Yesterday Leaf Rapids in northern Manitoba became the first Canadian town banning plastic bags. That is, the ban of single-use plastic bags such as they are palmed off on you everywhere here. Instead Leaf Rapids will introduce re-usable bags which will be purchasable for 99 cents (article). So they're basically getting the same system we have in Austria. Respect!

I wish, they would introduce it in Edmonton as well. Also it would be funny if a store pretended it had adopted this measure over night and you could watch the face and reaction of local people - who usually leave the supermarket with 4, 5, 6 or more bags - when they suddenly were asked to pay 5 bucks! (Of course as a good tree-hugging central European I go shopping with my spacious backpack, take as little plastic bags as possible and then re-use them at home in the litter bin.)

Anyway, I heard this story yesterday morning on the radio - obviously some people (notably the plastic industry) were not amused and attacked paper bags (although this is sort of off topic) by framing the slogan: "Paper is the new fur - stop the hunt for trees!" Haha. :-)

Der hat sich für's erste bereits wieder erledigt: -8 Grad, alles ist weiß bezuckert und es schneit noch weiter. Tja, da müssen Capris, Shorts und Flip-Flops wohl wieder für ein paar Tage zurück in den Schrank..

Seriously, they are crazy these Canadians. By now the snow is almost completely gone and apparently to them this means it's summer and it's warm. It isn't. Temperatures are between 0 to 3 to 6 degrees. Nevertheless I see people walking to university in shorts or Capri pants and flip flops. Unbelievable! Well I guess they are well trained by constantly wearing fewer clothes than required during the winter. This is my new theory about climate in Canada: Actually the weather is fairly bearable but Canadians just don't know how to dress properly and, therefore, freeze all the time (apart from three to four summer months), which leads them to the conviction that in their country it's frigging freezing cold almost the whole year round..