The Canadians that visit the site

I'm in Dundas Ontario, just southwest of Toronto. I've got to say I rather enjoy this site and particularly the forums.

Happy Trails!
Vince@Freewheel

Vince you are very fortunate.Alternative Audio in Dundas is by far and away the best high end store i have ever been in.

I live in Ottawa; but not the capital of music or hi-fi gears. The local dealers here are not ideal. I was about to upgrade my system for two years. However, Paradigm titan is sitting in my living room, although my listening is via my Sen600 most of the time. Anyway, I turned to audiogon and look for the advice and gears.

I often ask myself if the ideal high end dealer exists. Someone are not trying to sell you a two grand speaker at your first visit. No offence to the people at GTA, montreal, and west.

Happy listening to all

I am in the greater, greater Montreal area. Longueuil, which is to Montreal what New Jersey is to NYC. Did I say that? Well all comparaisons are odious. Canada does not have a floating currency, it has a sinking currency, to borrow from one of our fine banks' executives. Could it be time to adopt the USD? It will not be done for the sake of audio equipment, that's for sure. Not even a reasonably sized blip on the economy's radar screen. All is not so dark, friends and neighbours, as I found out not too long ago, quite a few Canadian companies do produce a variety of good to extremely good hi-fi equipment. Insofar as buying used from our good neighbours to the South, makes very little economic sense, factoring in shipping paid for in USD, the GST and PST based on the equivalent in CDN $ for which we are fleeced at the border, the usual brokerage fee (hey UPS as a right to be paid for its efforts too), the rate at which credit card cos charge for exchanging money if you are buying from a dealer and using plastic, and the hassle in trying to ship something back should it prove to be defective for whatever reason (try getting your $ from the Federal Gov't- like all of them, way better at collecting than cutting a cheque). My pet peeve: Canadian vendors who don't even bother giving a price in CND $ when they post (all of them actually...). Better yet, the friendly fellow who did not deign to reply to my e-mail asking how much he wanted for an Audio Research LS-16 in CDN $ and where he was situated. Somebody out there has discovered a form of audio arbitrage in scooping up high end products (the few that can be found)in Canada and being paid USD for them.

I am in St.Catharines. I am close enough to the U.S. to drive over whenever I want so if something in the states is a good deal I just mail it to Tonowanda N.Y. and go pick it up. No brokerage fees and alot of times no taxes either if its not too big of an item.What sucks about this area is no REAL hi-fi stores in the immediate area.I bought my audiolab and ProAc peices off the owner of a store that no longer exists in the area. I still appreciate quality audio but not quite into it like I was before. I used to live at the electronics store in my youth.