Expedition Canada

Beans Means Heinz Thu Oct 19th But which ones?  An excursion to our local supermarket the other day left me curious about the difference between the original Heinz Baked Beans sold in Canada and the British Style sold alongside.  After a bit of research it appears it is not limited to just to basic styles and the original baked beans in Canada may be different again to those sold in the USA.   One video I stumbled across Original v British Baked  beans suggested the British Style had less sugar. It went on to say that the British Style were different to the original beans sold in the UK. Commentators in the USA indicated their 'original beans' were darker, sweeter and had a more smoky flavour through the addition of pork.  By this stage I decided I'd bean dwelling on this far too long, and gave up! Turnstone In the last blog I posted a picture of what I thought was a Least Sandpiper.  My personal birding advisor (PBA), who I worked alongside ...

A Vancouver Visit Dad in contemplative mood Fri April 29th WARNING There are going to be quite a few baby pictures in forthcoming blogs. We had been holding off coming over to Vancouver to clear our shipping container contents though Customs, until the wee bairn had arrived.  With Sebastian (Seb/Sebi) now home we caught a Thursday afternoon ferry and headed over to Granville Island and our favourite Vancouver hotel.   The plan was to go over to the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) office closest to Granville Island first thing Friday. A local dog sitter, a lovely lady called Karla, was going to look after Jack for the day until Duty duties and baby visits were complete. 'Oh', she said 'have you seen the news reports about the queues at that office, people have been arriving the night before to queue for passports'.   Noooooo.  "We're not queuing" I helpfully offered on the drive over to the CBSA.  "We'll come over another day on the early fe...

Whistler in Spring Sun Apr 10th Rogers Arena from across far side of False Creek - on morning run Editorial Correction Last week's headline "A year in BC" was not strictly accurate.  Although we arrived in Toronto on April 3rd, we didn't actually get to Vancouver until April 6th.  I shall put it down to artistic licence.  '363 Days in BC' sounds meaningless and 'A year in BC bar a few days' strays too far from the message.  So I will leave it as written.  Fortunately nobody spotted the error or were too kind to point it out. Blog Update This last week we have started to think about packing up the house ready for movers, who are booked for May 21st.  There isn't a huge amount to do, it's only the possessions we have acquired since arriving in Canada, plus the workshop machinery.  Some of it is a two or three person lift so better done by professionals.   The Federal Budget caught much attention, even reported on BBC News.  No home sales ...

Granville Island Jack checking out urban Van Wed Apr 28th The day started trying to work out how to change the Apple App store country location on my iPhone, so we could download local Apps that were barred from being added to a UK configured phone.  After much research, discussions with Apple and trial settings the project was abandoned.   Changing you country location, can only be done after you have unsubscribed from Apple Music.  You then lose all your music.  I assume this is for copyright reasons. As part of setting up the country you have to enter a local address.  No problem, we will use our rental address.  As you go through the process of adding a payment card to the store, you discover that the Paypal or Credit Card address, has to match your residential address in Canada.  Except we don't have a Canadian payment card (or bank account) yet. Lobster Brioche from Popina So after several hours of trying to resolve this and ending up back a...