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Date: Saturday, 30 July 2011 15:00 (UTC)That sounds like the general Canadian phenomenon called Canadian Raising. Basically the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ have their first half raised to something near schwa when they're before voiceless consonants - I usually notate them as [ʌɪ] and [ʌʊ]. This actually occurs in quite a few dialects, not just Canadian, with /aɪ/, but it's more restricted with /aʊ/.
(For some Canadian speakers, including myself, I suspect the raised and unraised versions are somehow getting delinked from their strict phonological contexts and turning into phonemes in their own right. I have a raised [ʌɪ] in 'fire', even though it's before a voiced consonant and so shouldn't be raised; thus, for me, 'fire' and 'wire' don't rhyme.)