A friend of mine working in Fort McMurray called me, dying laughing, to let me know that her boss apologized to her - a Newfoundlander - for the city being full of her kind.
"You should have seen his face when I told him. I guess he didn't read my references beyond Medicine Hat!"
That cracks me up. In a city dominated by Newfoundlanders, this poor native Albertan is apologizing to newcomers.
And it made me wonder, what do you apologize for to visitors to your city?
For us, a few spring to mind:
If they had to go through Canada Customs on the mainland (which is usually the case, given that only a minority of international fights land directly in St. John's but are routed through Toronto or Montreal), we apologize for that. Our friend D. from Kazakhstan even tries to get direct flights to St. John's now because the experience is so much friendlier with local, small city service. It's probably nothing unique about us, of course - I'm sure it'd be the same in any city of a comparable size on the mainland. But it bothers people here that their first impression of the federation is usually a snooty, rude, disinterested one.
Another obvious one is the weather, usually prefaced by "It's not usually..." - but one hears it so often that it betrays the
unusual is, in fact, quite normal. Even in the middle of summer, when I see a comment thread on Facebook related to someone announcing a visit here, by the third or fourth comment, someone has said, "Hopefully you'll hook into some good weather while you're here!"
And, also universally common: public transportation. "Just rent a car, sorry." And the high (for a city this size) price of taxis.
Growing up there were others too - limited international cuisine options. Still today we have to apologize for not having many large chain stores in the downtown, but that one doesn't really bother me. You can just grill them on what they're looking for and send them to something local. Or *shudder* the Avalon Mall.
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