Cafe Maplethorpe Blog :: PEI Restaurant » holidays http://www.cafemaplethorpe.com/cafe-blog A Chronicle of Food and Life on Prince Edward Island Thu, 12 May 2011 22:51:52 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 We’re Not In Kansas Any More, Toto http://www.cafemaplethorpe.com/cafe-blog/2010/04/were-not-in-kansas-any-more-toto/ http://www.cafemaplethorpe.com/cafe-blog/2010/04/were-not-in-kansas-any-more-toto/#comments Mon, 05 Apr 2010 21:29:28 +0000 cafemaple http://www.cafemaplethorpe.com/cafe-blog/?p=446 totoWe’ve been in Canada full-time for about 8 years now. Oh, yes, we travel back and forth between our home on Prince Edward Island and various parts of the United States regularly and keep on top of US news. It isn’t hard. Canadians are obsessed with the United States! Canadian media outlets carry plenty of US news–as much as we ever got when we lived IN the US. We get lots of US stations on cable. And we can access anything we want over the Internet. More than we want, really. It’s not like you can get away from the American perspective on anything in this tiny world…US culture is like global warming: deny its impact if you want, but the evidence is everywhere.

Honestly, I find that American values and actions aren’t as different from Canadian as many Canadians seem to think. And I find that Canadian values and actions are not as different from American as most Americans seem to think. (Except for Ann Coulter, who was recently in Canada on a speaking tour. THANK GOD Canadians do think and act differently than you.)

Sometimes, just sometimes, there is a clear differences in the way Canadians and Americans operate.  Sometimes the differences are pretty squarely in favor of one place or the other. But some are just differences.

closedEaster was this past weekend. In Canada, Good Friday is a national holiday, and in Canada, a holiday means THINGS ARE CLOSED. That means:

  • Stay home.
  • Do things with your family.
  • Sleep all day.
  • Do some yard work or throw some dead animal flesh on the bar-b-que if the weather is nice.

No Good Friday Blowout Sale. …No Holy Week Buy-One-Get-One Free Sale. ….No Passover Midnight Madness.

You know why? BECAUSE IT’S A HOLIDAY.

Remember those, America?

Wal-Mart was closed on Good Friday. The grocery store was closed. Ditto for banks, postal delivery, you name it. A holiday in Canada is not an opportunity to hit the mall. On a holiday, we’re kickin’ it old style up here.

We operate a very busy restaurant and bed and breakfast. The telephone normally rings constantly for reservations, cake orders and accommodations inquiries, plus the personal calls, mostly for our teen.

On Good Friday the phone rang exactly ONCE. We are scheduled to bake the cake for a beach wedding in July and the bride was on the Island visiting relatives. After repeatedly apologizing for the interruption of our HOLIDAY, she asked if it would be okay to get together over the weekend to finalize her cake details. She stopped by briefly on Saturday and made her decisions about flavor and frosting and cake stands and then she was off to enjoy her Easter holiday. We were happy to interrupt our holiday to put her at ease.

Our first “We’re Not in Kansas Any More, Toto” Award goes to Canada, where a holiday is still a holiday.

May it ever be so.

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