Archive of Our Own

General knowledge/vocabulary

For a residential unit inside a larger building which is rented/leased, we say apartment (not “flat”).
A residential unit inside a larger building which is owned by the person living there is a condo. (Shane’s place in Montréal is a condo.)

Just to make it confusing, you could colloquially call your condo "an apartment". Idk. Shane does this a few times in the books iirc.

Ginger ale and ginger beer are not the same thing. Ginger beer is spicier/has more of a kick to it, is less sweet, isn't as carbonated, and is cloudy. It usually comes in glass bottles. Ginger ale is clear, mild, and sweet. It mostly comes in cans & plastic bottles, like Coke. The most common brand is Canada Dry. Ginger ale is extremely common in Canada (most places have it, most vending machines have it, all convenience stores have it, etc.).

I cannot stress this enough, Canada does not have Venmo! Or Cashapp either. It's not just that we 'don't use' Venmo/Cashapp, it's that you literally cannot use either one in Canada. They're not available in the Canadian app store(s) and you can't connect to a Canadian bank account with them. We use Interac e-transfer. You log into your bank account or your bank's app and send money directly from your bank account to the other person either using their phone number or their email address. You can add a note if you want saying what the transfer is for. It's usually free (a few banks charge a small fee of like $1 but this is uncommon these days). Most people are registered for auto-deposit, so they receive the money instantly in their own bank account. If you're not registered for auto-deposit, you get either an email or text message (depending how the transfer was sent) and have to claim the transfer by logging into your own bank account and answering a security question set by the sender. We've had e-transfer since 2003 and it's pretty universally adopted, so there's no need for Venmo or any similar service.

What USAmericans call a “green card”, we call permanent residency, or PR for short. Canadian permanent residents don’t get a Canadian passport, they get a PR card.
We do use the word visa for temporary/conditional immigration status (e.g. student visa). The word permit might be used instead for work visas (i.e. work permit). Canada does not have spousal visas (more on that under misc. logistics).

Canada uses a mish-mash of the metric system and the imperial system. Unfortunately it’s kind of vibes-based LOL.
Units of measurement:

• For distance, we use metres and kilometres, not feet or miles (although it’s pretty common to use those colloquially, e.g. “Walk a few feet this way!”).
• For temperature, we use Celsius for the weather, but ovens are often in Fahrenheit. IDK what that’s about.
• At the doctor’s office, they’ll probably record your height in centimetres. Sometimes forms will ask for your height in centimetres. But in day-to-day life, you would give your height in feet and inches. (You also, if anyone is curious, would not give the size of your penis in centimetres, LMAO.)
• For human weight, we use pounds.
• There's actually a really helpful Wikipedia article about this!

In Montréal, a convenience store/variety store/corner store/bodega is called a dépanneur, or a dép for short. If you were in Montréal and needed to, say, buy cigarettes, you’d find the nearest dépanneur. They also sell alcohol, but only beer and wine, not hard liquor. (In Ottawa, AFAIK, the most common lingo would be “convenience store”.)

• In Ontario, you had to buy alcohol at a special Alcohol Store (the LCBO for beer, wine, hard liquor, etc., or you could also buy beer at — get this — The Beer Store, and wine at — not kidding — Wine Rack) until 2024, when liquor sales were expanded into convenience stores and grocery stores. 
• In Quebec, the equivalent of the LCBO is the SAQ. That's where you can buy hard liquor (and beer and wine etc.)

If you’re gonna write anything prominently featuring JJ, you might want to look into sacrés just for fun. :) Also, be careful: Québécois French and French-from-France have several notable differences. Here’s a helpful video for you with some common Québécois French expressions.

Poutine is a Québécois thing. You can definitely get poutine in every other province as well, but it will not be anywhere near as good (much to my chagrin). Montréal also has its own specific kind of bagels.

Canada got rid of the penny in 2013!

All packaging is bilingual! (See the official languages section for more)

Both Ottawa and Montréal are usually at least -5°C in the winter, but probably colder (-10°C to -15°C). It wouldn’t be unusual for it to get down to/past -20°C in deep winter, especially at night. Both are snowy and icy. In the summer, both will almost definitely be over 15°C (probably averaging somewhere in the low 20s) and can get up to/past 30°C. Both are pretty humid in the summer.

Since Shane and Ilya are both millionaires I can’t imagine this would really come up LOL, but just in case:
Canada has universal healthcare, which is handled/administered on a provincial basis. This means that Shane wouldn’t need to pay for healthcare (including emergency healthcare) in his province of residence (which I believe is Québec rather than Ontario, I assume he lives most of the year in Montréal). However, Ilya would need to pay for healthcare if he was there from Boston and needed to go to the ER or something. Similarly, Shane would need to pay for healthcare in the U.S. (by which I mean that the government of Québec wouldn’t cover it except in extremely unusual & specific circumstances). I… imagine this is something the League would take care of for their players via some kind of insurance, but NGL I don’t have details about that.

As portrayed in the books, it’s fair to say that Montréal is pretty intense about hockey, and Ottawa less so. Toronto is also intense about hockey, and Toronto’s hockey media/the spotlight on the players is the most intense in English Canada by a large measure. Toronto and Montréal have a long-running hockey rivalry, and Edmonton and Calgary have a rivalry, like, As Cities. This is all I know and I had to use Google to confirm LOL. I don’t like or follow hockey, I’m just here for the gay stuff ❤️

Official languages

Sources: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Canada has two official languages: English and French. However, English is the majority language: ~76% of Canadians speak English, ~22% speak French, and only ~18% are English-French bilingual. [1] There’s a lot to be said about this and a LOT of history I could go over, but I’ve tried to focus here on stuff that seems imminently relevant/applicable to HR. There’s a useful Wikipedia page about French in Canada if you want more information beyond what’s covered here.

Montréal is in Québec, which is the only province with French as the sole official language. In Montréal, things like street signs, advertisements/billboards, price tags, etc. etc. are in French. A few neighbourhoods in Montréal are more heavily Anglophone, but even there the street signs etc. would be French. 

• The majority of people in Québec speak French as a first language and speak English as a second language (if they speak English at all). ~85% of Québec residents speak French, and ~46% are bilingual. [1] In Montréal, around 60% of the population are English-French bilingual. [2]
• Esp. in less-touristy areas, it would be usual for e.g. customer service workers, cab drivers, etc. to address you in French first. Only 10% of Montréal’s population is exclusively Anglophone, compared to around 30% exclusively Francophone [2], and 70% of Montréal-based workers primarily speak French at work. [3]

Ottawa is in Ontario, which is a predominantly English-speaking province. ~94% of Ontarians speak English and only ~11% are bilingual. [1] However, as the capital of Canada, Ottawa is much more bilingual than the rest of the province. It’s also literally abutting the border between Ontario and Québec, which contributes to this.

• ~37% of Ottawa residents are English-French bilingual, which is like… double the Canada-wide average.[4] However, English is still the dominant language in Ottawa, and what most people would probably default to.
• Street signs/other signage are in both English and French.

On Shane being English-French Bilingual:

• Only around ~10% of Anglophone Canadians living outside of Quebec can comfortably conduct a conversation in French. [5] So the fact that Shane, as an Anglo Canadian, is fluent in French actually is fairly unusual, and (in my personal opinion) it’s pretty safe to assume that this is because he’s from Ottawa. “He’s from Canada, of course he’s fluent in French” is decisively not a safe assumption and is also gonna irritate any Franco Canadians / Québécois people who overhear you.
• It’s possible that Shane attended a French Immersion school for at least part of his schooling, which could contribute to his fluency.
• French classes in school are mandatory to some extent in every province, but are pretty notoriously terrible/ineffective (at least this is the consensus among the people I talk to haha). Personally I took French in school (in Ontario but not in Ottawa) from kindergarten through Grade 11, got really good grades in it, and cannot speak French. ¯\_(-_-)_/¯ Obviously I’m not speaking for All Canadians here (some people will know more bilingual people than others) but I think it speaks for itself that French classes are mandatory in school but only 10% of the Anglo population outside Québec can hold a conversation in it. Anyway, /end rant.
• Also!! Despite Ilya’s jokes/jabs, Shane does speak French with a pronounced Anglophone accent. (At least, Hudson does haha. But in my personal opinion it’s very safe to assume that book!Shane would as well.)

In the rest of Canada’s provinces (with the exception of New Brunswick, the only Officially F-E Bilingual province), street signs etc. are almost always in English only.

Cottages

OK, I never realized before starting to read HR fanfiction how specific Cottage Culture™ apparently is to Canada, and especially to Ontario and Québec. No worries, I’m here to help LOL.

A cottage, in this context, is a vacation home/weekend getaway in a rural/remote area, almost always on or extremely close to a lake. People who live in cities will go to cottages to relax/get some peace and quiet/connect with nature. An area mostly made up of cottages is called cottage country.

Shane’s cottage is… extremely above-average in terms of size and what a cottage looks like. But, it’s pretty typical for a rich-person cottage.

In many (if not most) cases, a cottage is not going to be connected to municipal services such as water — hence Shane’s well, without which there probably wouldn’t be potable water and he’d have to bring in big water jugs. 
Other services a cottage probably isn’t connected to: sewers (there’d be a septic tank instead), electricity (you’d use a generator — the power might not be on when you’re not there, although if Shane visits frequently enough he might not do a full shutdown between visits), garbage/recycling (you might need to drive out your garbage to the dump, or to a local collection point).

[One thing I feel compelled to say because I feel very strongly about this: I don’t care that it’s book canon, a pool is a fucking crazy thing for a cottage to have and I rebuke it. 1) The lake is right there, and accessing the lake is basically the entire point of going to a cottage, and 2) Shane only has well water. You would not want to be filling and re-filling a pool when you’re relying on well water. They can (and would!) still go swimming, but it should be in the lake. I’ll die on this hill. SMH.]

In most cases, you would have a fair amount of space between your cottage and your neighbours. Even if the next cottage over is fairly nearby, there would be a significant number of trees between you and them and your view of their place would probably be significantly obstructed. You may or may not even know/be friendly with your neighbours (this depends on the area).

You spend a lot of time outdoors at a cottage — that’s kind of the point! Common activities:

• Swimming in the lake
• Fishing (either off your dock or from a boat)
• Canoeing, kayaking, motorboating
• Jet skiing
• Campfires/bonfires
• Chilling out in a hammock or in Adirondack/Muskoka chairs

In most cases it would be a fairly far trip to go to the grocery store, and an even farther trip to go to a restaurant. Chances that you’d be able to get takeout delivered are slim to none. 
(To be honest, Shane’s lie to Hayden in e06 about an Amazon delivery being at the door makes me think that Hayden doesn’t know Shane’s at his cottage. I would be sincerely shocked if Amazon’s doing door-to-door deliveries in cottage country. Best-case-scenario would probably be a community PO box that you could pick mail/packages up from and which you’d have to drive to.)

Oh, one more thing. You all should have seen the look of abject horror on my face when I read the scene in the books where Shane and Ilya start having sex against (and then on) Shane’s dock. I am dreadfully sorry to inform you all of the existence of dock spiders. (BIG warning for Spider Photos at that link.) They’re extremely common in Ontario and Québec, and in my experience, almost all docks have a bunch of them. They can be up to 3.5”/almost 9cm long. They also walk on water and can survive being submerged. SHUDDER. Under no circumstances would I fuck on a dock in eastern Québec. Get tf outta here.

Misc. logistics

The drive between Ottawa and Montréal is about 2-3 hours depending on traffic. In most of Canada, this is not considered an overly-long drive. This would be considered extremely doable for most things beyond, like, a daily commute to work. 

• That said, this isn’t a drive you’d want to make in super inclement weather, e.g. heavy snow or freezing rain.
• BTW, you need snow/winter tires on your car in the winter months. This is pretty strongly recommended even if you have all-wheel drive.
• You can also get between Ottawa and Montréal by plane, train, or bus.
• Something like Montréal/Ottawa to Toronto would be considered a long drive. Anything much further than that (about 5-7 hours, depending on traffic) is starting to lean into “too far to casually drive there” territory.
• In the show, they say Shane's cottage is in eastern Québec, specifically Lanaudière. So for show canon, maybe his parents' cottage is inherited from Yuna's parents, or maybe the Hollanders just wanted a cottage near Montreal because they both lived there for a while! It's like a 3-ish hour drive from Ottawa which is pretty manageable for a cottage trip. As for book canon, the books just say Ontario (which sadly rules out my beloved Gatineau Hills), but a kind Ottawa Resident commenter has informed me that there is popular eastern Ontario cottage county about an hour or two west of Ottawa - the Frontenac/Perth/Calabogie region! For me, the important point is that Muskoka or the Kawartha Lakes would be (imo) pretty wildly unlikely. His cottage is near his parents’ cottage and he grew up in Ottawa. Why would you want to drive 5 hours to go to Muskoka or the Kawartha Lakes when there’s really nice cottage country only 2 hours away?

Ilya would probably not drive his fancy sports cars during the winter. Tbh this is probably true in Boston too (they get snow and stuff from what I understand) but I can say this with confidence for Ontario and Quebec. Putting aside safety entirely, road salt (deicing salt) damages cars through corrosion and it would probably be worse/more pronounced on a car so low to the road.

Canada and the U.S. don’t have any kind of Schengen-style agreement — this is not an open border. To travel between Canada and the States, you need to go to a border crossing and clear customs. You need to have your passport with you to get across the border.

• I would assume that Shane probably has a NEXUS membership, but he would still need to carry his passport when crossing the border. Ilya is not eligible for NEXUS because he’s not a U.S. or Canadian citizen or permanent resident/green card holder. He would need to show his Russian passport.
• Incidentally, Ilya would also need a visitor visa for his trip to the cottage, but it’s possible that he has a multiple-entry visitor visa valid for up to 10 years, so. Shrug.

Canada does not have spousal visas. If you are a Canadian citizen and you marry someone who doesn’t have permanent status in Canada (i.e. PR or citizenship) and want them to be able to live permanently in Canada, you need to sponsor them. This is a 12-14 month process and does not grant the non-Canadian spouse the ability to live & work in Canada in the meantime. Until the sponsorship application is processed and accepted, the non-Canadian spouse still needs a work permit or some other kind of visa to be able to live in Canada. Also, the spouse gets PR status, not citizenship.