I moved from Fairbanks, Alaska to Vancouver, British
Columbia in January 2013 to work on my Masters of Library and Information
Science (MLIS) at the newly rebranded iSchool at the University of British
Columbia (I much prefer the old title, School of Library, Archival and
Information Studies or SLAIS, and the awkward resultant term for students in
the program, SLASISers). As with every travel experience I have ever had,
telling people I am from the US results in either cold indifference, vague hostility
or the occasional fawning and disconcerting “I love America,” while telling
people that I am from Alaska results in immediate interest and an easy opening for
longer conversations.
In Canada I also discovered a wide spread interest in
teasing me about being from the barren, backwards, icy north apparently as a
role reversal from all the teasing Canadians experience about being from the barren,
backwards, icy north from my southern US counterparts. Thus I have fielded an inordinate
number of jokes about igloos, dog sled teams, the absence of roads and running
water and whether or not I have heard of the internet. I take it all in stride
for the most part. I understand their feelings. I was once asked back in 1994
or so about whether or not I had a telephone in my home in Alaska. Trust me, I
did. And a computer and the internet and even, gasp, running water.
What has actually caught me off guard is spelling. Yup, that
thing we all took endless tests on in our hazy elementary school days. Well,
apparently I learned it all wrong - at least when it comes to the impish “ou.” Granted
I was never very good at spelling. I discovered my old school records just
before I moved to Vancouver and noticed year after year after year the same
exact pattern – good solid S (satisfactory) and S+ grades in all my subject
areas and then the good ol’ N (needs improvement) in spelling, handwriting and
organization. Scary how consistent we are since those are still very clear problem
areas for me today (I will return to that organization one in a future post
since there is a story there as to why a disorganized person thinks they have
any hope at all of becoming a librarian).
Anyway, I never was very good at spelling, and now I have a
whole new problem. The MLIS program is very big on group work, so we are
constantly working on shared documents via Google Docs and the such. After
completing most of a very long and complicated project with one Canadian fellow
student, we suddenly realized we had spelled the word flavo(u)r in two
different ways across 30 some uses. Thank goodness for the find function. The
next group project I did I actually got lectured (yes lectured!) by another student
about spelling center/centre the “proper” Canadian way as long as I am here in
Canada. I didn't even know there was an alternate proper spelling of
center/centre.
I recently spent 10 days in Chicago attending the American
Library Association conference (again, more on this later). Back in the land of
“color” and “flavor” and “center” and “check” (vs cheque). However, when I got
home I raved on Facebook about a wonderful ice cream sundae I got at Margie’s
Candies. And wouldn't you know, I automatically typed flavour without even
noticing.
I think I’m being assimilated by Canada.
