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I absolutely agree that you can't paint a picture of Canada by just one Canadian city and I in no way meant to imply that. Definitely it is interesting to meet Canadians from other places (Nova Scotia, Quebec, B.C., etc.) and it would be ignorant to paint them with one broad brush--so many interesting differences. But I do think their makeup as a whole has many common threads. f1000, I also like your comparison of Americans being more advanced perhaps in some ways (material items maybe) and yet Canadians being more advanced on a human level. Great analogy and "spot on" as they would say here in Canada. Yes, we are definitely more alike than different and I think that was the mystery to me, because we are so similar but yet there were definite differences as exhibited to me time and time again in a consistent and constant fashion. I must admit, in many ways, this Southern former Republican has been 'Canadianized' in many ways!!
I know I kind of hijacked this thread with it being what CANADIANS think of Americans but as someone with one foot in and one foot out, I thought I would share my observations and experiences.
I would also like to point out that I "resisted" at first some of the ways that were different up here, but over time I realized the Canadians really had it right in many ways.
I would also like to point out that I applaud John Diefenbaker saying he wasn't anti-American, just pro-Canadian.
An interesting side-note might be that when the Calgary Flames were in the Stanley Cup playoffs a few years back, the Flames flags that were attached to so many cars, the enthusiasm of the fans and the spirit that swept the city for those weeks, made me feel at home. It felt American.
I would also like to point out that I applaud John Diefenbaker saying he wasn't anti-American, just pro-Canadian.
John Diefenbaker was neither anti-American, nor pro-Canadian.
He was either pro-American, being a major "brown-noser" to the U.S. and/or excessively anti-Ontario.
He was the sole reason the AVRO Aero was cancelled, and then destroyed instead of at least selling the remains for profit.
Without John Diefenbaker, Canada probably would have become a military world-superpower, at least as far as military technology, rivalling or even overshadowing the U.S. military.
Read the first paragraph of what I initially wrote for examples.
So your saying that you cant go hiking or skiing in the US? Or maybe your also saying that you can't experience asian food in america. Are you also saying that There are no rodeos in the US, when there are plenty and surely more than in canada. Which should be pretty obvious because most of the year its too cold to ride a bull.
So your saying that you cant go hiking or skiing in the US? Or maybe your also saying that you can't experience asian food in america. Are you also saying that There are no rodeos in the US, when there are plenty and surely more than in canada. Which should be pretty obvious because most of the year its too cold to ride a bull.
All US Americans that I've met in person have been very nice folks, can't say the same for some that I have met on the internet tho', not all just some....
I am grateful for my boss he is Canadian.
He started the company there in canada .
As far as us Americans we have good one and bad ones.
Just like Every Country.
OH yes and you have The best part of the Falls.
would like to come up and see it need to plan a trip.
My ex-wife is Canadian (she still lives in the states and has dual citizenship). We were together for 16 years, and we often visited and stayed with her large, extended family (in southern Ontario). We all spoke pretty freely about this issue, and America and Canada generally. I also lived in Buffalo, NY, for 14 years, and traveled very often to and around Ontario. I've kept up with Canadian news for the past 30 years or so.
So here are my observations about this--with the forewarning/admission that I am exaggerating the differences just to address the question. Obviously, humans are human wherever you go, and our two societies are more alike than different. These differences, while I think very real and important, are not terribly vast and CANNOT characterize all Canadians and all Americans. They're only *generally* true.
One other admission: While I love America--I mean, lump-in-the-throat-while-looking-at-the-flag kind of love--I love Canada, too. I think that, because of its great culture AND because of its spectacular natural beauty, of the kinds that most appeal to me, Canada just may be the greatest country on earth. Even so, I am proud beyond words of being an American. Much of the good I try to do as a teacher, citizen, parent, etc., is out of my gratitude for what America has meant to me, my family, and the world in general.
-Canadians tend to acknowledge, and even take a subtle but deep pride in, the individual limiting his self-centeredness for the common good. By contrast, Americans tend to think of individualism as a good unto itself, with very little cost or risk to the common good--the "common good" itself being a now-strange term to most Americans. In fact, "compromise" is almost always a very dirty word in the American vocabulary, whereas for a Canadian, "compromise" suggests "Doing what you have to, short of betraying your integrity, to get the larger task done so all can benefit." Take a cartoonish but telling example: A far higher percentage of STOP signs have bullet holes in them in America than in Canada. To an extent, this simply shows how guns saturate American culture (another sign of American self-centeredness?). But it also shows how Americans tend to pride themselves on that self-VERSUS-society ethic. We're rebels, outlaws, each-man-a-country-unto-himself, survivalists, cowboys of perfect self-sufficiency, etc. Plenty of Canadians have hunting rifles and shotguns--but even in hunting areas in Ontario, at least, you very rarely see bullet holes or shot patterns in STOP signs. Yet even in suburban areas in America, you'll find a lot of signs intended to help people keep from hurting themselves and their fellow citizens, signs put up for and honoring the common good, shot full of spiteful holes. Look at how we wrap every demand that "Washington" subsidize our every need in a self-flattering contempt for all things "Washington" and governmental. Makes us feel "independent" even while we're demanding that government solve every problem. It's a national tic.
-Canadians tend to be much more aware of the world beyond their borders. They also tend (somewhat less, but still more than Americans) to put their own national issues and identity in an international context. This happens for several reasons: 1) Canadians still have some identification with Britain, and Britain, of course, needs to deal closely with Europe. 2) The French/French-speaking heritage can be a strong reminder that different nations exist (and that compromise is often a good and needed thing between nations and peoples). 3) The Scotch and Irish, and in some places, German heritage of Canadians' ancestors is in many places strongly sustained and palpable. Americans, by contrast, have tended to pretty successfully merge, blur, and obscure their lineages. We are pretty close to the "melting pot" ideal we've long had. This is mostly a very good thing. You're not as likely to kill your neighbor for being from the wrong tribe if you don't give a damn what tribe even you yourself are from. But it does have a subtle cost. We Americans have so detached ourselves from our ancestors' origins that we not only have lost the beter qualities of those origins, but we think we can live in a national bubble. Ask most Americans born since, say, 1950 what ethnicity they are or where their ancestors came from, and they're very vague. They usually don't know. Ask Americans what good things they sustained in their ancestral heritage and they might say, "Umm, french fries?" By contrast, a McDaniel or a MacIntyre or McDougal or a Gerhardt in, say, Orillia--much less a LeFleur in Montreal--is very aware of his ancestors' origins, and may even participate in some carefully preserved ritual acknowledging and celebrating this ancestry. 4) Canadians have the big three-ring-circus-with-enough-power-to-make-or-wreck-economies-and-blow-up-or-save-the-world--America--right on their border. No disrespect indented, but since Canada makes less of a splash (and less noise) on the world scene, it's easy for us to forget that Canada is there. Ditto Mexico. It's only been since job-loss to Mexico and the influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico reached a tipping point that many Americans became so aware of Mexico's presence on our own border. Plus, any country that is populated, powerful, BUSY with a zillion gossip and material and entertainment choices, AND in love with its own "patriotism = being yourself most fully" ethic, is bound to be insular, if not self-absorbed. To blunt, Americans would generally rather be entertained than educated. It takes a lot of time to half keep up with America's manic popular culture. So most of us are not just ignorant about Canada and Mexico, most of us are ignorant about most of the world most of the time. I've been teaching college for 22 years, at two highly respected schools, and the international and geographic ignorance of even my brightest students is astounding. Far more Americans can tell you the number of times that Britney Spears has been hospitalized than can tell you much about Castro, or who is Russia's new leader, or what the Kyoto Accord stipulated, etc., etc. When you're inside the three-ring-circus that is American culture--all the mirrors reflecting each other--it's pretty hard to get perspective on the tent, much less the field next door.
-In both countries, one can live a (pathetically) cacooned life, cut off from traditions, seasons, even nature itself. BUT much of Canadian culture is formed around the enormity of Canada's resources and extremities of the seasons. Only in our northern states is Summer the magic, schedule-shaping power that is in Canada. Only in our northern states and our coastal areas subject to storms is the power of nature to destroy you and reshape the land as central as it is to most Canadians much of the time. Similarly, it seems that proportionally more of Canada's economy is more directly dependent on natural resources, and with that, the seasons, the land, nature. Add this up and you get a culture that is bound to be more sensitive to, and I would argue more appreciative and protective of, natural resources, the seasons, the weather, and nature itself. Unless a hurricane is coming, you can live in Florida in January much as you live in Florida in July. Ditto huge swaths of our country. The big drama is how high you can crank the air-conditioner. It's amazing how much of America is getting homogenized. It's increasingly hard to tell where you are. The suburbs of Houston are as similarly barren as the suburbs of Atlanta or Philadelphia. It's amazing too how many Americans have any continuity with the way even their parents and grandparents lived, much less where they lived, or how and where their great-grandparents lived. We're not just rootless, we're losing understanding of what a root does, and even what one looks like. But think of how profoundly different life is in, say, Thunder Bay in January vs. life there in July. Think of how much of a Canadians' life, and the life of a Canadians' family and community, is driven by it being Winter or Summer--how profoundly personal and local habits are shaped by weather, seasons, nature, time of year, the driving reality of the natural world. Sure, there are plenty of greedy, environment-reckless Canadians. But with the power that nature has in Canada, coupled with Canada's traditions of compromising for the common good (individual AND/not vs. society, French AND/not vs. English, native AND/not vs. European, Canadian ways AND/not vs. British ways, etc.), there is palpably more humility to the Canadian character. Canadians concede that the individual can only do so much--that nature is more powerful, that certain recognitions of reality must be made lest we kill ourselves. Americans want more channels to watch, more tax cuts for services we already aren't even fully paying for, faster cheaper more. This doesn't mean, of course, that every American is a would-be Donald Trump, and every Canadian is a practicing monk. But there are reasons why Canadian streets tend to be cleaner and less violent; why Canada's cities, towns, and villages tend to be more functional, with more efficiency in government; why you're far less likely to be shot, robbed, raped, or begging for medical care in Canada than you are in America. Go from Detroit to Windsor, or Appalachia to Guelph, and the difference is almost painfully evident.
-Last note: Canadians tend to think that we Americans play the role of world cop because we're arrogant. Sure, some Americans are insufferably arrogant. But this larger claim that we're arrogant in our international actions is pretty galling. For the truth is that many Americans simply see that when certain injustices and types of suffering reach a crisis point, we would be failing our humanity AND America's ideals by NOT acting. This is something that some of our own people fail to get, or want to villify. But the fact is that, at our best, Americans are almost painfully sincere in our surges of benevolence. That doesn't mean we don't do some dumb and dangerous things. Certainly we sometimes misread what we're responding to and end up perhaps doing more harm than good. But there is a reason why we Americans keep thinking that every conflict in the world can be solved if we help the goodwilled people there establish democracy: we love our own democratic principles that much, and we're willing to risk our lives for the people whom we believe such principles can truly help. As much as I often wish I lived in Ontario instead of Virginia, I also wish Canadians understood this better about us. American goodness does not make American actions automatically good or even sensible. But it is very real, and very precious to the world's hopes of curtailing its cruelty and madness. As decadent as America is becoming/has become, there's still an incredibly generous decency in many of our people. Maybe in a generation or two this will be gone, starved and polluted away, but it's still here. And it's something to be admired. Something humbling, even.
Last edited by homeward bound; 02-20-2008 at 06:54 PM..
I am an American by birth, however, both my parents were Canadian. To make it more complicated one was a French Catholic and the other an English Protestant. TALK ABOUT A CONFUSED KID!
When I was two my folks aquired a large tract of land in Quebec. I spent every summer there until I was 23 years old.
When I married, I married an American. Sometimes, I regret that, but not because of the man. I regret that I did not go home. Canada has always felt safer, happier, and more laid back. Don't get me wrong, there are problems everywhere, but to me, Canada is a kinder, gentler, nation. My hope is that they watch the mistakes that the US made/makes and will make, and learn from them. And remember, we are all just doing the best we can.
HB, that has to be about the best analysis I have read. Well done.
It's not just recent history either. The Canadian and American experiences can be viewed in how each country "won the west"
American settlers came west, fought, battled and gained a foothold in an incredibly difficult environment, and eventually society, law and development caught up to the pioneers.
Canadians sent the police first, a) to protect the frontier from increasingly aggressive US Pioneers, b) To protect the natives from a) and c) indirectly support the development of the railroad and future populations.
Thanks, Mikeyyc. Glad you could forgive the typos and long-windedness!
Very telling difference in the west-settlement history! I'd heard of this, but must admit I'm pretty ignorant about this part of Canada's history. I've heard that Canada policed the Americans going to the Yukon and Alaska for gold very effectively, too, doing a heroic job keeping things relatively violence-free.
In fact, if anyone can recommend a few good books on the history of Canada, I'd much appreciate it. Hopefully one with a lot of pictures--I just love LOOKING at Canada. What a dramatic landscape. Even where it's cozy and quaint--say, a small lake surrounded by forest, or a pond in a small clearing--against all that unspoiled immensity, the quaint places themselves become dramatically beautiful. Like a lone, perfect snowflake pausing suspended out of a vast blizzard.
Selfishly, I'm glad that most Americans have no idea how gorgeous Canada is. I'd hate to see it get Disney-fied....
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I am grateful for my boss
