“Sometimes It Gets on My Nerves How Friendly They Are! What’s Wrong With You, People!”

There are thousands of beautiful corners in the world where Mother Nature or the human hand has conjured up places that tourists flock to from every continent — just so they can snap a selfie with the very image they’ve already seen a thousand times on tacky mugs or in calendars. The incredible Canadian friendliness you experience when living in Canada wasn’t what drew me back for the fourth time, though.

But it wasn’t those mugs and calendars that kept pulling me back to Canada. It’s beautiful in the Lake District too, and sure, our hills might not reach three thousand metres, but we’ve got mountains that from a plane look like a thousand fingers dancing a polka.

Going to Canada means returning to a country where people know how to live. According to the OECD, Canadians rank among the most satisfied nations on Earth. And I’d already tried three times to figure out why — how is it even possible when the population is made up primarily of immigrants? How can everyone be equally “so insanely friendly”?

“And sometimes it gets on my nerves how they’re always so nice. I go to work wanting to have a proper moan, and they’re all just so content. What’s wrong with you, people!” — a Slovak working in Calgary describes.

When I convinced Lukáš that we were moving to Canada for a few months, I was a little afraid that I’d imagined their friendliness after all — that once we actually lived there, we’d discover they weren’t really like that. Especially when we landed in Montreal, in the province of Quebec, where Canadians are the least friendly in the whole country (but still friendlier than people in most European countries).

I never thought I’d be back in Montreal just three years later — and this time, walking out of the airport with a paper full of maple leaves and a stamp saying I could work for a year in a country where people still genuinely enjoy living. We documented the entire nearly five months in Canada on Facebook.

What makes Canadians the friendliest nation in the world — Lukáš discovered that on our very first day in Montreal. We wanted to buy something to eat but couldn’t find a supermarket, so we ended up in an Indian grocery shop.

“Can I help you?” A fellow customer stepped in, reading our faces worn out from a full day of travelling. He clearly shopped there often and tried to recommend what we should buy.

“There’s a supermarket nearby — hang on, I’ll find the address for you,” he said, calling the hotel where he worked, then showing us directions on his phone.

Our shop assistant in Canmore knows more about us than our neighbours back home

“Wait — before you go, you have to try this!” He called after us when we said we weren’t hungry and didn’t want what he was recommending. In the end, we left carrying several Indian delicacies he’d bought for us “because we simply had to taste them.” And I felt relieved. The people here hadn’t changed.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with these people. On Saturdays everyone’s in a mood. I had this one psycho today who looked like he wanted to murder someone. Can you believe it?” In Calgary, an energetic shop assistant tells us this while packing our groceries — baffled that anyone could possibly be angry. She’s laughing, and we just stare at her in amazement at how much she can say while bagging our items. Then she hands us our shopping and wishes us a lovely day.

In Canmore, we soon had “our” shop assistant — the one who worked two jobs, always greeted us with that tired smile, and told us she had another shift starting in two hours. And we told her about our lives too. Our shop assistant knew more about us than our neighbours back in Prague. And we knew which assistant was flying home to Samoa to get married, or whether she had a cat or a dog at home. When we were leaving, we saw her full of energy for the first time. “I’ve only got one job now! I’m finishing up here soon too.”

It must be something in the air

“How are you? Where are you from? How are you liking it here? Need any tips? No, we don’t have any rooms — but let me ring the hotel next door and see if they’ve got space. Want me to?” It must be something in the air. I’d caught it too. The people who’ve been breathing it their whole lives are hooked on it like a drug. You work in one hotel, yet you happily find rooms for people at another.

By the time we moved to Lake Louise to work as tour guides, we could interview a person in under 30 seconds — as long as they spoke English — and, as a bonus, explain what on earth we were doing there.

And my favourite, oft-repeated exchange whenever Americans blurted out in surprise: “Canadians are soooooo ridiculously friendly!” And I’d just widen my eyes and say, “I knooooow, right?”

Now I understand why a company actually bottles the air from Banff and exports it around the world. Maybe we should buy some too. Maybe we’d have one more smile to carry through the day. Maybe we’d start caring a bit more about the people around us. Then again, maybe we’d just waste a bunch of money and nothing would change at all.

I’m sitting at home drinking coffee from a mug that reads: “Mountains are calling and I must go.” About those mountains, those peaks whose shapes I can still see after five months whenever I close my eyes — I’ll tell you about those next time.

/Stories from a Working Holiday in Canada/