Differences, Part II

• Bilingual everything. With French as a national language (even though hardly anyone west of Quebec speaks it), almost everything is printed with both languages. It's noticeable on food packaging--especially cereal and such where in the U.S. they'd put games or something else on it. Typically one side of the box is English and the other French.
• Car registration & insurance. We're still trying to figure out this whole process. We have to get a provincial exam yet before we can do it (we just found that out today). Then we register at an insurance place. Everyone has to have mandatory provincial liability insurance. You register you vehicle through the same place. So there isn't much in the way of big insurance companies like you get in the US. It tends to be more small places that offer the extra insurance (comprehensive & collision). It's just a weird process to us. And licensing is a whole other matter that I'm not sure I'm clear enough on to be able to explain.
• .ca - since our internet address shows up being from Canada, most of our websites end in .ca instead of .com (hotmail.ca, yahoo.ca, etc.). Not that there's really much difference. The news blurbs on the side tend to be more Canada-focused, but that's about all (oh, except for the option to view in French).
• Looser censorship. A few more words slip by the TV censors than they do in the US. And it's not unusual to see an occasional bum (mostly men - like the in the locker room on the old Major League movie that was on the other night).
• British spelling (with a little French thrown in): don't forget to add the extra "u" to words like colour, honour, Saviour, etc. And you use your cheque card for shopping.