Due to business reasons, I had to travel to Seattle back-and-fro in the past few weeks. I came back to Toronto each weekend stopping over at the Vancouver Airport. In the Memorial Day long-weekend, I had trouble connecting to an immediate flight from Vancouver. I ended up spending 6 hours in Vancouver. I went out [...]

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan caught the attention of the international media back in 2006, when he accepted the flag at the closing ceremonies of the Turin Winter Olympics. He is Canada’s first disabled mayor and also the first quadriplegic mayor of a North American city.
The mayor was paralysed after a tragic skiing accident when he [...]

Today is designated to be the “International Mother Language Day”, whatever it might mean…
The United Nation has proclaimed 2008 the “International Year of Languages”, whatever it might mean. But still this seems to me more meaningful that the “International Mother Language Day”.
According to this UN link, the International Mother Language Day has been observed every [...]

After more than a year of waiting, the data finally came out last week. Statistics Canada released the language-related statistics of the 2006 census.
Here are the top 20 languages “spoken most often at home” in Toronto, my home town, and their corresponding head-counts and percentages:

English – 2746480 (55.31%)
Italian – 185760 (3.74%)
Chinese, n.o.s. – 172040 (3.46%)
Cantonese [...]

Since I have joined so many language exchange websites, I am quite used to receiving language exchange requests from time to time. Back in September, I received yet another one. But this time it was a bit unusual.
First of all, she was a native French speaker (bilingual French/English to be exact) asking for a Cantonese [...]