When we arrived here on Sunday, one of the first things we noticed was that we were right beside an Indian Reserve. "Great!," I thought, "we can finally get D's smokeless tobacco cheap." Wrong! After going to 4 stores on the Res, we both were ill, so we gave up and headed over to Sobeys for a few groceries.
On Tuesday, I had discovered another shop that we had missed. So after D got off work, we headed across the bridge to Listugui (lis-to-gush). Finally, he found some. Yes!!! Not what he wanted but none the less, somewhat cheaper.
Just to put this in perspective for you guys. D can go through a can a day. Up here that would be $119 a week compared to $7 a week back home. $119 x 4 = INSANE!! We found this same product of Stoker's on a Res back in NY for $12 and up here it's $42. Hopefully, this will last him 10+ days!! Pray for this man to kick this nasty habit.
Once we moved over into Quebec, all English channels went out the window. There were three stations in total and all were in French. I tried to make the best of it and learn a little french. Fat chance on that! The closed captions were also in French!! Plus, they spoke so quickly the closed captioning couldn't even keep up. Without being able to pause and look up the words it was a waste of my time. Oh... and don't get me started on the French language! When did we drive out of the supposed bi-lingual country of Canada, Eh?
When we arrived here in New Brunswick, silly me thought things would be different. Well, they are...there are only TWO channels now. Both are French, one is just cartoons and the other is just weird stuff. Hopefully D's cell-router will work at our next stop and we will be able to get back to streaming YouTube TV and Netflix again!! (I know, I can hear you guys now...TV!? You are supposed to be out seeing the sites! Well what can I say...everyone needs a little downtime.)
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| The pain in the $$$$ product! |
Just to put this in perspective for you guys. D can go through a can a day. Up here that would be $119 a week compared to $7 a week back home. $119 x 4 = INSANE!! We found this same product of Stoker's on a Res back in NY for $12 and up here it's $42. Hopefully, this will last him 10+ days!! Pray for this man to kick this nasty habit.
Television or should I say the lack thereof!
Ever since we crossed the border, TV has been at a minimum due to the lack of over-the-air stations available. In Ontario, there were seven public channels, three of which were for kids, one was total French and the other three were in English, thankfully. CBC Gem had a few good shows on it like the Great British Baking Show, Heartland, and the Murdock Mysteries. The second channel was Create TV out of NY that had cooking, travel, arts & craft shows and the third channel was CTV, Canada's news channel. So not great choices but choices none the less.
Once we moved over into Quebec, all English channels went out the window. There were three stations in total and all were in French. I tried to make the best of it and learn a little french. Fat chance on that! The closed captions were also in French!! Plus, they spoke so quickly the closed captioning couldn't even keep up. Without being able to pause and look up the words it was a waste of my time. Oh... and don't get me started on the French language! When did we drive out of the supposed bi-lingual country of Canada, Eh?
When we arrived here in New Brunswick, silly me thought things would be different. Well, they are...there are only TWO channels now. Both are French, one is just cartoons and the other is just weird stuff. Hopefully D's cell-router will work at our next stop and we will be able to get back to streaming YouTube TV and Netflix again!! (I know, I can hear you guys now...TV!? You are supposed to be out seeing the sites! Well what can I say...everyone needs a little downtime.)
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First I must comment on how totally lovely the blog is. You have become an EXPERT at blogging!...and I'm here to tell you that you are not missing much without TV. The news (which I'm sure you do get) has been nothing but awful. French and all, I'm tempted to move to Canada...I fear for our country. I have no idea why the "comments" weren't working before, but I'm sure it was user error. Now you have to contend with me COMMENTING!
ReplyDeleteBut I thought our conversation in the park about Canada and the US medical systems went much better ;-)
ReplyDeleteYou know who this is...the guy with the many children in the 33 foot trailer. You taught me the meaning of blessing my heart. I still smile at that.
I have to come to the defense of both the US and Canada on the issue of who decides what is bad for my health or not. I say this in a friendly tone and not intended to point fingers.
Regarding allowing the government choosing what to tax, and what not to, and how much:
In Canada:
- Basic health care to all. Smoke, chew, whatever you like. Get cancer? Covered. But, not everything is covered. However, if you make the choice in Canada to chew tobacco, which is known to be very highly cancerous, it will be highly taxed, and those taxes will go into the health care system for when... when someone gets cancer. Makes sense to me. A lot and I mean a lot of money goes into our system. Want to live here and make very poor choices about how much you drink or smoke? Go right ahead, but since so much tax money goes into health, items like tobacco and alcohol are heavily taxed as a deterrent.
In the USA:
- Some basic health coverage. Get cancer? Unless you're paying into an insurance company, or work covers it, with cancer, you're kinda on your own to figure it out and are left with a hefty invoice. Tax dollars are not deducted the way they are in Canada for health care.
- Chew tobacco, cheap, your choice. And I agree with that too, however, the difference is that you have not paid a good portion of your tax dollars into the system which will now try and save your life, unless you have some kind of coverage.
- If I were an American and suddenly, the government decided to put a massive tax on tobacco, I'd be pissed too.
In my opinion, both systems work as intended. I quit smoking when a pack cost $11 a pack. Today, a premium brand is $17 a pack. Good. Make it higher. As a former smoker of 16 years, now almost 10 years quit... I'll tell ya, price was a factor. In any case, addiction in general has a deeper issue than just tobacco itself. There are other factors contributing to the addiction and use of tobacco, but that's a whole other topic.
Hope that clarifies that our government isn't out to make life miserable because they are the governing body of our choices as
a whole, however, when 38 million people are relying on good health care and pay a whole lot of money for it, I don't mind a hefty
price on very, very unhealthy products.
Consider this though... why does an EpiPen cost almost 5x as much in the US as it does over the counter in Canada? Since health care is not for profit, we see it as a basic human right.
This is where I'd take the government control to add taxes to something that will kill people over allowing some corporation to make huge profits on an EpiPen, which is something that can save a life.
So, which will it be? Government taxes? or huge profits? In both cases, the money goes somewhere, but comes out of your pocket and mine just the same.
I owe it to God first, and then an American company for saving my life. A pill treatment worth $75K saved my life. And I get to look at my children daily and know someone above took care of me, and
used an American drug company to do it. The difference is my government paid for it, using all our collective tax dollars.
Maybe that sounded like a rant, sorry. I have to defend a great system. It's not the big bad Socialist Democracy. It's a Democracy. We here can leave anytime. As I mentioned when we were talking...
I love the people in the US, the country too. We have visited many times. But we could never move there, and this post describes why. Hopefully, one day you too can buy an EpiPen over the counter for $135
in the USA.
Have a great trip, wherever ya'll are!
Andrew
Thank you for the very well thought out rebuttal to our attitudes about taxes.
DeleteYou have effectively changed my thoughts on the subject at least for the Canadian side of it.
Thanks for commenting, Andrew!
Andrew....sorry for taking out my frustrations about Dennis' willingness to buy tobacco at any cost on your government. I 100% agree with Canada's healthcare system being a thousand times better than the US. Please accept my apology.
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