Driving distances

How many times have you received a call from someone visiting from outside of North America thinking that they can get to see you quickly? I know that, just being able to realize that Canada is a lot bigger than a lot of the European countries. I have done a bit of a comparison to show the differences between Canada and some of the European countries.

• Nuremberg Germany – Berlin Germany 449km
• Nuremberg Germany – Munich Germany 226km
• London England – Glasgow Scotland 663km
• Plymonth England – Inverness Scotland 1,107km
• Vancouver, British Columbia – Halifax Nova Scotia 6,610 km
• Toronto, Ontario – Montreal, Quebec 541 km

Part of what can be interesting is when you have people visiting from Europe, and they think that everyone in a city or even a province should know everyone else. I have also heard that people in one city in Canada thinks it will only take an hour or two to drive between major cities. One comparison is someone wanting to go to Toronto for lunch when they are in Montreal for a business meeting. I know that this happened, and someone received a call from a business colleague visiting Montreal from Europe, and they were driving to Toronto to take the other individual out for lunch. The European individual didn’t realize that the drive between those two cities were more than a 5-hour drive, not the hour or two that they were normally doing in Europe.

Another thing that happens is some of the different European vendors don’t think about how long it takes to drive from city to city in Canada, and they send out the different events in cities that are hours away. We recently received an email about an event in Ottawa in April, while the same event is being hosted in Toronto in September. Why would I drive 4 hours to Ottawa for a one-day event when I can go to the same event here in Toronto without having the expense of travel time and also a hotel that would be required to be at the event at 8 am.

Yes, Canada is a very large country, and it takes days to drive from coast to coast and not just hours. It can be interesting to see the difference in times between getting between major cities depending on what country you are talking about. I enjoy comparing the differences between the different countries and seeing how long it takes to get from major city to major city. So next time you hear someone talk about why don’t we know everyone in our country, let them know that we are an extremely large country, and it would be difficult to know everyone either in our city, province or country.