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Pony: Free trade changed everything!
6.6.2005
My mom is is NYC right now. Word.
She is there with her 1st cousin, helen. They are visiting Sydney, my scrumptious niece. They are also doing the proverbial shopping and dropping. But shopping in the states is different from what it was when I was a wee Canuck.
I remember when I was a kid in Vancouver, we used to go to Bellingham or Seattle to shop, because there were just some things you could not get in Canada. Like Hershey bars and Watchamacallits. And cheap toys and clothes. And machines you put a quarter in where the plastic bubble came out and inside there was a toy. And other grownup stuff like EE bras for my well-endowed grandmother. And large-sized shoes for my mother who spent three hours in the shoe department at Nordstrum's.
Going to America there was always this sense that you were exploring or foraging for goods that you could never find in Canada. You'd bring back your booty (all cleverly disguised and de-tagged to conceal it from the border guards) and parade it before your friends and family.
Oooh, THIS DRESS? We got it on sale in Bellingham. Cute, no?
Free trade and a weak dollar changed everything. Now I can get a Watchamacallit right here in Canuckistan. And for reasons you can imagine, it does not taste nearly as good as it did when I had to cross borders to get one.
