Mahendra:
Ah! You missed visiting the England/France of America

Celine:
Welcome to my blog. I am led to believe that working culture of Toronto and Newyork is quite similar, but I’ll know the differences better after spending more time here.

David:
Yea, and I heard someone here say just the opposite

Oemar:
I agree. I love the accent:) Canada is indeed beautiful (even in snow)

Not “all” Canadians are confused about our history, just the ones who stopped paying attention after their third year of high school. Our schools teach American history more than any other school system on the planet — including, maybe, some American jurisdictions — because our history is intertwined with American history, right to the point where events in Canada created America, and events in America helped create Canada. So if we want to understand where we are, and who we are, then we have to understand what made us… and that means America as a whole, America’s Revolution, America’s relationship with France and Aboriginals, the American Civil War and so on.

During the Revolution, American’s loyal to The Queen came to Canada. After the Revolution the newly formed American government saw Canada — a still poor British colony of about 300,000 people — as an easy target (America’s population was around 8 million) and America launched an invasion of Canada… and lost horribly. This invasion was a direct cause of Canada — then a single, largely unfocussed colony, becoming a federation.

Before the American Civil War, African-Americans escaped slavery by coming to Canada. Until the past thirty years almost all of Canada’s black population were descended from them. During the slave years African-American’s used “Heaven” as code for “Canada”.

Canada is America’s largest trading partner. About 30% of American goods and services are bought by Canadians, and Americans buy 60% of the stuff we make. We even supply America with the overwhelming majority of their oil, almost 60% of America’s daily intake comes from Canada.

There has been talk, during my lifetime, of “hey, we’re all pretty much the same, why not merge?” But there are 33 million Canadians who, compared to Americans, are all Socialists. The last thing the Americans want is 33 million Northern-Cubans, with 8 million of them speaking nothing but French. And 9 million of us vote.

Things like “the Queen” and “Victoria Day” are traditions here, and not necessarily celebrated for the same reasons now as they were ‘back then’.

There’s an author, Pierre Berton, who has written extensively about Canada. In fact his books are considered the unofficial biography of Canada. If you want to learn about Canada’s history he’d be a fantastic place to start.

I’ll just end this with an excerpt from one of his books that pretty much sums up the difference between Canadians and Americans, it’s from pages 313-314 of “The Invasion Of Canada: 1812-1813″ (I wrote a post on it: http://culturalsnafu.wordpress.com/2007/03/08/greatest-hits-canadian-books-the-invasion-of-canada-1812/)

“Thus the key words in Upper Canada were “loyalty” and “patriotism” — loyalty to the British way of life as opposed to American “radical” democracy and republicanism. [British General Isaac] Brock — the man who wanted to establish martial law and abandon habeas corpus — represented these virtues. Canonized by the same caste that organized the Loyal and Patriotic Society, he came to represent Canadian order as opposed to American anarchy — the “peace, order and good government” rather than the more hedonistic “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Had not Upper Canada been saved from the invader by appointed leaders who ruled autocratically? In America, the politicians became generals; in British North America, the opposite held true.

This attitude — that the British way is preferable to the American; that certain sensitive positions are better filled by appointment than by election; that order imposed from above has advantages over grassroots democracy (for which read “licence” or “anarchy”); that a ruling elite often knows better than the body politic — flourished as a result of an invasion repelled. Out of it, shaped by an emerging nationalism and tempered by rebellion, grew that special form of a state paternalism that makes the Canadian way of life significantly different from the more individualistic American way.”

Sorry it’s been a few days between visits. I have enjoyed my visits to Canada – and I reckon Canadians are really Aussies with different accents!

Cheers

David