Strange Canuck road signs baffle American tourist

Ty Burr is the film critic for the venerable Boston Globe. He is also a sometime visitor to Canada, whence he has just returned after spending some time "car camping" with his wife near the coast of New Brunswick.

He began his column yesterday, headed "Do you speak Canadian road sign?" by calling Canada a "gorgeous country". But, he warns his readers, if you're used to American road signs, written in English text, you'd better bone up [Would a Bostonian really use that expression? Ed.] on the amazing array of symbols Canucks use to communicate information to bilingual or multilingual road users. Like these.

"What began as a minor puzzlement for my wife and me bloomed over the course of a few days into a full-on obsession," he wrote of the various blue-and-white, black-and-yellow, French-and-English signs. "What in the name of Rob Ford were the road signs trying to tell us?"

Mr. Burr took the sign in the upper right corner to mean "Roadside genome sequencing booth just ahead". In fact, it's a signpost for the River Valley Scenic Drive. Poor Len Canayen, who alerted us to this story, admits that he didn't know that one either. Nor could he figure out the blue-and-white ones in the bottom row. Whatever could they mean? Don't ask Walt. Read Mr. Burr's column.