American's general knowledge about Canada

Factual Questions
1

Can agive me a sense about American’s general knowledge of Canada? ‘up here’ we regularly see/hear stories on ‘dumb yankees’ who don’t know sqaut about their biggest trading partner, and closest neighbor (culturally anyhow, depending on geography). In fact, one of the most popular tv shows in Canada is a satirical weekly newsmag with a featrure called ‘Talking to Americans’ in which the host, Canadian comic Rick Mercer, does man-on-the-street interviews about such subjects as Canada opening its first university, curbing the polar-bear hunt in Toronto, running water in all 5 states . . . and the thing is, people fall for it everytime.

To set this up - Margaret Atwood said that the world’s longest undefended border is actually the world’s longest one-way mirror: Canada has an unobstructed gaze on everything that happens south of the border, while Americans look north, and see themselves. Is this true?

2

Canada… Canada… that’s somewhere near Alaska, isn’t it?

3

I would say that’s true. If you think that your “man on the street” interviews are funny, you should see Leno do it and quiz people about THEIR OWN COUNTRY! Its absolutely amazing how little Americans know about the U.S. Its just embarrassing. Let me see if I can find a link giving examples…

No, can’t find it. But still very funny. Anyone remember any bits?

4

Having Canadian relatives, I see both sides of that “mirror”. If you’re asking if the US is US-centric, it should come as no surprise. Yes, and very much so. In the US, the differences between the two countries are lost. But, Canada and Canadians have class and style - something long since lost here in the US. Also, sadly, don’t expect the US to know much about Canada’s geography or history. If you’re lucky, they’ll know it’s to the North! Then again, those people in the US who can find Hawaii on a map are a dying breed, so Canada can’t expect too much more!

Ok, I exaggerate a bit, but your post answers itself. One exception might be the US hockey fan who, by osmosis, has learned city names like “Toronoto”. Mention Halifax, and expect blank stares!

However, to those who come to Canada, it’s well worth the trip to enjoy the beauty and hospitality of Canada!

5

Thats just the kind of ignorance the OP is trying to address here. If you don’t know that Canada is IN Alaska then please refrain from posting.

Thank you for your support

6

I have not seen the show you mention, but…

I’d be distrustful of those man-on-the-street interviews. That’s not a representative sample, for several reasons, but the main reason: he’s looking for the funny ones. So if he interviews 20 people about Toronto getting television for the first time, for instance, the 19 who look at him like he’s crazy aren’t going to make the show. It’s only the really dopey ones that get reported back.

The Jay Leno show in the U.S. is similar. He goes out on the street to ask questions, but only the ones who come across as dumber than a post are actually aired. The dumber, the better. I know someone who was interviewed – she said that she knew it was the Leno show, and that if she could sound dumb enough, she’d be on national TV… so she played stupid, and it worked.

Second point, sometimes people just freeze up when interviewed on the street like that. (“This is some kinda nut, and the best way to get away from him is to nod agreement and make noncommital sounds of agreement.”)

Finally, it’s not just ignorance about Canada. You pick ANY topic and you’ll find an appalling number of responses that indicite zero level of knowledge. Ask people who’s running for President of the U.S., and you’ll get a significant portion (5% to 10%, say, at a guess) who don’t know.

I’d bet it’d not be different going the other way. Ask a buncha Canadians if they’d heard about Wyoming opening its first hospital, how many would nod agreement? Or about the Chicago gangsters? All you’d need would be one or two to film, after all. How much of Canadians “knowledge” of the U.S. is based on TV shows and movies? More people (around the world) know about the U.S. than vice versa, because of the predominance of the U.S. entertainment industry.

In short, Canadians enjoy making fun of Americans’ ignorance, and Americans enjoy making fun of Canadians’ provincial attitudes (pun intended.) It’s all playing up to stereotypes, and it plays well.

7

One of my favorites is when Jay showed the famous photo of the Hindenburg disaster and someone identified it as the sinking of the Titanic.

One must, however, remember that the people he talks to are wandering Hollywood Boulevard in the evening. That can’t really be a representative sample, can it? Please tell me it can’t.

As far as our knowledge of Canadian culture and history, I guess it’s true. But then again, we’ve got a big enough country to be terribly unaware of parts of our own territory. Here in Washington State, I’d say that Alabama is more like a foreign country to most of the populace. Brittish Columbia is a neighbor.

8

I’m curious why you think we should know that much about Canada anyway. Sure, we get Canadian singers, movie stars, beer, etc., but are we smothered by Canadian culture? Everybody knows about the US because we’re so noisy and nosey. I doubt most Americans know much more about Mexico than they do about Canada. Do you think Canadian news shows up more often in the US than, say Russia?

Considering population–Canada is what 45-50 million? Seems to me ignorance of China, India, and Indonesia should take precedence.

9

Oops, my bad. Canada is a National Park in southern Alaska then, no? The Park Service runs a couple mapel syrup plantations, a few excellent breweries, and I think three rangers get together off-hours to play some really great music?

On a slightly serious note, I will admit that I am only slightly kidding about my Canadian-ignorance. I am not (I hope) ignorant in general. But I know a lot more of the goings on in most African and Asian countries than I do about our friendly neighbor to the … the … the north. (It is north, isn’t it?) I think the reason for this is similar to why so few Americans could tell you much about Delaware or Rhode Island. Comparatively speaking, there just isn’t much going on. I don’t mean to imply that Canadian goings on are not important, but democratic reforms of African nations or dramatic market restructuring in Asian countries are a bit higher on the world-wide importance scale.

Where does news of the world come from? I get it from the Economist. And how many articles does Canada get in the Economist? Canada is lumped in with the Americas section, while the United States has its own suite of articles. (Well, it is in the issues I read. Is it different overseas?) Now, it is not unusual for other articles in the Americas to reference neighboring countries so a more cohesive picture of the continent is depicted by reading several articles. But one rarely sees reference to Canada in an article about a South American country. Once or twice in the US section, but that’s about it. Same goes for the International, European, etc. sections as well. Of course I am oversimplifying things a bit, but safe, docile, non-problematic Canada just doesn’t grab headlines.

10

If Mercer shows you six or seven people, he interviewed sixty.

I once had dinner with a bunch of guys from the University of Calgary who thought Calgary was the capital of Alberta. You find them everywhere.

I have known fellow Canadians who:

  • Didn’t know how many provinces there are in Canada
  • Didn’t know who Adolf Hitler was or what “World War II” was
  • Did not know who the Prime Minister was
  • In two cases, did not know WHAT a “Prime Minister” was
  • Did not know who the woman on our coins was

These are educated people.

11

I actually picked up a copy of Morton’s Short History of Canada to learn more about my Canadian internet friends. Haven’t finished it yet, but so far…it’s kind of lame. 19th century Canada comes off as a paranoid country expecting the bad old Yankees to come pouring over any moment.

That, and Morton sometime mentions things that I’m sure I’d have heard of as a Canadian, but have no clue what are as myself. I’m just lucky I know St John’s is the capital of Alberta.

12

Damn! I meant St John is the capital of Alberta. St John’s is the capital of the Province of the Northwestern Yukon. Teach me to preview, somebody!

13

As a Canadian married to an American and living in Canada, both my wife and I see both sides of the mirror, too. But we’re long past the obvious things (she knows the names of all the provinces and their capitals, and knows that a box marked flocons de mais contains corn flakes), and into the more subtle.

What she has noticed is that things in Canada are not quite as easy (for lack of a better term) as they are in the US. Here in Canada, our supermarkets sell groceries. Drugstores sell prescriptions and other remedies, clothing stores sell clothing. Makes sense, eh, Canadians?

But on trips to the US, she has shown me what an American supermarket is: groceries, clothes, prescriptions, over-the-counter remedies, liquor store–and sometimes the supermarket even has a few gas pumps! Credit cards and checks (they’d be cheques if they were accepted for groceries in Canada) are accepted for everything, including groceries, there. It sure isn’t your local Dominion store, but very convenient!

Notarizing documents is another matter. Apparently, in the US, you can get documents notarized in banks and other fairly-easy-to-get-to-when-you-need-to places. Here in Canada, you generally need to make an appointment with a lawyer, at his or her convenience.

But as I said, these are the kind of things that are subtle; that one only sees if one lives here for any length of time.

I suppose we don’t tend to have terribly exciting news (by world standards anyway), and what we do have is mostly political in nature: who said what today in Parliament, and how some new policy or budget will affect the Maritimes fishing industry or BC loggers or Toronto financiers or Quebec francophones. It’s not the kind of earth-shaking news that would make anybody, including Americans, notice and take an interest in us.

And yes, Canada has its share of those who do not know their own geography and history, much less anybody else’s.

'Nuff said for now.

14

Canada is around 30.5 million as of July 1, 2000. Are you suggesting that population is the prerequisite for whether or not a foreign country deserves your attention? I’d suggest economy might be a better indicator. Every day $1billion worth of trade (that’s US dollars too, folks) crosses the Canada-US border. Canada and the US do more trade in ten days than the US does with any of its other top ten trading partners all year.

15

I’ll show my lack of knowledge here.

mealypotaotes, which “5 states” are you talking about? I thought Canada had provinces and territories.

16

Actually I was thinking from a humanitarian perspective–that those are a couple examples of cultures with millions that might be living with severe hunger or disease. But perhaps you’re right and we should just ignore them in favor of the bottom line.

What kind of attention do you want?

17

I’m from TEXAS so my perception is skewed - to me Kansas may as well be the Great White North and Canada is lumped in with the permafrost countries like Finland and Norway. But seriously I’ve always understood Canada to be essentially the same as the U.S. culturally (transportation, religious beliefs, education, what have you…). A possible exception being Quebec – but we have Louisiana so it still evens out. From my admittedly limited point of view the U.S. and Canada are fairly similar – except Canadian money is cheaper!

18

Let’s get down to some specifics:

A friend once told me that a Canadian two dollar bill
has the American flag flying over the Parliament
building.

Is this true?

19

Originally posted by Mooney252:

Not true. Your friend is thinking of the ten dollar bill that was issued about ten or so years ago. But it still didn’t show the US flag over Parliament.

What it did show was the Canadian flag as it looked in the old days: the Union Jack in the top corner and a red field with the Canadian coat-of-arms on the fly. The flag is quite small on the bill and while the engravers did their best with the detail, an observer unfamiliar with Canadian flags through history might indeed mistake it for the US flag.

As for the two dollar bills, they’ve been replaced by coins now. I miss the bills, myself.

20

I’ve lived on both sides of the mirror. I attended graduate school in Toronto, then moved back to the USA – to my native state of Delaware of all places, where like Canada, as a previous poster seemed to think, not much goes on. (Ever heard of DuPont?)

I definitely noticed the difference moving back to the USA. We get practically no Canadian news here. Having lived there for a while, I got interested in national and local events; moving back was kind of like putting down a novel in the middle and never finishing it. The only event which seemed to break into our newspapers was the referendum on separation/sovereignty for Quebec, a few years ago. It’s appalling to me that we should hear so little about our closest neighbor (politically and culturally), and the second largest country by land in the world. For instance, how many people in the USA – who regularly read the newspaper and generally try to stay current – know what “Nunavut” is? Or putting it another way, how many know that there are now ten provinces and three territories in Canada?

The question is not whether Canadian news is always relevant to us. There’s a lot in the daily paper that has little effect on me personally, but I still find it interesting to read. But it could be relevant; we could learn a lot from Canada and Canadian society, if we bothered to look and understand. Somehow, though, we take this ally for granted – as if Canada is some kind of shadow of the USA.