After not having posted in almost sixteen weeks, driving all of the way across the country with my daughter, pregnant wife, and mother-in-law, and having spent a little over a month in our newly adopted city of Moncton, I’ve decided that it’s probably high time that I posted something.
On the surface, Moncton is very different from Vancouver. It’s a much smaller place, entailing everything that one might expect in that. The people are — for the most part — very friendly. Pretty much anything is within walking distance or a very short drive. It costs less to live here.
But people are people. The people who are very friendly cease to be so when they’re behind the wheel of a vehicle and you’re on foot. Never mind that you’re pushing a stroller, or your wife is seven months pregnant. They will still run that stop sign; they will still make that turn; they will still honk at you while you’re walking through that parking lot. There are 58 traffic lights and 3,494 stop signs in this city. They don’t seem to mean much to many people.
Walking in Moncton can be quite a challenge. There are surprisingly few sidewalks, making it even harder to deal with the people in their cars. In some places there is a sidewalk on at least one side of the street, but frequently, nothing.
Another challenge to the pedestrian is the weather. While I was living on the West Coast, people would complain frequently about the rain. And it did rain a great deal, there’s no getting around that. But rain in Vancouver always had some warning: big heavy clouds and a slow start. I would watch TV shows or movies that take place in New York and see how fast a heavy rainfall could come on and think, “There’s no way that it would rain that heavily by surprise: I just don’t believe that.”
I sure do now.
Here I’ve seen it be beautifully sunny and hot one minute. And with one crack of thunder you’re caught in a 15-minute mini hurricane. Big heavy cold drops of rain with winds of such force that you’re lucky your clothes don’t blow off. These winds can make even the heaviest rain fall horizontally. Not at all what I’m used to. And it’s quite common to not be able to see the other side of the street during one of these events. I’ll never again think that a film producer is taking liberties with East Coast weather again.
(The first time we experienced one of these the three of us were caught out in it with a forty-minute walk home ahead of us. We’d had to go into a restaurant and call my sister to bring her car and rescue us.)
And then it’s gone again just as quickly. Within a few minutes the storm blows itself out, tapers off, and the sun comes back out. It’s once again sunny and hot, and in a couple of hours the puddles are dry and you can’t even tell that it happened.
And it’s so inexpensive to be in Moncton! With the one exception of milk, we pay considerably less for everything! That’s nice, that is.
In this vein, it’s time to talk about utilities. Bell touts its ExpressVu! satellite television service as the kinder, gentler option to cable. I don’t see it. Sure, what we get on our television is great. But — just like with our cable provider in Vancouver — we have to read our bill very carefully. Our first monthly invoice included charges for our free installation, and for the setup of a second receiver (for which I’d already paid). Silly Bell. I’m not paying you $100 that I don’t have to, or $50 that I have already. I’m blond, not stupid. This may be sorted out, but it will be another couple of weeks while they ‘investigate the contract and payment history.’
And then there’s the phone company. We get an awesome deal with these people and I couldn’t be happier. Except with our first bill. Just like with our old provider, we have to read our bill very carefully. We were charged for our ADSL installation (which should have been free, since we did it ourselves), the activation fee for our two cell phones (which should have been waived because of our great huge package), and double for our cell phones (because it hadn’t been programmed correctly into our account). Silly Aliant. I’m not paying you an extra $110 that I don’t have to, and never should have. I’m crazy, not stupid. All of this was taken care of with one long phone call, and should continue to be correct in the future. We shall see.
The lesson here: please don’t describe your phone or TV provider as ‘all phone and TV providers look alike.’
Oddly, I have nothing to say about the power company. But stay tuned.
And then there are the little differences, and things that I thought I would really miss.
We used to live four blocks from the ocean. I do miss this, but not so much that it keeps me up nights. Over the last few years, I didn’t take advantage of that as much as I should have, anyway.
Living around the corner from a 24-hour grocery store? This, it turns out, I don’t miss at all. Sarah and my sister do a big shopping every week, anyway, so we pretty much always have what we need. And! no more going out right when the store’s at its busiest to buy ginger. Or at 1:00 am so that we have coffee in the morning. I’d rather thought I’d need methadone to get over this one, but no. Slid right off, it did.
Having two branches of our bank within easy an easy, ten minute walk (and two more within half an hour)? Yeah, this one I miss. There’s not getting around it, the bank branch is not at all convenient by foot. Harrumph. But, that’s only one so far, isn’t it?
One thing I was sure that I wouldn’t miss was Vancouver’s bus system. Buses that run on a strange, seemingly arbitrary schedule, frequently late. I’d thought that the bus system in a smaller community might have an advantage. But I was wrong: I miss Translink. Buses in Moncton work on loops and figure eights. Nothing really meets up with anything else, the transfer system is only good for specific routes, and they run on schedules of between forty and sixty minutes. And you can’t really get a stroller onto a bus here. There are no steps up into the bus, granted, but there’s nowhere to put a stroller once you get in. You have to fold it up and leave it in the aisle, keeping the child on your lap instead. Chalk another one up for Vancouver.
Overall living in Moncton has been quite good, and we’re settling in quite nicely. We’re getting used to the slower pace and quieter living here. We are enjoying having a church within walking distance, and the [more or less] weekly brunch with my mother and sister. I’m even slowly getting used to the fact that Letterman comes on an hour later here (there’s no Atlantic time zone in the US).
But then we come to the one thing that I’m having trouble getting past: coffee. There’re no Starbucks here, and that’s good. There are, though, Tim Horton’s locations for as far as the eye can see. And, while it may always be fresh at Tim Horton’s, it’s not really what I’m looking for in a coffee shop. But there’s no Blenz. But there’s no Second Cup.
And what there really isn’t, is a Melriches. I miss them so much they don’t even have a website.
So I either need to convince those people that they need to open a third location (here!), or have everyone that I know send me care packages of large dark coffees with brown sugar and a cinnamon bun.
Then, Moncton would be perfect.
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