# Are Canadians generally nicer than Americans? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 8, 2019, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683 "2019-05-08T20:19:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dunmurry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d2c977/32.png) [@Dunmurry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunmurry)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2019, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/1 "2019-05-08T20:19:33Z")
Well I have always thought that some people think that Canadians are nicer than Americans. Do you think this is true? Canadians seem to be less brash, less arrogant than Americans and there are probably fewer assholes there than you would get in America. Does anyone have any experience of things like this? ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2019, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/2 "2019-05-08T22:17:20Z")
I think that Americans are _friendly_. Canadians are _polite_. There’s a difference. A Canadian will diligently obey all social customs to avoid giving offense. An American will throw those customs out the window, but do so from a place of love. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2019, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/3 "2019-05-08T22:35:33Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > I think that Americans are _friendly_. Canadians are _polite_. There’s a difference. > > A Canadian will diligently obey all social customs to avoid giving offense. An American will throw those customs out the window, but do so from a place of love. For the record I am an American and I don’t love you. I’m not even particularly friendly! I am pretty polite though. Perhaps the fact that Canada borders my state is somehow corrupting me. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2019, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/4 "2019-05-08T22:49:11Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > I think that Americans are _friendly_. Canadians are _polite_. There’s a difference. > > A Canadian will diligently obey all social customs to avoid giving offense. An American will throw those customs out the window, but do so from a place of love. So you’re saying Canadians are Lawful Neutral and Americans are Chaotic Good? 😛 I don’t know how much( if any )real difference there is, but I was a bit tickled the last time I crossed the Canadian border( many years ago now ). The Canadian border guards at the Washington border south of Vancouver were truly tedious and obnoxious. The American border guards crossing back into nowheresville Montana were as friendly as could be ;). ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2019, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/5 "2019-05-08T22:50:22Z")
“Americans” is a huge category. (“Canadians” too, to a lesser extent.) I suspect their “niceness” varies quite a bit by region of the country, population density, and who knows what all other factors—insofar as you can generalize at all. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2019, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/6 "2019-05-08T23:01:46Z")
Meh. People are people. There are nice folks and assholes in every country. Possibly we Canadians are less stressed overall, in that we have universal health care, more restrictive gun laws, and don’t really have the same racial tensions like some of the US does. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2019, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/7 "2019-05-09T01:51:33Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > I don’t know how much( if any )real difference there is, but I was a bit tickled the last time I crossed the Canadian border( many years ago now ). The Canadian border guards at the Washington border south of Vancouver were truly tedious and obnoxious. The American border guards crossing back into nowheresville Montana were as friendly as could be ;). My experience over a lifetime of border crossings has been the exact opposite, so I guess the moral of the story is, so much for anecdotes. I don’t mean the US border guards are always difficult, I mean that whenever I encounter anyone particularly officious, it’s always when crossing into the US, and the Canadian side has always been perfectly easygoing. I suspect the real story here is just that one tends to face fewer hassles when returning to one’s own country, nothing more. Their only interest is if you’re bringing anything back, whereas for a non-resident, the main questions are immigration related. As for the bigger question, no, there’s no “nicer than” here. Canadians tend to be more reserved and polite than Americans, while Americans tend to be both warmer and friendlier and also in some cases more aggressive and obnoxious. In both countries regional and urban/rural differences tend to be much greater than any generalized differences between the nations as a whole. The main thing that never ceases to amaze is how Americans, a group of mostly-nice and friendly people, can create such viciously divisive politics, because it seems that whenever they get together at election time, they lose their collective minds and elect morons. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2019, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/8 "2019-05-09T02:06:37Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > For the record I am an American and I don’t love you. I’m not even particularly friendly! I am pretty polite though. Perhaps the fact that Canada borders my state is somehow corrupting me. [Minnesota Nice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_nice) As a Midwesterner (who also lived in the South) I believe people in New York City are actually nice. They’re just always in a hurry, so asking them for directions ends up something like them saying very rapidly, “Sure I’ll tell you how to get to the D train, and I’ll even tell you which place to stop at on the way to get a coffee and a slice, and remember that a “regular coffee” doesn’t mean what you think it does, and I gotta go, so I’m only going to say this once and then I’m walking away,” followed by directions you wouldn’t be able to figure out even if they drew you a map. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2019, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/9 "2019-05-09T11:53:16Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > Meh. People are people. There are nice folks and assholes in every country. > Possibly we Canadians are less stressed overall, in that we have universal health care, more restrictive gun laws, and don’t really have the same racial tensions like some of the US does. When I lived in the GTA for a year, I was shocked at how much racism there was, primarily against black people (“African-Canadians”?). Overall, as a Michigander, I Ontarians and us are mostly interchangeable. People in the US south, out west, east coast, etc., are much more different than people from southern Ontario. I’ve never spent time in other provinces, but I imagine the people there are significantly different than Ontario. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2019, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/10 "2019-05-09T12:11:33Z")
Canadians must be nicer than Americans. At least, they’re so insistent about it that it seems risky to disagree. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2019, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/11 "2019-05-09T12:46:53Z")
I’m neither American nor Canadian, and my experience is based only on both I’ve met overseas, but I’d say the cultural level of reserve of Canadians, though it may not mean anything regarding inner personality, does at least mean that I’ve never seen a Canadian go full on public don’t-give-a-crap asshole, and I have seen more than one person from the US do so. The public personality range of Canadians, at least those overseas, seems to cover a smaller spectrum; indifferently polite to friendly polite, whereas the US range that I have met included some of the most lovely, generous people I’ve ever met, to more than one person I wanted to punch within 30 seconds of meeting them. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2019, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-canadians-generally-nicer-than-americans/833683/12 "2019-05-09T13:35:03Z")
FWIW, the nastiest, most egotistical customs official I ever ran into was on entering the Vancouver, BC airport. They ain’t all smiles and “thank yous”.