Thank you, to my dear friend and colleague, Suzanne Nourse, from The Protocol School of Ottawa for doing this lovely piece on our friendship…a gift that has enriched my life!
Friendship
You know the feeling – you’re feeling a little down, the phone rings, and you hear the caring voice of a dear friend. Smiles all around.
That’s the relationship between Professional Courtesy and The Protocol School of Ottawa. Well, that’s how it started; Professional Courtesy and The Protocol School of Ottawa. Now it’s a valued friendship between Karen and Suzanne.
Over the years we’ve consulted each other over etiquette issues, traded notes, collaborated on seminar material, proofed each other’s work, and listened. It’s the listening that took a mutual professional respect to the rare and enviable place of true friendship.
Like most friendships, we’ve laughed, cried, and surprised each other during conversations. We’ve had lunch together and prepared dinner together. We e-mail, Skype, phone, send surprise packages, and exchange book and movie lists. We know each other’s families. We know each other’s strengths. We know each other’s weaknesses.
We have great fun compiling lists of differences since Karen is American and I’m Canadian. I can hear Karen smiling at my oot and aboot accent. I suppress a giggle at her roof and mauve pronunciations. She probably thought I couldn’t spell during our first few email exchanges. I put a u in a lot of words (honour/honor, neighbour/neighbor). Here’s a sampling of our fun differences list:
Karen Suzanne
°F °C
sofa chesterfield/couch
zee zed
“What are you talking about?” milk in bags
miles kilometers
dollar loonie
President Prime Minister
movie stars royalty
center centre
check cheque
4 downs (football) 3 downs
zip code postal code
We always look forward to our next communication, whatever form it may take.
We value and respect each other’s opinions.
We cherish our cross-border friendship.
We hope to meet one day.
Thank your for asking me to write for your blog, Karen. It was a pleasure.
Now I’ll ask you to write one and send it north to me.
It will be fun to see if others add to the list of differences.
I know we’ll talk again soon.
~Suzanne
It will be my pleasure, Suzanne. Would you like to mention the “lippy” thing?
I believe you’re referring to my comment “Let’s Skype when I get my lippy on.” Lippy referring to lipstick. It isn’t a Canadian expression. I have a foot in British culture as well and it is used there. I also heard it used in Australia.
I find the differences so much fun since we all speak English.
That was it! I forgot that it was a British thing.
Congratulations on your union!!!!
Congratulations on Your Union!!!
Bill & Barbara Deutsch
Dear Karen and Suzanne,
Congratulations on your insightful and entertaining post. From an international protocol standpoint, and an etiquette angle, this is lovely.Having traveled to multi-cultural Canada, I appreciate the phrases more and more every day! I look forward to reading Part II – Karen’s US post!
Warmly,
Sharon Schweitzer
Karen, thanks, I enjoyed this. I can remember trying so hard in 1966 to “educate” all my American college pals ion Canada. And by the way, thanks for saying I was your first Canadian friend and not your oldest. You do have so much etiquette!!!
Provinces Vs. States was always an issue. Or as a lot of Tri Stater’s used to say, Providences. And no one, absolutely no one in my dorm or later the Kappa Sig house knew who the Prime Minister was or the name of our capital city. The closest neighbour and largest international trading partner was a blur to most Americans at the time.
I can even remember Pam’s first visit to Newmarket when she told my mother the only thing that she notices different about me is how I use my knife and fork. We Canadians use a little backhand approach with the same hand rather than the more correct method of changing hands and having the fork tines up. As she said this, she looked around and both my sister and my father were “backhanding” their food!!! Poor Pammy felt bad about that one. And she just couldn’t get over the fact that my mother would pile her peas on her fork and “backhand” it to her mouth.
Yes we are different but alike. My time at home after 45 (yikes) years in the US has been so much fun for me. I still watch the Rose Bowl parade and yes, I still watch Good Morning America and I so miss the USA Today or as a convenience store owner in rural Alabama once said to me , You mean the “Ewwwwsssshhhhhaaaa”. True story. The AirForce fly over at football games and special events still makes me a little misty and I still think the JFK assassination was a conspiracy. But I love being home and am so proud to be a Canadian.
And anytime you need some USA/Canadian perspective, I am here for you.
Bill