I don’t think Arnold is an American citizen.
I am an American citizen (I have dual citizenship.) On that trip, when I got to the second airline clerk after coming back with my US passport, I asked if I really needed a passport to fly to Canada, and they told me that I could go with just my driver’s license and a birth certificate, but I would need a passport to come back. Of course, my memory could be wrong, or the agent could be mistaken. But it is definitely true that the first agent was insisting that I should have a passport for my round-way trip to Canada.
ID but not necessarily a passport for an American to get into Canada from the USA. Passport for anyone, including an American, to get into the USA from Canada.
“Anyone” but for certain exceptions – http://cfr.vlex.com/vid/41-exemption-law-treaty-passport-visa-19720522 .
A woman I met working at a Dunkin Donuts in Connecticut didn’t know where New Hampshire was.
I’ve also heard this. I don’t think most of them are geographers or geologists, either.
When in Los Angeles some years ago, a man asked me where I was from. I replied Toronto (which was true at the time), and he said, “Toronto, Kansas?”
Apparently, there is a small town in Kansas named Toronto, but why a Los Angelino would twig on that instead of the huge Canadian city is beyond me.
That’s kind of silly. I’m about 20 miles from the Pacific Plate right now. I’m pretty sure the land on the other side of the San Andreas is still part of North America.
Southerners do not have exotic accents. It’s the rest of y’all that talk funny.
My parents got their start in Manhattan. It’s about 100 miles north of Toronto.
Martha’s Vineyard residents refer to the mainland as America. I’m pretty sure that they’re aware that they are subject to MA and US laws. But back in '77, there was a movement to secede from MA. Had it succeeded, it would have become a territory of the US, or part of Vermont, or part of…
Hawaii!
And it’s also definitely true that you were an ass in your conversation with the first agent (mistaken or not).
Besides, “round-trip” means into Canada and then back to the US, yes? Which means you would need your passport before you leave the US. Splitting hairs and saying “no, technically I don’t need it right now, but I’ll need it on Tuesday when I fly back into the US” misses the point (which is that you need your damned passport when you visit Canada, unless you plan to just stay there).
For your edification, some cities in Newfoundland. 
Tell him that where you grew up, they use the same currency that his country does. And the same jet fuel.
I’ve done similar, but I think mine’s a bit more understandable, given that the town in question was at least in my home state.
After my first roommate in undergrad up and left without telling anyone, I got assigned a new one. I skimmed the sheet with her name and address on it, and it listed her hometown as “Montevideo.” So I figured, oh, it must be “MON-tuh-VID-ee-oh,” Minnesota. Not an unreasonable assumption, as it’s closer to home.
But then I thought “hmm, maybe I should add her number to my phone, in case I need to contact her for something,” and I looked at the sheet again. Her phone number wasn’t listed, which confused me somewhat, as usually it was. Then, scanning the sheet again, I saw that underneath “Montevideo” was “Uruguay.”
Now even more confused, I did a quick google search, and, sure enough, Montevideo (pronounced roughly Mon-tay-vee-DAY-oh) is not only a city in Uruguay, but its capital. So I had an international student as a roommate for the rest of the year. It was fun. 
(Yeah, I’m not that great at geography.)
Geotectonically, nope. Baja California and the part of California state west and south of the San Joaquin Bay and Valley and Imperial Valley are on the Pacific Plate, along with Hawaii (but the Chukchi Peninsula in easternmost Russia is part of North America).
Oh, you too, huh? It doesn’t happen that often, but occasionally lil bro and I meet people - always NE transplants - who refuse to believe that we’ve lived in New England all our lives because we don’t have a strong enough accent to suit them. Most people I know don’t sound like the exagerated MA/NH/ME accents (which are all different, FTR) you hear on TV shows and in movies. They sound like Mandy Moore, Bob Marley from the Boondock Saints movies, and Misha Collins from Supernatural, so I don’t know why I get “where are you really from?” questions.
Are you saying there’s a city in Nunavut? Where are they hiding it?
It’s the same here: I speak English to my daughter, my husband speaks Danish to her, for the longest time she didn’t know what “language” was, it was “how mommy speaks” and “how daddy speaks”. It got even more confusing because most people around us spoke Spanish. She sorted out her languages when she was 4. And she doesn’t mix them, we don’t allow it.
She finds it strange that some people only speak one language.
Funny enough, I just went to check the local weather and discovered that, according to The Weather Channel, I no longer live in a state.
Actually happens all the time - most New Mexicans have at least one story of trying to convince people it’s a state and not just Mexico.
It’s underground. And the proper word is ‘lair’. Where do you think all those federal surpluses went?
Oops, I’ve said too much.