I was on the phone with a tech support person today who told me she was “down in Canada.” I’m in the U.S. so that seemed funny to me. But there isn’t really much of anything above Canada, so I guess now I’m wondering if ‘down in Canada’ is a common usage by Canadians.
And, yes, I realize that the only ‘up’ and ‘down’ that exists on a globe is how it is represented on flat maps that have words printed on them that tell us how the map is to be looked at.
She wasn’t ‘down east’, was she? There are a lot of call centres in the eastern province of New Brunswick.
She might live/work in Windsor. Other than that, no it’s not common to say “down here in Canada”.
I was going to say Windsor too. Detroit is directly north of Windsor. Most likely, she is geographically challenged (or stoned).
Random trivia: Although Montreal is south of Quebec City, Quebecers usually say monter à Montréal and descendre à Québec. Why? Because Quebec City is downstream from Montreal on the St. Lawrence.
For the same reason, ‘Upper Canada’ is further south.
Not common at all. We mostly always say “up in Canada.” Although as Sunspace indicates, way do say “down East.” Not sure why.
We have strange relationships to Space and Time down here in Canada. We’ll say ‘down east,’ ‘out west,’ ‘up north’ and ‘down south.’ We do generally acknowledge that the U.S. is south of us – we speak of going ‘down to Maine’ and ‘down to Boston.’ We also tend to give distances between places as the amount of time it takes to drive from one to the other; for instance, it’s about 13 hours from where I live now to Montreal. And it’s about 20 minutes from here to the village where I grew up. (Here on Prince Eward Island, we’ll even say ‘down east’ and ‘up west’ to refer one end of the Island or the other, which I guess comes from our placement in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the westerly tip being closer to the the St. Lawrence River itself, and the easterly tip being closer to the mouth of the Gulf.)
It must depend on how close you are to the East. Here in the West, I’m pretty sure most people say “out East”. I don’t recall ever hearing anybody say “down East”.
My grandparents were all from the Maritimes; two from Prince Edward Island, one from New Brunswick, one from Nova Scotia. My family has always referred to it as going “down” to Canada, and I was told that it was from the phrase “Down East”. And yet, in some bizarre M C Escher twist, when leaving the Island we always referred to it as going down to Boston.
I guess should be expected from a family where the parents went to school barefoot in snow up to their waists, uphill both ways.
Toronto is south of Minneapolis. I have used the going down to Canada thing in the past.
‘Down east’ is an Ontario thing, and refers to the Maritimes. (I’d go so far as to say it refers to only NS and NF.) ‘Out east’ is what you say when you’re further west, and that refers to anything east of Manitoba. ‘Up north’ completely depends on where you stand – it could mean Barrie, or Timmins, or Fort MacMurray. ‘Down south’ refers invariably to the USA.
I still get confused when people say they’re going to ‘the Island’. I think to myself, ‘Why are you going to Newfoundland? That’s really far.’ (They’re referring to Vancouver Island.)
Frequently we’ll go ‘over to’ some place on a similar latitude, for example I’d sooner go over to Regina than down to it.
It’s also a North Carolina thing. Easy to keep track of here, since the ocean is east and the mountains are west, and the whole state pretty much slopes downhill all the way in between.
Because the Maritimes are downstream of Ontario and Quebec. The stream in question being the St. Lawrence River, of course. The same reasoning is how Lower Canada (Quebec) was named, it being further down the river (thus, lower) than Upper Canada (Ontario) which was up at the river’s source, Lake Ontario.
Down in Canada?
Of course there’s down in Canada. It keeps all those Canada Geese from being completely useless. 
Hey, Canadians only need three to make ten yards. You guys need four, however.
In the US, in addition to the North Carolina usage mentioned by KneadToKnow, Down East most commonly refers to Maine (particularly the coastal areas east of Penobscot Bay, but I’ve heard it used to refer to the entire State o’ Maine). It refers to the prevailing wind direction as applied to sailing ships; since Maine was usually downwind from Boston, a Bostonian would sail “Down East to Maine” – even though the trip was north/northeastwards – then back “up” to Boston.