Another great piece from Scout magazine for Vancouverites. They pose the reasonable question: “Does Main St. need another coffee shop?” Read on for their opinion, but I might posit that if you are perhaps peeved at the casual custom that takes up the bandwidth (seating and WiFi) in your favourite other café in the area, then at the VERY least this addition to the offerings will relieve some of the strain…
49th Parallel Coffee Roasters & Lucky’s Doughnuts Opening At Main & 13th : Scout Magazine.
And for those perhaps not from Canada, the 49th parallel is the line that by and large splits Canada from the non-tea drinkers to the South. (I still shudder at the thought of all that tea being wasted in Boston in 1773!)
There are a few kinks in the line, such as when BC moved its provincial capital to Victoria in the South of Vancouver Island to make sure that Canada got the whole island, and not just the top bit (look how well that went for Ireland or Cyprus, just as an example…)
However, the flip side is a local peninsula (Tsawassen – try saying that after a couple of beers. Actually – at all!) with about 2 square kilometres below the line. This tiny plot is technically Washington State and goes by the name of Point Roberts. The rest of it is BC. There are a few folk living on the end, and so when they get jiggy, there are inevitably a few kids. Enough to build an elementary school even. Too costly to have a secondary school though. So guess what! The poor teenagers have to make the daily trip via school bus across two international borders each way and travel all the way to Blaine in “proper WA state”. The more logical alternative of sending them to one of the several Canadian high schools they pass on the way, or even – dare I say it, making Point Roberts Canadian – seem to have been passed over. It’s handy for getting a US mailbox or cheaper petrol though. Just sayin’…
Quieter Elephant 