If you’ve spent time as a visitor in all three of Canada’s Maritime Provinces – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island – you undoubtedly had memorable experiences with Atlantic Canadian English. Maybe you were invited to “dinner,” which is a term used to describe lunch in the Maritimes, and you showed up at “supper,” which is the evening meal. Maybe your host told you not to worry about it and that he “likes the cut of your jib,” a jib being the forward sail of a boat or ship that cuts the wind and a way of saying that he gets you’re explanation and he’s more than okay with it. Maybe he told you that the next stop in your three province tour was just “downstream” or “up the road” and it turned out to be a day’s drive. That’s because for Maritimers, every community feels like it’s the one next door and that everyone is connected in some way or another – which is, more often than not, the case on these shores. And that’s why it wasn’t a surprise to me – a Maritimer myself – when Tyler Kember, part of the second generation of the family-based management team of six at Centennial Auto Group on Prince Edward Island, told me that his family’s customers come from all over the Maritimes.
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