18/10/96

Oy Canada

Unspoiled, serene, friendly. Until seven Israeli journalists got through with it.

    If you've been reading the travel pages in this here paper, you might have noticed I've been to Canada. And by now, you're probably sick to death of reading about my trip to Canada. Stay with me, though. I saved the nuttier stuff for this page.
    My reason for being there was, for instance, nutty. It seems Canada wants Israeli tourists, so they invited seven journalists to tour the country at the expense of Air Canada and the Canadian government. 
    The premise was, if half a million Israeli tourists poured into Canada a year, Canadians would be thrilled.
    They think.
    I actually asked them about this. They had statistics. We travel, we have money, we spend, we buy. Apparently, irksome behavior is unquantifiable, so they didn't have any numbers on that.
    We were strolling around the town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, which, if nothing else, is distinguishable from Ramle, Acre or Kiryat Gat by its utter quietude and cleanliness. Our guide, a local fellow, was eager that we should write nice things about his lovely town. "Sure," someone told him. "And when this place is crawling with Israeli tourists, you'll thank us."
    If Canada is the antithesis of Israel, then our itinerary started off on the wrong foot: dinner in Nova Scotia (which one junketer had thought was up in Eskimoland) hosted by the Jewish community of Halifax. "Great," someone mumbled. "We get the hell out of Israel and the first thing they do is herd us into a room full of Jews."
    We spent much of our three days in Nova Scotia on the road. In all that time, we heard just one single Nova Scotian honk his horn. And nobody raised a voice. And we didn't see a speck of litter in the entire province. My six sabra colleagues felt like Neil Armstrong.
    They felt a little more at home in Montreal, with its predilection for Israeli-style driving. Our chauffeur, like everyone else on the road, careened, weaved and lurched at high speed. Bad driving? Not in this city, where a pothole can swallow up a small car. 
    In Montreal, inevitably, we got into the Great Debate. No, not English vs French, or separatism vs federalism, but Schwartz's vs Ben's. To my horror, our itinerary had us lunching at Ben's. O Travesty! As a Montreal native, I knew this was cataclysmic stupidity. When it was my turn to order, I glumly grumbled at the wizened old waiter: "A Schwartz's Special, medium fat." He'd been dishing out smoked meat at Ben's all his life, and apparently I wasn't the first wiseass he'd come across. Entirely humorlessly, he told me: "Been here t'irty years, eh? And I'll tell you de trut'. Before I die I wanna try a Schwartz's."
    Mealtimes were often adventurous. For those of us who wanted to indulge, there was an array of exotic and unfamiliar foods to be had. Ostrich. Buffalo. Alligator. And in Nova Scotia, everything wet from squid to shrimp, oysters to octopus, which I'm not exactly in the habit of eating. "Want to try something out-of-this-world?" our guide asked me at a seafood restaurant in a remote fishing village. "Order the 'Solomon Gundy.'" "What's a Solomon Gundy?" "A local delicacy. Trust me, it's great."  Well, it was, but I wouldn't give too much credit to the locals for inventing it: right down to the garnishings, a Solomon Gundy is a plateful of schmaltz herring.
    I guess they wanted us to write nice things about the Montreal Casino, because they didn't let us stop to gamble. But as we scurried along, I did manage to shtup a quarter into a slot machine -- and wouldn't you know, the thing spewed up a small cascade of coins. I thought they'd ask me to leave the premises.
    In this era of mass tourism, every spot on earth seems to have to justify its existence by letting you know its every minor distinction. Guides and publicity hacks can't say "Welcome" without adding something like "to the largest cufflink-manufacturing city in the world." (One desolate town out in the middle of Saskatchewan, taking a wry poke at this penchant, greets the rare visitor with a sign that reads: "New York may be big, but this is Biggar.")
    In Calgary we got a non-stop torrent of glorious superlatives. Then someone else joined our entourage and enthusiastically ran down the entire list again. Then we bumped into a friend of the guide, who wowed us with the same stuff, then a brother of our escort, then another guide, a shop saleswoman, a cabbie, sundry passersby and, well, you get the picture.
    Like, did you know Calgary has the most elevated street-spanning walkways in the world? Or that it's the least expensive city in North America, the second-largest head-office city in Canada, the largest metropolitan region in the most westerly landlocked province (which is first among all provinces alphabetically) in the entire country, which is the second-largest on earth, which is the most populous planet in the most famous solar system in the world?
    Just outside Calgary is the site where a snowball was thrown furthest in the history of journalism. By me. And I had six Israelis, who'd never before seen a world-record snowball, convinced.
    The mini-blizzard we got caught in was a highlight of the trip, not just for my warm-weather confreres, but for me too. I was a kid again. We made a snowman, which I hadn't done in maybe a quarter-century. I had my first-ever vertical snowball fight, in the Rockies, when a third-floor hotel guest stepped out on the balcony and playfully lobbed snowballs at us. He retreated only after I'd zinged a few into his room. And I showed my friends a great winter trick: we were out in the wilderness when Rafi Man of Ma'ariv found he had to answer nature's call. He ducked behind a fir tree. I scooped up an armful of snow, patted it into an oversized ball and heaved it high up in the tree -- which, of course, created a little avalanche upon poor vulnerable, exposed Rafi. Canadian culture at its best.
    We couldn't spend that long abroad without a classically diasporic experience: the expatriate Israeli taxi driver. In Toronto, we hailed a couple of cabs in front of our hotel. After a couple of blocks I asked him a question, and hearing us talk among ourselves in Hebrew, he grinned and responded likewise. "So! You're one of us!" we exclaimed excitedly. "Well, yes and no," he said. "I'm an Israeli Arab from Nazareth. But the other driver -- he's an Israeli Jew from Jaffa."
     As we got to know the country, we got to know each other too. At first, I didn't think I'd like Avi Lan of Yediot Aharonot. He seemed sullen, humorless. Until we got to the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, in Lunenburg. Wandering about the displays, we stopped at an antique sea-captain's desk. "Gee, would you look at that," I said, pointing to a clunky old cast-iron typewriter. Never mind that it was, not so long ago, the tool of our trade: we peered at it from every angle, as if it were an Incan artifact. "What do you suppose that was used for?" I said, completely stumped. Avi took my bait nicely. He shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe to catch fish."
    Later, in Calgary, he actually lost control completely in a mad fit of laughter. We all did. We were watching a film at IMAX Theater, which is in-your-face cinema on a screen six stories high and with effects that not only enlarge everything to overwhelming size, but make you feel as if you're right in the picture. We were absorbed in this spectacle, agog and agape, when someone whispered: "Hey, this would go over great in Israel. With X-rated films." Yeah, and change the name from IMAX to CLIMAX.
    Ten days in Canada was enough to modify a lifetime in Israel. Ronen had arrived with some very recognizable Israeli mannerisms: shlumpy, cocky, even boorish. For the first days he stuck close to Rafi Rosenfeld, whispering snide asides and cackling together. But after a week and a half he was transformed. On our last day, we attacked a huge mall in Toronto, each going our separate ways. Ronen, by now decked out in tony pinstripe threads, accidentally bumped somebody. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said, most un-Israeli like. "Sorry, my fault," said the other, quite Canadianly. The two gracious gentlemen caught a glimpse of each other, and cracked up: Ronen and Rafi, together again, just as they began. Though not quite.