Acceptable Behaviour

If you ever ride the C-Train (Calgary’s light rail), you might have noticed posters that are part of a campaign to enhance civility- telling riders to turn down music, not put feet on seats, not block entrances, that sort of thing. Two things have irked me about the posters: First, the drawings are… weird. Every person featured has this bizarre sort of smile that seems to indicate that all CT riders have conduct disorder or just had face lifts, even little kids. Second, and I ranted about this in one or two of my courses last year, the posters were (WERE) rife with American spellings: “ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR,” with an illustration of, among other things, the sign to “City Center.” Trivial? Well, in point of fact, signage is all properly Canadian (every platform indicating the direction to “CITY CENTRE,” thanks very much), and really, one of the more interesting and challenging things about emigrating from the US was, in my case, being diligent about learning and using Canadian spelling, nomenclature (as with “in university” instead of “in college,” among many others) and even pronunciation (”COMP-uh-zit” instead of “com-PAH-zit,” and “shed” in “schedule”). I LIKE that my name has a “zed” in it. So in light of all this effort and care, it pissed me off, more than a little, to see these signs.

Well, I’m happy to report that, despite my not having complained officially (that I can recall; I complain a lot) about these spelling snafus, the signs have been corrected- “ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOUR” and “City Centre,” big as day.

Sometimes little pleasures are enough. I’m going to write CT and thank them.