What Jamaicans think of Canada!
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 28/Jul/2010 23:43, 34 days ago
Well, I was shocked yesterday. I found out what Jamaicans think of Canadians. We walk around thinking of ourselves as North Americans, but better than Americans and yet what does the rest of the world really think about us? I need feedback and support on this, so please feel free to make comments in the box at the bottom.Yesterday I was told three things about Canadians that really concerned me.First, I was told that Americans think of us as the nation who sues more than any other in the world. What we've always been told about Americans turns out to be what Americans think about Canadians. The example given was a Canadian who was called a rude name by an American sued the person for verbal abuse, and incidentally won the case. The Americans who told the story thought it was extremely petty to sue for name-calling. I won't go into any detail on that one.The second example my Jamaican friend gave me was that Canadians are a wasteful nation. She said we buy groceries every week, let them go bad then throw them out before buying new the next week. I replied, in our defence, we recycle and that makes us feel better...we have composting schemes in place in many areas. She didn't think our recycling was of any significance and certainly didn't solve the problem of wastefulness in her eyes. This is in a country where there is no public recycling whatsoever besides private collections of 1 litre water bottles and they're few and far between - you have to be a good researcher to find them. The Jamaican I'm talking to lived in the US for several years and her sister currently lives in Toronto, so they know! It's what they believe about Canadians.But the third was the most shocking. The sister of my Jamaican friend works at Citizenship& Immigration in Toronto and according to her, they have casual Fridays, but not just where you wear jeans, apparently the Toronto office has bathing suit Fridays, every Friday! I'm in shock. I won't and can't believe it and told her so. Please will somebody tell me this is not true!On the bright side, I learned that Toronto does make better Jamaican patties than Jamaicans. That is something Nadine's friend Nicky said when she was here a couple of months ago. I was a bit sceptical at the time, but now that it's been confirmed by a Jamaican (the same Jamaican friend who told me the above situations), I'm good with it. Yay Toronto. But my friend did say it was Haitians who were making the Jamaican patties in Toronto. :) You can only laugh!