Canadian Literary Consultant Needed, Please :)

G

Guitarist

Senior Member
I need a little help with the language, please. Canadian English. I am working on a piece of fiction and two Canadians have just walked onto the page. I just need some minor help with dialogue -- do they eat supper? or dinner?

Do they eat ice cream cones, or cornets? What do little kids call their mothers?

These two are from Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. Would they vacation on "PEI," or "Prince Edward Island" and is it as lovely as it looks to me on TV?

In my part of the US most people eat dinner but I grew up eating supper. And ice cream cones (which seems to be pretty much nationwide), and my friends called their mothers Mama, Momma, or Mother (some of my younger friends call their mothers Mom). So I know there's no hard and fast rule, but I would like to at least try to get it right if this ever makes it to publication.

And I know that in GA and AL and TN they couldn't eat Timbits or poutine unless they'd brought them with them in the car!
 

Let's see, I am a west coast Canuck, so I don't know the answer to the PEI question. Canucks eat ice cream cones, young kids
call their mothers mom or mommy, older peeps, usually mom or mother. Supper is casual, celebratory feasts are usually referred to as dinners.
 
And the answer to the PEI question is that they would vacation on P E I. Yes PEI is a very pretty province. Rolling hillsides planted with crops and bordered by 'tidy' bands of brush and eventually levelling down to meet the sea. It's not a GRAND AND IMMENSE sort of landscape (like BC or Alberta's western mountains) but it's peaceful and pretty that's for sure. Stays green all summer because it gets regular rain throughout unlike many regions of Canada. And it gets about two or three weeks every summer where it's so humid, you sweat just sitting still. Right now I'm living just outside of Charlottetown which is the provinces capital. It's a quaint province but not very well off.
 
Thanks, Debby! :)

Your timing is cool -- I just started a new chapter today with these characters talking up a storm!
 

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