 230 kms into Toronto for a meeting. They practically call me a lair when I state that it takes over a day to drive west out of Ontario. They can’t imagine the 4400 km schlep from Toronto to Vancouver. Why? Because it’s further than driving the entire length of the UK, three times. That’s why!

English folks, you see, picture English distances when talking about driving. They also think of English traffic, which never bodes well for pleasant discussion. The UK is a small island with far too many folks living on it. Every one of them seems to own a couple of cars and has the ability to drive both at the same time, or so it seems on highways overflowing with traffic.

It’s a fact that in London the average speed of motorised vehicles is 6 km/h, and I’m not talking about golf carts. Every road trip from my London apartment was an ordeal. With gritted teeth and furrowed brow, I’d slide reluctantly into the driving seat of my rental car and no sooner had I reached the end of my road than the first fist waving obscenity strewn interaction with another similarly embattled driver would take place. No one gives an inch in London, let alone offers to allow you to turn in front of them into the crawling line of traffic: no matter that cyclists sail past the almost stationary cars and a pensioner walking an aging three legged terrier has just overtaken them.

There are good roads in the UK. Beautiful twisting turning lanes amidst patchworks of quintessentially English countryside: hedges and trees growing tall either side, sometimes curving over to create sun dappled tunnels of foliage. The trouble is they are few and far between and to get there you inevitably have had to negotiate a spider’s web of traffic clogged suburban streets while verbally abusing every second driver you have had the displeasure of making eye contact with.

In contrast, here in Canada driving is a pleasure from the moment I leave my driveway and that’s a good job too because there’s a hell of a lot of driving to do. I am still getting used to ‘distance’ and Canadian ideas of what it constitutes, though, so don’t be surprised if I turn up for that quick coffee with you, suitcase and sleeping bag in hand!