Posted Aug 14, 2012, 2:55 PM
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Unapologetic Occidental
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Province 2, Canadian Empire
Posts: 68,128
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You know you are from Orleans when:
- You’ve always lived in the exact same house, but over time your postal address has officially been Gloucester or Cumberland, and even bizarrely Navan, and later Ottawa, but you’ve mostly used Orleans even though it has never officially existed as a “place”
- You have witnessed several expansions of Place d’Orléans, and remember the one that crossed the Gloucester-Cumberland border caused confusion for fire and police calls depending on which side of the mall you were on.
- You live in a house built by Minto. So do your parents. And your brother. And your sister. And 80% of the people you went to high school with.
- 80% of the furniture in your house comes from Prestige.
- You are amused every time someone tries to open a reasonably fine dining restaurant in Orleans because deep down you know that no one there is really interested in anything other than family-oriented chains like Kelsey’s, etc. And you are right every time when they go out of business in no time at all
- As a young adult, you often wondered why other suburban areas like Nepean and Gatineau had at least some nightlife and Orleans didn’t, and rejoiced at any attempts (which eventually failed) like Pat and Mario’s at giving Orleans a bit of action after dark
- You are glad that the rest of Ottawa finally woke up to the fact that Gabriel’s pizza is the absolute best in the world
- You remember that your parents always had to go to Beacon Hill for stuff we didn’t have in Orleans. Now it’s people in Beacon Hill who tend to come out to Orleans
- You had friends who lived in houses on big estate lots in Cumberland and Navan but who hated it because all of their friends lived in Orleans which was where all of the action was
- You’ve taken out of town visitors to Taffy Lane at Christmas time and they were of course blown away
- You attended teen dances organized by Party Arnie at the sportsplex at Jeanne-d’Arc and Youville
- You are aware of the debate over the “accent aigu” (Orleans vs. Orléans) and you don’t care either way, but you do notice that only the city, the province, The Star and the Ottawa Citizen actually use the accent aigu in English
- You remember when everything that we had in Orleans was on St-Joseph and Innes was a country road
- You have jokingly referred to Cairine Wilson High School as Cocaine Wilson
- You chuckle when people from other parts of Ottawa or elsewhere in Canada say they wouldn’t live in Orleans because they don’t speak French
- In your mind’s eye, huge signs announcing the SALES CENTRE for new housing developments are a permanent fixture of the landscape.
- You are slightly irked or amused (depending on their attitude when newcomers) incorrectly pronounce certain Orleans street names like Jeanne D’Arc (John Dark), Boyer (Bow-yurr) and Des Épinettes (Dez Ee-peye-netz)
- You remember when the Queensway ended with a traffic light at Champlain where there was a motel with a bowling alley in the basement
- You know lots of people with names like Jean-Pierre Bédard who do not speak a lick of French, but also know people named Kevin McLaughlin who are totally francophone
- You used to go dirt biking or BMXing at the pit near Bilberry Drive
- You knew quite a few people who had Montreal Canadiens season tickets as a kid but today pretty much everyone you know has switched over to the Senators now
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