Do people of Canada and the US have more in common than people of other countries?

Factual Questions
1

Dunno if it is GQ or IMHO material, but I am sure a kind mod will move it if it digresses too much.

GENERALIZATION ALERT!!!

I would hazard to say that our grocery stores stock virtually identical of identical brands products. We watch the same TV. Radio stations play the same songs. Many of the brands of alcohol we buy are the same (except we can buy Absinthe!). Our restraunts serve the same food (IE - If you go into a restraunt in small town Alberta, you’re going to have a similar menu in small town Kansas). We wear similar clothing from the same makers. Our department stores are very similar with similar products. We drive the same cars and motorcycles.

Does say, Switzerland and Germany share as much in common as us? New Zeland and Australia?

[sub]Yes, I realize that Quebec has a different language and culture, but even then I still think for the most part the above applies[/sub]

2

This is going to depend on how you quantify the differences.

In general, I would say it MAY be true. Americans and Canadians are very similar, as these things go. Quebec is a special case, and there are other small groups in both countries that stand out (Newfoundlanders, Hawaii, etc.) but generally speaking the similarities are very, very numerous.

However, you must consider that many other countries are very similar as well:

Germany and Austria
Australia and New Zealand
England and Scotland

The same arguments that hold for Canada and the U.S. hold for these pairings as well.

Personally, I like the similarity between Canada and the U.S. It gives you a place to go that’s not so different.

3

Many adjacent countries in Europe are culturally very similar and owe their independence more to historical factors than any current conditions. In addition to Germany and Austria mentioned above, don’t forget there are whole groups of countries that are lumped together (Scandinavia, Benelux, Britain).

4

England and Scotland aren’t seperate countries, RickJay. Anyway, I’d say Americans and Canadians have a lot more in common than the English and Scottish.

5

England and Scotland are countries. They are not sovereign countries, but then again, neither are Canada or Australia.

Merriam-Webster:

country : a political state or nation or its territory

state : a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially : one that is sovereign

More information about the government of Scotland:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk

6

What about the nations of Central America? How much cultural difference, for example, is there between Honduras and Guatamala or Costa Rica and Panama?

7

The Dutch sociologist, Geert Hofstede, came up with four dimensions for measuring national cultures. He’s focused on the deep-rooted questions about what life is all about, not the superficial stuff like food and clothes. On his scales, Canada and the U.S. are closer together than any two other nations.

Good reading, if you like that sort of thing, is Hofstede’s Cultures and Organizations

8

By any reasonable definition, Canada and Australia are sovereign states.

Scotland is a country, but is not truly a sovereign state. The difference between Scotland’s level of sovereignty and Australia’s should be quite obvious.

9

Is that because you’ve never been here? You may find English or Scottish people who would agree with you, but it’s not a point of view to be taken very seriously. The OP mentioned these similarities between the US and Canada:

“…our grocery stores stock virtually identical of identical brands products. We watch the same TV. Radio stations play the same songs. Many of the brands of alcohol we buy are the same … Our restraunts serve the same food (IE - If you go into a restraunt in small town Alberta, you’re going to have a similar menu in small town Kansas). We wear similar clothing from the same makers. Our department stores are very similar with similar products. We drive the same cars and motorcycles.”

Do you really think things are any different between different parts of Britain?

10

Those would actually be closer that the comparison between a restaurant in small town N. Ohio/N. Indiana and a restaurant in small town Alabama/Mississippi. Then there are New England small towns and small towns in the southwest. All of those would vary more than Alberta vs. Kansas, IMHO.

11

True, and keep that going by saying a restaurant in Nova Scotia will be similar to one in Maine, which will also differ from Alberta.

12

My father-in-law travels extensively in the US. There are similarities, but there are big differences too.

News is really different. Commercials are different (which you don’t notice in Canada because we replace American ads with local commercials).
You can a lot of the same foodstuffs in either country, but there’s always gonna be something weird and deranged in the supermarket aisle when you go somewhere new.
I can tell you emphatically that radio stations do not play the same songs. I can catch US radio from a dozen WA based stations at home-- and they’ve got very different playlists (not a single Canadian artist, for one).

If you go looking for the blandest middle of the road stuff, yes you can find similarities.

13

When travelling between Buffalo, New York and Fort Erie, Ontario, superficially things look very similar. Fort Erie’s main drag resembles that of a suburban strip in the United States, only it’s tackier.

Head off on a side street, though, and you’ll notice that residential architecture is MUCH different. Housing in suburban Buffalo is frame, resembling what you see in suburban Washington, DC or Cleveland, Ohio. In Fort Erie, single family homes are mostly brick, and there’s less variation in architectural design; they could very well be in Milton Keynes or any other London suburb, only with big two or three car garages attached to the front.

Not to insult a country that I think is wonderful, but Canada, in my mind, always seemed like what the area the United States now occupies would be like if the British won the Revolutionary War. There’s many superficial “Britishisms” encountered in Canada that you don’t see in the US; plainer but more solid-appearing brick homes, “milk stores,” a collective sweet tooth that’s much greater than what’s found south of the border, “mind the gap” announcements in Toronto’s subway stations, the presence of British chain stores not found in the US (Boots, Marks and Spencer, Granada Rentals, etc), and tea (there’s far more tea commercials on Canadian TV than on the tube in the US) are things that I think of off the top of my head. Among my Canadian friends, British profanities (“bloody,” “sod off,” etc) are interpreted as equally profane north of the border, while in the US they seem humorous, in a Monty Python-ish way.

Canadian attitudes and mindsets, to me, don’t seem “American” as much as “Anglo North American.” I get far less culture shock when I’m north of the Canadian border than when I’m in a Southern state. Chicago and Toronto seem closer in feel and attitude than Chicago and Atlanta. Denver and Calgary are identicial twins; Denver and Charlotte aren’t even distant cousins. Seattle and Vancouver seem cast from the same mold, but Seattle and Nashville don’t share much.

I’d like to pose another question. What has more in common … middle America and Canada, or middle America and the American South? I’d answer the former.

14

This conversation reminds me of The Nine Nations of North America(Amazon link) by Joel Garreau. Been quite a while since I read it but it basically carves up N.A by cultural similarities.

I basically agree with RickJay but I would think it a mistake to disregard differences in basic social policies between the countries. These differences are rapidly being dissappeared (for examples of both see one-tier health care and national broadcaster CBC)

If we soon decriminalize pot(fingers crossed) then that will certainly throw a big old onion in the cultural stew. :slight_smile:

15

Actually, that’s a pretty good description of what Canada actually is. :slight_smile: There are still people in eastern Ontario who proudly put the letters UEL after their names: United Empire Loyalist.

I’ve seen no word lately on the progress of that guy who was seeking reparations for the loss of his g’g’g’g’great-granddaddy’s farm, which was on Manhattan Island. (Bummer if the site was under the World Trade Center…)

16

The great Robertson Davies is a good read in this regard. If you can find his ‘Papers of Samuel Marchbanks’ in a library you’ll learn a lot.

He once said that Britain had had two daughters; America was the flashy oldest best-loved one who ran away, while Canada was the dutiful but dull one who stayed at home. I think that says a lot.

As a Northeasterner, one who’s lived recently in MA for a number of years, I found eastern Canada’s progressive, good-government mindset quite easy to understand. The pride was quieter yet a little desperate sometimes–it seemed every flat surface in Halifax was emblazoned with the Maple Leaf as if you’d forget the country you were in. And entirely too much time was spent in saying that they were NOT the US, ya hear us, world, America’s down there and we’re not just like them!

Two final things, since it’s late: Having the sovereign of another nation on all the money is…I don’t know what it means exactly, y’all probably ignore it, but it seems somehow not entirely grown-up for a nation to do that. And it must be great to have a big rich country so close that your more ambitious/jerky people can go to and make good/bad when they feel the need. I was in Nova Scotia and, like my grandmother in the '30’s, the NSers were still coming down to ‘make their fortunes’ in the States for a while; unlike her, buried in Brooklyn after a long happy life here, almost all of them now come back, build lovely houses with their fat American paychecks, and settle down. It’s great but it’s such a safety valve, something like a mild version of what Mexico has too. Here in America I feel like we all know it’s sink or swim right here; yes, people emigrate sometimes, but basically this is it–there’s no other place on the planet you can go to to make your fortune.

17

The thing to remember is the Canada and U.S. are huge countries (although Canada is bigger, heh-heh) and you’re more likely to share traits with people in your area regardless of nationality.

I, for example, have much more in common culturally and politically with urban Jewish New Yorkers (three of whom are my cousins, by the way) than I do with an Alberta wheat farmer, and the Alberta wheat farmer has more in common with a Montana wheat farmer than he does with me.

There isn’t a single Canadian culture or a single American culture so trying to make a general comparison is kinda pointless. I’m just tired of all that “aboot” crap. The only Canadians who say anything close to “aboot” are the Maritimers in the east, but somehow this has become a staple on American sitcoms. It’s like a British show that has all the American characters speaking in Texas accents, not recognizing that it’s just a regional thing.

Of course, our “regions” are the size of a European would-be emperor’s wet dream, but what you gonna do?

18

The thing to remember is the Canada and U.S. are huge countries (although Canada is bigger, heh-heh) and you’re more likely to share traits with people in your area regardless of nationality.

I, for example, have much more in common culturally and politically with urban Jewish New Yorkers (three of whom are my cousins, by the way) than I do with an Alberta wheat farmer, and the Alberta wheat farmer has more in common with a Montana wheat farmer than he does with me.

There isn’t a single Canadian culture or a single American culture so trying to make a general comparison is kinda pointless. I’m just tired of all that “aboot” crap. The only Canadians who say anything close to “aboot” are the Maritimers in the east, but somehow this has become a staple on American sitcoms. It’s like a British show that has all the American characters speaking in Texas accents, not recognizing that it’s just a regional thing.

Of course, our “regions” are the size of a European would-be emperor’s wet dream, but what you gonna do?

19

The sheer, monstrous size of Canada and the U.S., by itself, has a significant impact on their cultures, and that’s one similarity between them.

In North America, the very size of the nation-states makes it impossible for the countries to have a single culture. It’s simply not possible for a country of such vast size to be culturally homogenous to the extent countries like the Netherlands, Japan, or Ireland are. In a nation-state the size of Canada or the USA it is inevitable that different regions will have different histories and will develop deep cultural divisions. As Bryan points out, the differences in accent in Canada and the USA are dramatic, as dramatic as the differences between Jamaica and England - a Newfoundlander sounds nothing like a rural Ontarian, who sounds nothing like an urban Vancouverite, and I’m surprised Texans can even understand people from Boston.

So in a sense, a key similarity between Canada and the USA is SIZE. The size of the countries significantly impact both nations’ attitude towards cultural difference. I believe Canada and the USA are historically and presently more inclined to define citizenship and inclusion along civil grounds, rather than cultural grounds. You are an American or a Canadian because you choose to be, and because you live here, and because you owe your allegiance here - not because he speak a particular language, dress a certain way, or worship a certain God. Obviously there is always pressure to conform to things even in North America, but I believe the definition of citizenship is more inclined towards the civil rather than the cultural here, as opposed to places like Japan or Sweden. I’m not saying Japanese or Swedes are racists, and I know Sweden has welcomed immigrants with open arms, but I do believe their national identity is based more on culture than ours is.

One of the most common themes of Canadian complaints is that we lack our own culture. This is, IMO, A) factually incorrect anyway, but more importantly B) misses the whole friggin’ point. The whole IDEA to this country is that we don’t define ourselves by prototypically European touchstones of national identity. There is no universal Canadian dress, dance, or diet because Canada is not defined by those things and was never meant to be defined by those things. Canada is defined by civil membership in a country that was, in a very real sense, created to solve specific social and legal problems. To a large extent I believe, as an outsider, that the United States is much the same. A barbeque-lovin’ Texan is very different from a vegetarian in Sunnyvale, CA, who in turn is nothing like Ted Kennedy, who in turn is quite different from a Hawaiian, but they are not Americans because they listen to the same music or talk the same way or eat the same food; they’re Americans because they have chosen to live together under a common definition of how the law should treat people.

And I think this is based, in part, on the size of the countries. It’s also based on their history, of course, but I think size has a lot to do with it. And to my mind, that’s what makes the two countries very similar.