There are not many saunas in France or in British Columbia.
I discovered the sauna when I was sent by the French Navy to Halifax, Nova Scotia, as a NATO exchange officer, in 1979.
My wife then told another woman that "there is not much oxygen here". She pronounced oxygen as "oxygène" in French. So, the woman guessed that my wife was speaking French. As this woman was from France, they started a conversation in French. And she and her husband, an East Indian, became our friends during her three years sojourn in Nova Scotia.
My boss, the French military attaché in Ottawa, once said in a sauna "It makes you sweet". Of course, he wanted to say "sweat", but he mispronounced it. The other guy looked at him with a strange look!
The year I was born! You were talking about being a boomer the other day - I am the last of Gen-X.
That is a great story. I think a lot of friendships are made in saunas here. Not as much now, but it also used to be the place where a lot of business was done - Sauna and vodka. Supposedly, a lot of the negotiations between Finland and the USSR happened in saunas too.
:)
In some countries, the sauna is seen as some kind of sexual thing, but it is nothing of the sort here! Families go together.