I’m sure Nova Scotia’s pictogram road signs are universally standard, but The Gnome and I had never seen the likes of some of them before. Maybe we live sheltered lives. Or maybe we’d just been alone together too long. Whatever the reason, the road signs we saw along our Canadian travels finally started to crack us up. We did struggle with some, and then we started making up our own messages. Here are some examples.
It was the exclamation point that first got our attention. What could this say, we wondered: Hey, Mom, watch this? Don’t dive from a pyramid? “Running down a vertical slope is exclamation-point-worthy?” The chain link fence separating us from a sheer cliff-drop into the ocean might have given us a clue. Good advice in any case.
Don’t know why, but we found this odd–a private railroad crossing.
Doesn’t this look like a warning that a dump truck is about to crash into a wall? Look again–it actually means construction equipment may be entering the highway somewhere nearby.
Wow, those Canadians and their speed limits! Oh, wait, that’s kilometers, not miles per hour. Quick, calculate!
This one? Maybe mountains ahead? Nope. It means the road’s about to get bumpy
After trying to interpret some of the more obtuse road signs, we decided this one meant “No tossing a tin can from your car window when the lid’s still attached.”
I loved the extensiveness of informational signage and was impressed by the wifi notice, but do you know what some of the other images mean?
You may have seen this on a previous post, but it fits here, too. It took us a while to figure it out. It looks like cuts of meat or something on top of two capital H’s. Soon enough we learned it means the pavement is about to end in favor of gravel–or worse.
The next one’s not a road sign, but we did find it in Canada.
Okay, I know it’s done differently in different places, but I’d simply never seen anything like this sign before. Sitting in my stall, I laughed out loud–mostly because I could never manage the first position!
It’s good to laugh. We did plenty on our trip.
Living on the Diagonal 
My first encounters with unusual “facilities” was during the 4 years we were stationed in Germany in early 70’s. We traveled all over Europe – for all the campers in our families – we parked our van at campsites in many countries! There were no signs, it was just drive in, park, check out surroundings and there were always surprises! The memory is still avid. It was a favorite and often repeated personal philosophy of former, now deceased NCSU basketball coach, Jim Valvano, on the importance to be sure to “laugh a little, think a little, and cry a little” everyday. Interestingly, the same quoate can be found on former UNC-CH basketball coach Dean Smith’s headstone. I have done all of these today and I am still laughing about the signs! Thank you Carole.
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Happy to give you a chuckle, Marcia!
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Hilarious! I think I might know why the final sign was deemed necessary. One of my students who had worked in another country as a missionary said that almost all the toilets there were in the ground, and people squatted over them. However, where she stayed there was an American-style toilet. BUT they often found footprints on the toilet seat after one of the locals used their facilities. Perhaps in the area where you discovered that sign they have frequent visitors who are not used to using above-the-ground toilets!
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Agreed, Leslie. I would break my neck if I tried it!
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Yes, laughing is good, especially when traveling. It gets one over the bumps and through the tunnels of life, doesn’t it?!
On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 7:50 AM Living on the Diagonal wrote:
> LivingOnTheDiagonal posted: “I’m sure Nova Scotia’s pictogram road signs > are universally standard, but The Gnome and I had never seen the likes of > some of them before. Maybe we live sheltered lives. Or maybe we’d just been > alone together too long. Whatever the reason, the road signs ” >
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Yes, it does, Sylvia. I love to laugh!
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