As I’ve mentioned, I have friends in Ontario, mostly in and around Toronto, Canada’s largest and, if you ask me, one of its most beautiful cities. I’m spending the winter in Owen Sound, Ontario, which lies about 190 km/118 mi northwest of the city. Not dissimilar to the distance between Los Angeles and Palm Springs.
The drive, between LA and Palm Springs can take anywhere from as little as an hour and a half, if, like some Californians, say me for instance, you drive like you’re piloting a low flying aircraft, to three hours or more, depending upon traffic.
In Ontario, the drive between Toronto and Owen Sound is guaranteed to take a minimum of three hours and that’s assuming you’ve escaped before the city’s daily dalliance with crosstown gridlock. The reason the drive requires this much time is not what you may think.
Sixty percent of the drive between these two cities is through gorgeous rolling countryside, up and down ancient glacial valleys, through pastoral farmlands and a series of small towns and villages.
The maximum posted speed through this idyllic landscape is 80. Not 80 miles per hour, mind you, but 80 kilometers per hour. Canada went all in on conversion to the metric system back in the 70s.
For the metrically challenged, 80 kph is 52 mph. Yes that’s right, 52 miles-per-hour on open road in broad daylight.
What’s even more amazing is how many Canadians actually obey this law or, worse, drive well below the posted limit.
I’m a 30-plus-year veteran of driving in California where speed limits are not so much “laws” as guidelines loosely interpreted by the driving public as they go along.
There are Canadian drivers who flaunt the law and regularly drive this route at speeds reaching 93 kph. That’s a blazing 58 mph.
Now to be fair I should mention that once you’ve reached the outer GTA [Greater Toronto Area], multilane freeways slim down dramatically and become two lane highways. Nevertheless, because this part of Ontario is mostly forest and farmland, there is very little traffic, which makes pulling up behind anyone going less than 80 kph all the more maddening, especially if it occurs while you’re cruising through a miles-long stretch of double-yellow-lined road.
Meanwhile, back in the GTA the problem is just the opposite.
Like most modern cities the Toronto metropolitan area is crisscrossed with a fairly well laid out network of high-speed freeways. Here posted speeds can reach as high as 125 kph or roughly 78 mph.
For the most part, urban drivers tend to adhere, traffic permitting, to posted speeds. However, just as parts of the US suffer from the obnoxious driving habits of some high-end, luxury car owners (can you say Audi and BMW), Canada, at least in the GTA, has its own brand of self-entitled highway bad boys.
“Camo wearing, pickup driving Hosers are the worst,” is a phrase I’ve heard more than once driving around southern Ontario.
In Southern California and elsewhere too many drivers look upon the far left passing lane as their own personal country road regardless of how slow they’re going in relation to the rest of traffic. Canadians for the most part tend to observe highway etiquette and keep this lane open for swifter moving vehicles to pass.
The problem with using the number one lane in Canada is that no matter how much faster you’re going than the traffic to your right there is almost always someone behind you who becomes infuriated that you’ve pulled into traffic ahead of him.
Signal your intent to move left and they immediately speed up. If they can’t prevent you from moving over they will tailgate you until you’re either both traveling at warp speed or you give into sanity and slip back into the number two lane.
It has been my experience that Canadian freeway drivers of all kinds detest the idea of allowing people to change lanes for any reason. Nowhere is this a bigger problem than during the GTA’s horrendous “rush hours.”
Say what you will about the way people in Southern California drive, we have, for the most part, mastered the freeway hive mind in as much as most of us understand navigating the region’s maze of thoroughfares requires lane changes to get wherever it is we’re going.
Normally mild-mannered Canadians, on the other hand, seem to be overwhelmed by a primitive sense of territoriality when it comes to allowing their fellow commuters to slip in and out of the flow of traffic.
Signal your need to move to the left or right and the drivers around you close ranks as if to repel a foreign invader. You virtually have to bring your lane to a halt while waiting for a nonlocal who believes in keeping a safe distance between vehicles. Meanwhile you sit poised like a vulture ready to pounce on the first potential opening in traffic.
Is it any wonder that Canadians who’ve never even set foot in the place believe with all their heart and soul Toronto is the Underworld made manifest?
