Actually, in spite of all the anti-American sentiment here, I think most Canadians would do that. I’ve worked with many Americans, and I like to think we are pretty friendly towards individual Americans. In spite of your constant complaining about our iced tea. (Is a biggrin really necessary here?)
Second the motion. Whatever I might think about public life in the U.S. (and like a lot of Canadians, what I hear about U.S. politics scares the shit out of me a lot of the time), I don’t think I’ve ever met an American I disliked, except on the Internet. I’m a dual citizen, anyway.
I’ve never been to Canada, but I guess the people can’t be too bad…Tiffany Towers came from up there :eek: OOOOH Yeaaa 
As did Rufus Wainwright. drools
If you’re just counting flags you’re not getting to the core of the issue, matt. In my experience only, Canadians (specifically in Quebec) are much more insistent on declaiming their nationality than Americans are.
Every single time I’ve been speaking to a Canadian and it’s somehow been established that I’m an American (here it’s assumed I guess, up your way it has to come up in conversation) the very next thing I hear is an assertion of Canadian-ness, with the implied “and therefore better than you.”
When I’m visiting relatives in Quebec I usually get along just fine until people find out I’m from New York instead of Ontario. Then the attitude changes. It’s subtle, but it’s there and it can be uncomfortable. I don’t go up there any more. If my relatives want to spend time with me they can come down here, where we don’t treat people with contempt solely based on their citizenship.
Unless they’re French.
This is brilliant. It describes the area perfect.
There’s a car dealership in Surrey, BC, imaginatively called Flag <whatever> that has what must be a hundred small flags and one freakin’ huge flag. They must buy flags in bulk because you never see any damaged or frayed.
Surrey is hardly a tourist trap.
When this sort of thing comes up I remind my fellow Canadians that is the only reason that we exist. Or would they have preferred to have the former USSR as neighbours?
Speak for yourself, Bub. I’m not too excited to have a lower standard of living paying for every crazy scheme a politician comes up with. Everyone had the same chance going to school. Some chose to squander that chance. I have little sympathy for them. Are there no workhouses? [/scrooge]
No, they don’t forget. Quite a few of the ruling elite go off and bad-mouth our friends to the south. And in the process jeapardize relations with our largest trading partner.
Our nationality is a technicality. If the US wanted to annex us they could. I wish more Canadians would recognize that they haven’t done so and stop acting as if the US army is poised across the border just waiting for a reason to take our water, oil, or whatever else they might fancy.
When I’m with a group of friends that start bashing the US, I usually remain silent because it is like arguing with a bigot. They have their opinions and no matter what I say will change it. If they start annoying me too much, I usually ask for a show of hands – Those of you who are citizens of a country who put a man on the moon, please stand up…No one? Okay then, shut the f*** up!
Oh, just for the record: I AM Canadian and AM an asshole
That’s funny, because I used to visit Quebec on a semi-regular basis and always found that they were nicer when they found out we were American and not Ontarian!
Speaking of Quebec, I want to make sure that the non-Canadians here understand that when talking about Canada, Quebec is different than the rest of Canada. Now, all you Quebecers, don’t get your panties all bunched - I said different, not better or worse.
I think that the “animosity” Canadians feel towards Americans has less to do with political differences per se, but more to do overwhelming cultural “invasion” we experience from the US. This has been said already, but here goes, Canadian politician do seem to love the American system. Our entertainment is predominately American, culturally we are becoming more and more the latest state added to the Union. Trade-wise we are becoming more and more the U.S.'s bitch.
The US has a lot of power: economical, political, militar-ical? and we are the smaller brother in the brotherhood, so to maintain some form of identity we need to be constantly pushing against the big brother down south.
For myself, I am a sweet guy, I have liked most Americans that I have met, I am related to a few through marriage. But the culture of America needs to be teased and made fun of, if only to remind us that we are not Americans… yet.
I’ve also heard Canadian women wear way too much makeup. What’s up with that?
The omnipresent Canadian flags are more of a federal/provincial politics thing than real nationalism, I think. The Canadian government has an official public visibility program that includes sticking flags everywhere possible in an effort to a) remind potential seperatism supporters in Quebec about how much Canada is doing for them, and b) remind voters everywhere of what they get from the federal government v.s the provincial government.
Federal/provincial government tensions are an integral part of Canadian politics, and there is a constant struggle for credit with the voters in the many areas where the provincal governments deliver services which are paid for partly or completely by the federal government. (The really big flags all seem to be in front of car dealerships or Denny’s restaurants, though. 
)
With relation to the OP, I think that Canadians may just be more likely to be polite when company’s present or we’re visiting in foreign parts, thus we can be total assholes at home, but not as much so when actually face-to-face with you furriners.
The vast majority of Canadians I have met were all nice people. I would say that about most of the English, German, French, and Chinese people that I’ve met. I did have the misfortune of meeting a Canadian who didn’t like the United States at all.
My roommates from Newfoundland were celebrating some holiday, maybe Discovery Day or something. I made a turkey and they prepared the rest of the meal and then a whole bunch of Canadians showed up. My girlfriend and I were the only Americans there. One guy who had just come from Brazil couldn’t stop talking about how great Brazil was and how much he liked it there as opposed to the US. He took it a bit farther and just started ragging on the US and Americans any way he could.
Unfortunately the conversation took a turn for the worse when it got to politics and he asked me during dinner “What’s to keep you from just grabbing a gun because and murdering someone over an arguement” and I replied “The same thing that’s keeping me from stabbing you in the throat with this knife.”
That was the first and last asshole Canadian that I’ve ever met. My roommates didn’t know him to well and after he left they confided that they didn’t really like him either.
Marc
You do realize that the Avro Arrow was a bust for solid engineering reasons, right? And that it’s demise was mostly due to mismanagement and a general misapprehension of the actual strategic situation? I love it when you guys bring this up. The short story is that the thing was great for what it was designed to do, but nobody really needed it to do that.
The long story is that the Arrow had one purpose, and one purpose only: to intercept Soviet bombers coming over the Pole. If the project had been completed, it might (that’s might) have fulfilled the role perfectly. Unfortunately, there were troubles.
[ul][li]No guns, just missles. To be fair, everybody thought this was the way to go, and the Phantom came out without guns too. Still bad, because you can’t multitask the thing.[/li][li]Internal missle bays. This was actually really forward-looking and the now-defunct Raptor project went in a similar direction. It was a good call.[/li][li]It was HUGE. Biggest damned interceptor anybody ever thought of building.[/li][li]The Iroquois engine never got off the test bed. The airframe was flight-tested and the engines were bed-tested, but they were never tested together.[/li][li]Did I mention that it was big, and that cold weather maintenace and storage would be a problem?[/li][li]The US Navy cancelled the Sparrow missle program and left the thing with no weapons at all.[/li][li]It’s a transpolar interceptor. The only three countries who need such a thing are the US (if we can get a flyover agreement), the Dominion of Canada, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. You can’t sell copies to NATO countries, you can’t sell them to the Americans, and you sure as hell can’t 'em to the Soviets.[/li]Ten years, millions spent, no useful result. Kill it[/ul]
The Avro Arrow is the definition of “boondoggle.”
Dug the apocalyptic note you strike here. 
Exgineer, your secret history of the Avro Arrow leaves me quite intrigued. (That sounded sarcastic, but I’m serious!)
A bit of history on the big-ass flag: For Expo 86 in Vancouver, they decided to include the world’s tallest flag pole on the grounds. When Expo was over the car dealership (I’m pretty sure it’s Flag Chev-Olds, btw) bought it as a promotional thing, which I guess works since you can see it from a long way off. I haven’t been up that way in ages, but as I recall the zillions of little flags are a bit tacky.
And to repeat what the other Canadians here have been saying, most Americans are great, I just don’t think much of your current government. I think that what Hamish had to say has some merit - there’s a segment of our politicians and media that would like nothing better than to turn Canada into an inferior copy of the U.S. and we’ve just gotten into the habit of reminding them that a lot of us like things as they are. However, I can assure you that if I would never dream of haranguing some American I’d just met about the evils of Bush or the American medical system, and I neither would anyone else I know.
Where do you get this from? I’ve not seen anything even remotely like this, either in the media, or from our politicians. If anything the reverse is true. There is a distinctive anti-american bias to our politicians and media. To the point that we reject good ideas, or trying different approaches to problems, just because we don’t want to be seen to be like the US.
Ever read the National Post or listened to the Alliance/Conservative party?
All the time. Have you? No one says we should be the junior US. Maybe you should listen more carefully. I think you are confusing ‘not pissing off our major trading partner’ with ‘doing everything they tell us to’. They don’t have to be the same thing.