I can’t believe that nobody has picked up on that eternal refrain of the American tourist in Canada, “It’s so CLEAN up here!” And after growing up in Canada and living for many years in various parts of the States, I’d have to agree with them.
PS - Anyone looking for a good dose of musical Canadiana should check out the Arrogant Worms, Can-con at its finest! Especially their song “The War of 1812,” which (politely) gloats on the Canadian torching of the White House. Other songs of note: “Forgive Us, We’re Canadian” and “Canada is Really Big”.
Well, technically yeah, but I think the Worms take credit for it on the grounds that what was then British North America is now Canada, and why let details get in the way of a good gloat. Plus the forces that did the actual torching marched down from present-day Ontario I believe.
Yeah Smarties are M&Ms by another name. What is uniquely Canadian is Coffee Crisp, a chocolate bar with coffee flavour and wafers, and Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. Of course the granddaddy of weird Canadian food products would have to be Clamato, which is tomato juice and clam broth. Mmmmm! It’s a vital ingredient of the Caesar, which is pretty much the same as a Bloody Mary but with Clamato and a sprig of celery.
No, it is wrong for any Canadians to A) Gloat over the burning of the White House or B) take any credit. They were British troops who sailed into Washington, in fact one of their naval bombardments of a fort (Sorry the name escapes me) prior to the invasion was the inspiration of a poem which eventually became the Star Spangled Banner.
However if you do want to take pride in Canadian troops beating American Troops then look at the taking of Fort Detroit (without hardly a shot fired) or the defence of Quebec where 250 Voltigeurs forced 3000 American troops off the field merely by remaining after the first Volley.
I was watching an American channel a couple months ago and some candidate for governor was promising to end bilingual education in that state’s schools. If you look in a Canadian dictionary under “Political Suicide”, that’s pretty much the definition.
I could be wrong but i reckon there are alot more people in the United States speaking languages such as Urdu etc. than those speaking French in Canada.
According to 1990 census data, there were 1,702,176 Americans using French at home (0.74% of the population), while there were 331,484 Urdu speakers (0.14% of the population).
French was second only to Spanish (by quite a margin, though).
In Canada, according to the 1996 census, the were 6,359,505 native French speakers in Canada (22.29% of the pop.) while Urdu speakers numbered 27,075 (0.095%).
So. The French population of Canada is almost 20 times larger than the Urdu population of the United States. As a matter of fact the Chinese population of Canada is larger than the Urdu population of the US. [sub]Though the use of the generic “Chinese” bothers me.[/sub] Only Spanish has more native speakers in the US (17,339,172) than there are Francophones in Canada.
I could have been a bit more specific (and done a bit of research…) but my point was that while Canada is consistently called a bi-lingual country the fact that a huge amount of Americans don’t just speak English (or American!) is often ignored.
Canadians smoke Cuban cigars and go there on vacations. Castro came to the funeral of one of our greatest leaders(Trudeau) after he died. not that it adds anything to the debate, but it is something that would NEVER happen in the States… Though during the funeral service Castro sat near Jimmy Carter. I wonder what those two had to say to eachother…
Sorry a post script to my point>>
Québecers whose mother-tongue is French comprise 82% of the local population, thus being a linguistic majority, but outside this province, it is indeed a minority language, with 33.9% in New Brunswick, those being Acadians, 4.4% in Manitoba, 4.1% in Ontario, and less than 2% in other provinces (Chevrier, 1997).
In spite of being officially a bilingual country since 1982, these figures show that this is not true, and **perhaps it would be more accurate to describe Canada as an English-speaking country, with French as its second language. **Although in any government-run organisation you may find both English and French speaking clerks, this does not mean that French is widely used by its supposedly bilingual population. Only 9% of Anglophones outside Québec can communicate in French. In contrast, one-third of Québec francophones can communicate in English.
