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I live in The Netherlands
March 2, 2008 - 5:59am
I would like to visit Toronto. I hear that it is a very nice place. I have some extended family - a cousin - living in Sarnia I would like to visit as well.
Bedankt!
So, I hope you get to come and visit Canada!
[ 02 March 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]
When my Dutch relatives used to visit my parents would take them on a Thousands Islands boar tour in Gananoque and to Niagara Falls (not too far from Sarnia), and to the CN Tower in Toronto. A few of them took a bus or train to New York. Sometimes they wanted to go up north camping but they weren't prepared for the insects in summer!
Wanneer komt u?
I hope that you can come west and see the prairies
http://www.traveldrumheller.com/royal-tyrrell-museum.html
http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/
and the Rockies too.
http://tprc.alberta.ca/parks/kananaskis/flashindex.asp
http://www.tourismcanmore.com/
http://www.turnervalley.ca/history.html
http://radiumhotsprings.com/
http://www1.travelalberta.com/en-ab/
Oh well, you would have really enjoyed Toronto, had you not fallen for the good ol'"too much crime and violence" BS.
BTW, what does that actually mean to you? The words "crime and violence"?
pk34th45! You can come to Toronto and just skip going to Bay Street! I never go that far downtown, there are way cooler places here that aren't so full of criminals and violence.
Yes many downtowns have problems with crime. So I guess I am right to avoid Toronto. I thought it would be fun to visit the CN Tower or see a BluRay game.
The Stampede is great experience, and Toronto is not as dangerous as you might think, and it's not the centre of all things Canada, even Torontonians like to think they it is. [img]tongue.gif" border="0[/img]
Enjoy yr visit, maybe catch Toronto the next time.
Bay Street is the financial center of Toronto. Lots of tall office towers and white men in suits. There's pretty much nobody around, except tourists, after the 9-5 working people go away. I avoid it as much as possible.
But if you come to Toronto there are many fun things to do, especially if you come in the non-winter. And no, don't just come for the CN Tower (waste of money) or the Blue Jays (owned by a large corporation: don't support them!). We have the Toronto Islands, just a short ferry ride from Harbourfront. There's Harbourfront, a bit touristy , expensive and crowded, but lots of people enjoy the outdoor concerts there, which are still free so far.
Like to walk? Check out Chinatown, Kensington Market, Little Italy, Little India. Then there's Bloor Street around the University of Toronto area, High Park, the Beaches (aka The Beach) in the east end, Leslie Street Spit, Scarborough Bluffs (very pretty). Going north there's the Botanical Gardens.
Depending on what time of year you come we have a gajillion festivals: film festivals and other cultural festivals like Taste of the Danforth. Sadly, you have to pay to get into the film festivals, and I don't think Taste of the Danforth is free anymore. We have GLBTQ Pride week around June 22 this year.
There is tons to do, a lot of it free and no cost.
I'm only a grump when people make assumptions about crime and Toronto. I hope you can see this lovely city and make up your own mind. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
Nice city. Unlike most cities in Ontario, it isn't really tied to a metropolitan centre, so it has a good sense of community. Unfortunately most people in Ontario have no occasion to visit Sarnia unless they are taking their kids to the International Silver Stick hockey tournaments, split between Sarnia and the other side of the bridge (Port Huron, Michigan.)
I go to Toronto when I need to, and have never felt threatened by crime or violence there. Nothing remotely like visiting New York City or other major American cities. If you are flying to Toronto and if you are as fond of trains as most Dutch people I have met, you should take the airport bus to the downtown, stay a night in the Royal York Hotel and go up the CN Tower while you are there, and then take the train to Sarnia, either the 10:50 or the 17:40, a four-hour trip.
[ 08 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]
This is what "crime and violence" means to me:
One dead, five wounded in North York shooting
One battling for his life in hospital after gunfire erupts
Mar 15, 2008 04:30 AM
One man is confirmed dead and five others wounded in a shooting at a North York housing complex last night.
the torontostar
This never happens in the Netherlands. What is wrong with your Canadian society that this happens in your "premier" city?
Like most really large cities, Toronto does have poverty issues. So do rural communities mind you. With this will be associated crime. In multi million person cities the crime statistics will make the news, and across smaller communities they often don't. There are movements in Canada which would like go more in the direction of a punitive model in dealing with social issues generally, and recently they have been in the ascendency. This is of course contributing more to social alienation, and not less. However, Toronto remains one of the safer large cities in North America.
Personally, I work daily in areas of the city which have been given, (unjustly in my view) a pretty awful reputation, and I've never felt nervous.
I love this town, and I hope you get to see it someday. If fear of crime is preventing you from being a tourist in a place like Toronto, you may never get very far from where you are now.
3.40 - Toronto3.20 - Amsterdam
But being just a little more dangerous doesn't seem to affect our ranking against the Netherlands on the list of Top Ten Tourist-Friendly Countries. So come and see us, and I'll come visit you - right after Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Fiji, and Scotland.[ 15 March 2008: Message edited by: Lard Tunderin' Jeezus ]
Did a on line search for the Netherland crime rates and decided only to pick one out of the many that were available. This link link to a study was from 2001-2, though I imagine not much has changed and it is a compare with the USA, not Canada, but is still pertinent as we know that Canadian crime rates are 60%/100k less than the USA, or there about.
http://qsi.cc/blog/archives/000144.html
There is no murder in Amsterdam? No fires there either? No arson? No drug crimes? Funny, I spent time in Amsterdam and I loved it but I have never been so afraid as I was walking the Red Light District at 4am. Did I come home and complain about the 'crime' in Amsterdam? Hell no. I enjoyed every second there. If you are basing where you go on a newspaper then buddy, you shouldn't be travelling anywhere. Really. Stay home.
For god's sake, don't take that risk.
I remember Americans who asked me if I was afraid to live here in Montrйal because of the "terrorism" - y'know, those very hapless FLQ guys, several decades ago? It is funny the stereotypes people hear and repeat.
(Now, of course, we are "Quйbecistan" because of our large North African and Lebanese population). Sheesh. [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]
And to be honest, after reading much Canadian media lately, I have come to believe that we are far more progressive than you. I understand that I am biased in this matter, but please. Facts are facts. We have no running gun battles in our streets. We do not criminalize soft drugs like pot. Homosexuals are treated no differently than any oher citizen. Women are fully engaged in the workforce, and we have laws for pay equity that are actually enforced. We have generally rid ourselves of the shackles of religion. You have much catching up to do.
One blight is our engagement in Afhanistan, which must end! And will probably end next year, unlike Canada which will still be there in 2011!
I would enjoy a discussion regarding the various plus and minus of our respective countries, but I feel that it would quickly devolve into ad hominems on the part of some people other than myself. Please prove me to be incorrect in my assumption.
Seriously, this type of comment could come from the Ugly American stereotype Europeans have of North American tourists.
People have been polite to you here until you got insulting. So don't cry to us about ad hominems.
Fortunately I have never met a Dutch person with such attitudes about Canada or Canadians. If anything they are too ready to praise the country because of Canadians' role in liberating the Netherlands during the Second World War.
Now, that is a hard decision to choose between, so, I will go for both.
We already know that the crime in the Netherlands is higher than crime rates in Canada. As such, contentions otherwise hold no weight.
Then there was the contention that the Netherlands was more progressive and there was stated all those "we" things about women. Such as; "we" have women who are fully "engaged" in the work force, with pay equity laws enforced.
Well, it seems that the "we that is being spoken of is the "male we". If one takes a look at the just the cabinet minister breakdown, by gender, in government, one sees that 5/18 are women, less than 1/3, not even close to being equal. I could not find the entire breakdown of Chamber members by gender, but one must suppose it is about the same/similar statistically as the Minister breakdowns. So, this supposed equality is nothing to crow about by way of being more equality minded than Canada, nor does Canada have a lot of catching up to do in this area, as it seems about the same, with the power in the hands of men, with the women in Canada fully engaged in the work force too.
http://www.government.nl/Government/Balkenende_IV_Government
Then we have a talk of getting rid of the shackles of religion and we need only look again at government composition to see if this contention is indeed factual, to find it is not. In the first chamber, the party with the most seats is the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), with 23 seats, though their weight is balanced by the majority of seats held by others. But then again in the second chamber we see the CDA as having the majority of seats as a party, at 41, though again they are outnumbered by the majority of seats being held by other parties.
So, yes, one could "loosely" say that religious power in government has diminished, or been "shackled", in The Netherlands, but one cannot use it to denote that The Netherlands is more progressive than Canada. Canada has NO parties that are specifically religiously based, even though the CPC are in fact evangeligally leaning. If they ran under a religious banner, they would get not even a minority government. I would say The Netherlands needs to catch up to Canada's secularism in this area.
Netherlands government breakdown
Of course pot is legal in The Netherlands, as it should be in Canada, but really that is no measure of being "more" progressive.
Yes, facts are facts, and the facts do not indicate what was being blown at us. Indeed this is from the government site:
crime government of NL site
Apparently, the notions of prevention there are differing from ours on the progressive left here in Canada, as we do not call for assimulation to a cultural norm as being the way to prevent crime.
[ 16 March 2008: Message edited by: remind ]
Seriously, I am very capable of taking some hits at Toronto, hell I hear it most every day) but this person who is afraid to come here because of the running gun battles on our streets? jeez, what's the matter with this guy? Just purchase a semi-automatic at John's Gun Shop, get yourself a bullet proof vest and relax. Worried about getting mugged in our seedy downtown area? No problems, just look homeless. It's what we Torontonians do to survive in such a violent city. Well, that and we're all armed to the teeth and locked up in our inner prisons of fear.
[img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]
I have never been to a "coffeeshop" (they are very expensive) nor have I been anywhere in the middle of the Red Light district (inevitably, I've taken trams along its edges, and spotted bordellos elsewhere). Not remotely interested.
That said, I don't like smugness about "being better than them" either. Here we are speaking of two generally peaceful advanced industrial states, that each have their own problems (exclusion of Aboriginal people is just as grave as exclusion of former "colonials" or "guest workers"). It is silly to make it a competition.
At the conference on climate change I attended in Amsterdam, I met a Sri Lankan opposition party member who is on a publicly posted death list. That is just an example.
It is utterly silly to worry about "gun danger" in either Amsterdam or Toronto (and ludicrous in smaller places). Road traffic is infinitely more hazardous.
Funny, in Amsterdam what you have to watch out for most is the trams and the cyclists! Now, as a good ecologist, I am very much in favour of trams and cyclists, and even more of a combination of the two, but it is funny. The cars have been very much tamed.
And even in terms of traffic, the risks are far greater to people in the poor countries. I had colleagues who died in South Africa - not of street violence or guerilla attacks but because of the state of the roads and driving.
I'm kind of sad as I spend a fair bit of time in Amsterdam and thereabouts and it would have been nice to chat with a progressive Netherlander... Oh well.
Now to rebuttal. A poster above thinks that we Netherlanders have not rid ourselves of the shackels of religion because of the names of our political parties. Well the names are historical leftovers from another era, nothing more. A similar situation exists in Canada. Are the Liberals really "liberal". Most posters on this board equate the Liberals with the Conservatives, so the answer seems to be No. Is your New Democratic Party, which has been aroud for 50 years, really "new"? So it can be seen that the names of political parties do not necessarily equate to their current status.
Perhaps a more in-depth analysis into whether we Dutch are less religious than Canadians would be in order. I now turn to that great arbiter, Wikipedia:
According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2005,[1]
34% of Dutch citizens responded that "they believe there is a God".
37% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force".
27% answered that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force".
For Canada:
72% of the Canadian population list Roman Catholicism or Protestantism as their religion
Weekly church attendance rates at 25% are higher than those in Northern Europe (for example, Austria 9%, Germany 6%, France 8%, Netherlands 6 % and UK 10%).
The French version of "O Canada", the official national anthem, contains a Christian reference to "carrying the cross".
It can be seen than the Dutch are less religious than Canadians.
The Dutch are also far more progressive than Canadians on issues such as prostitution, drugs, homosexuality and euthanasia.
Prostitution: Current legal situation
Prostitution is defined as a legal profession; prostitutes have access to the social security system, may join unions, have to pay income tax and are treated like any other self-employed tradesperson. Health and social services are readily available, but the women are not required to register or undergo regular health checks.
Prostitutes must be at least 18 years old, while for non-commercial sex the age of consent is 16. Clients must be at least 16. Violation of either age limit is a crime for the other party, and possibly for a pimp.
Brothels are licensed legal businesses which are allowed to advertise. Pimping and trafficking human beings is illegal.
According to Philip Goodrich, prostitution is much like a farmers market.
What is the status of prostitutes in Canada? Robert Pickton bell rings?
Drugs: The drug policy of the Netherlands is based on 3 principles:
Drug use is a public health issue, not a criminal matter
A distinction between hard drugs and soft drugs exists
High drug related public expenditure, the highest drug related public expenditure per capita of all countries in EU (139 EUR per capita, 2004).
It is a pragmatic policy. Most policymakers in the Netherlands believe that if a problem has proved to be unsolvable, it is better to try controlling it instead of continuing to enforce laws with mixed results. By comparison, most other countries take the point of view that drugs are detrimental to society and must therefore be outlawed, even when such policies fail to eliminate drug use.
Are drugs treated this way in Canada? Mark Emery rings bells?
Gay rights: Too much to list, but I include a link to Wikipeia.
Gay rights Netherlands Compare to Canada, are Dutch better or worse?
Euthanasia: Still some work to go. In 2002, the Netherlands legalized euthanasia. Euthanasia is still a criminal offence but the law codified a twenty year old convention of not prosecuting doctors who have committed euthanasia in very specific cases, under very specific circumstances. The Ministry of Public Health, Wellbeing and Sports claims that this practice "allows a person to end their life in dignity after having received every available type of palliative care."
Canadians send that farmer to prison for 10 years for ending the suffering of his daughter.
One final point. How many Netherlanders do you think have to boil their water to make it safe? The answer is 0.
Canadians have 10000s people who need to boil their water because they live on Indian reserves. How very progressive.
I highly doubt you are from the Netherlands, and I certainly have no doubt you are a right wing troll.
So be gone. I'm going to don my bullet proof vest and head to the store. Hopefully I won't be gunned down by roaming gangs, or worse, mugged and assaulted by any elderly people.
You must be so lucky to have such a glowing, magnetic personality.
He's a puzzling one, but I haven't seen him say anything right wing. Did I miss it?