When Pirita was in Canada
Pirita first went to Canada when she was just 12 years old. She went with a choir that
toured in Newfoundland, on the east coast of Canada. She has visited Canada three times
since then. Listen to what Pirita says about Canada and answer the questions.
When I first went to Canada with the choir, I stayed for ten days. The family who hosted
me and my friend was very multicultural – the father was originally from southern Europe
and the mother was Canadian. I still remember how the children could switch from one
language to the other, living in both cultures at the same time.
I liked it so much that I was determined to go back one day – and I did. I got a job at a
Finnish newspaper in Toronto. I interviewed many Canadians with a Finnish background,
and this gave me the chance to get to know both cultures really well. To give you an
example: Somebody would invite me over and they’d have both rice porridge and maple
syrup on the table. Or I’d go to a sauna in the afternoon and to a basketball match in the
evening. And many Finnish Canadians lived like this, mixing and matching things from the
two different cultures.

I loved living in Toronto. It’s one of the most multicultural cities in the world and I found
the people tolerant and friendly … and very polite! I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but honestly,
Canadians really are amazingly polite …
So, anyway, about Toronto… my friends soon taught me to drop the second “t” in Toronto –
like this: Not Toronto, but /Torono/. They also taught me that although Canadians are all crazy
for hockey, it’s not actually the national sport. No, the national sport of Canada is … lacrosse!
I never knew that. Lacrosse, for those of you who’ve never heard of it, is a fast full contact
sport, played with a stick and a small rubber ball. And that ball can move REALLY fast. Lacrosse
champion, Paul Rabil, once shot a ball at 179 km/h!
Everyone speaks English, and French in Quebec, of course. Canadian English is a mix of
American and British English. For example, Canadians, like Americans, don’t really talk about
a ‘toilet’ – they call it a washroom instead. And they use British spelling in Canada. And finally,
there is that little word called ‘eh?’. It’s the one thing that everyone who moves to Canada picks
up pretty quickly. They put ‘eh’ at the end of every second sentence. Like this: Canadians are
cool, eh?
So…What else? Oh yeah, I didn’t only work at the newspaper, but I also taught some younger
kids at the Finnish school on Friday evenings. Some of my students didn’t use Finnish at all
at home, but because they had some roots in Finland, their parents wanted them to learn
some Finnish. It was a pleasure to see how they learnt Finnish words like “mansikka” and
“joulupukki”. And “hyvää yötä” of course – they found that very difficult to pronounce! … Nah,
Canada’s great. I can’t wait to go again.