I read this earlier and thought about it. I have complaints about the little things but yeah, over-all I'm pretty damn happy about it.

As a straight white guy the political aspects don't impact me negatively at all. (I unironically acknowledge my white privilege) Living is cheap, and the climate is pretty reasonable in the winter. People are friendly and even panhandlers are less aggressive because reasons. There are some pretty serious environmental issues here and this city looks like one big strip mall (imagine everything looked like Kingsway did 10 years ago) but I'm pretty good with being here.

It was just after Canadian Thanksgiving (I have one every year here) that I realized that my Canadian knowledge had calcified to what was current when I left in 2014/15 and I didn't want to lose touch with things.

Without me noticing, people were calling each other "partners" instead of using gendered terms like "girlfriend/boyfriend or wife/husband". The government was prefacing reports on impactful issues by mentioning the historical tribal lands they were on. People are even talking about moving away from being a Constitutional Monarchy and toward becoming a Republic?
The changes in Canada may feel slight to folks who are still back at home, but thats only because they have greater social context. This is part of what I want to also plug back into.

People are saying "Partner" more often now because many people are just cohabitating and not getting married, and it sounds better than the more transient term "Girlfriend or Boyfriend". I assume this is a phenomenon in Blue states as well.

The Land Acknowledgement thing is pretty unique to Canada although I think they do it in New Zealand too. Still feels forced and insincere in my ears though and reeks of lipservice without doing anything substantive.

Canadian Republic? Well Liz is getting on in her years, I think people are just dreading having King Chuck but I don't think it's a serious topic of discussion in Parliament.

Since you have Buc'ee's, you have everything for a happy life.

Dukes has been to Texas but I'll fill all y'all others in.

Have you ever wanted to buy cookware, a burrito, pajamas, and a whole bbq at a 70,000 gas station? Have you ever been in a bathroom that is 2000 square feet on its own? Ever felt like taking your car through the world's longest car wash?

Buc'ee's is a Texas-based gas station chain where many locations are the size of supermarkets. It is a testament to consumerism and in the early days of the pandemic it was the only place where you could find sanitizer when people started hoarding it. I would take my empty bottles and refill them in the bathrooms because they had that brand name Purell.

People unironically wear their merch in public.

On the note of gendered terms, people started using pronouns on their professional work signatures. Turd made our Canadian anthem more gender neutral. Instead of "true patriot love in all thy sons command" it's now "true patriot love in all of us command"

And that's a bad thing? Not everyone in Canada thinks they are a son of God. In fact very few do...

Not at all. But definitely shows the drastic differences between attitudes of the US and the ever changing PC attitudes of Canada.

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I thought you were going somewhere else the way you wrote that out, mb