I came to Canada to study at McGill — not to start a new life, just to get a degree. What I found was snow, confusion, and a national obsession with things that look like they’ve already been digested.

As a Frenchman raised in Washington, DC, I considered myself more than prepared for cultural nuance. Canada laughed.

This isn’t a heartwarming tale of finding myself — it’s more like a year-long identity crisis disguised as a study abroad. Every day was a fresh lesson in linguistic absurdity, social ambiguity, and what happens when people apologise while absolutely meaning the opposite.

Pootine and Punishment is a bitterly funny, frostbitten memoir of one man’s attempt to survive a country where “nice” is a threat, directions are bilingual but useless, and sophistication is met with blank stares and lukewarm coffee.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed barely surviving it.