I’m sorry you’ve had that experience. On behalf of other Canadians, I will try to be better.
In fairness, how people interact on the internet isn’t the same as how they interact in person. But one thing that is certainly true is that Canadians are a very nationalistic people, but at the same time will swear to you that they aren’t nationalistic. The reason for this is that Canadian nationalism is based in large part on the idea of Canada being particularly “diverse”, while they tend to think of nationalism as being something racially based.
As far as I’m concerned, being proud of your nation for its diversity is definitely nationalism. And there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that; I personally also think of myself as a nationalist.
Oh man I remember every single Canadian in the 00’s must have been given the exact same spiel by the Government to repeat on every message board. They all said “While America is a melting pot, Canada is more like a mixed salad. There are many different ingredients i both but unlike America in Canada they aren’t forced to become a single unified base”.
The term “cultural mosaic” was bandied about in my youth.
I read a pamphlet that says this is not true.
Also, I think I’ve heard a rumor somewhere that Asians are often quite good at martial arts. Doesn’t that count as a sport?
Moreover, black African PhD and MD grads are currently increasing their numbers at a rate that would be hard to explain under any hypothesis that black people overall are just biologically disinclined toward academic achievement.
I don’t have any dogmatic views on the possibility or impossibility of the existence of some kind of biological relationships between ethnic/“racial” group and cognitive characteristics, but common sense suggests that it would currently be extremely difficult to disentangle evidence of any such relationships from the distortions imposed by entrenched racial discrimination and oppression.
Not necessarily the government (though yes, the government certainly was banging that drum) but rather the whole prevailing culture. Most people aren’t especially sophisticated debaters, so they tend to rely on talking points or gotchas. Of course, it’s not just Canadians who do this, but Canadian talking points tend to stress how different the country is from the United States, since Canadians feel an existential need to distinguish their identity from Americans’.
Though unless I’m mistaken, the “mixed salad” (or “salad bowl”) metaphor is one that I hear more often from Americans as an alternative to the “melting pot”, while the Canadian talking point claims the country is a “mosaic”. Careful not to fail the shibboleth test here! 
ETA: I see leahcim’s also familiar with this term, but according to their location they’re in the US, not in Canada, so who knows.
I do feel that Canadian culture has a focus on conformity and on everyone playing the role they are intended to play in society, which may contribute both to sophisticated debate not being valued so strongly in Canada, and to Canadians being viewed as especially polite people.
Funny, one of the things I find strange about Americans is their obsession with roles. Are you telling me Canadians are even worse?
Don’t believe every airline pamphlet you read.
It depends on what you mean by “roles”, but my view on this is that Canadian culture is very conservative (in the classical sense, not necessarily in the modern left wing vs. right wing sense). English Canadian society was after all founded in the rejection of the American revolution and its associated 18th century liberal philosophy. So to Canadians, order and propriety are very important values, witness Canada’s unofficial (and very conservative-sounding) motto: “Peace, order and good government.” So yes, Canadians very much believe that everybody has a duty, a role to play in society, in order to make it work smoothly, and they accept it and are not very likely to criticize or oppose their elites.
At least, that’s one of the conclusions I reached over years of observing and trying to understand English Canadian society.
At least 3 Formula One champions that I can think of off the top of my head have been Jewish, so they punch above their weight/demographic size when it comes to that sport. But there have always been a lot of Jewish baseball and football players, so I find the “Jewish = bad at sports” stereotype to be weird. When you consider how many Jews there are relative to the world population, they seem to be over-represented in just about every field.
When it comes to driving, though, nobody can beat the Italians. And the Italians have also produced a lot of great scientists, probably equal to the Jews in that department.
Wasn’t there a time when Jews dominated basketball in the US?
Brazil’s also produced many car racing champions, and so’s Japan.
Q. How do you get 200 Canadians out of a swimming pool?
A. Say “Please get out of the swimming pool”.
Except for the one guy from Quebec going “Mais non! You must ask me en francais!”.
My first extended contact with Canadians was back in the 1970’s. Two Canadian brothers had a truck washing business and they had a contract to wash our fleet every weekend. Most weekends the two brothers would end up slugging it out before they finished, but they still finished and would go on with the rest of their day like nothing happened. I was convinced that all Canadians liked to fight.
I also think that English Canadians’ apparent belief that of course francophones speak perfect English but insist on being spoken to in French just to “cause trouble” or “be difficult” also stems from their insistence on conformity. Canadian culture values diversity, but I feel it’s a very superficial type of “diversity”, one that’s mostly intended for show and has no cost to the society (i.e. doesn’t “cause trouble”).
It’s like a person telling you they love multiculturalism, when what they actually enjoy is the availability of ethnic restaurants.
Not entirely fair - more like English Canadians have a very strong affiliation with a certain set of cultural norms (civility, respect for hard work, social conscience and the like). People from other cultures tend to be perfectly welcome, as long as they conform to these basic norms … but if part of their culture insists on (say) rudeness, that cultural aspect is not welcome.
This is easily satirized as English Canadians being open to other cultures, but only if those other cultures behave exactly like English Canadians (except for having their food, folk dances, or whatever). But to do so is to miss the essence of what is happening here.
At least in my home city of Toronto, “Canadian-ness” has been redefined: it no longer means a certain ancestry or background … rather, it means self-identity with those basic Canadian norms as worthy (even if you, individually, are not civil, hard working, or have a social conscience, accepting that these things are “good” ). That’s how Toronto, the most mixed city in the world by background, nonetheless manages to be full of ‘Canadians’.
My in-laws are a perfect example of this sort of assimilation–they came here in the 50s from Ukraine; many of them hang out entirely within the Ukrainian community, and hardly speak English day-to-day … yet they have, maybe without even knowing it, fully “Canadianized” themselves - a fact that only because obvious when the Wall fell and their relations, who stayed in Ukraine, started to visit - leading to a HUGE cultural clash between them.
I’m a white lady with a Ph.D. and I am a BMW track car driver. I was a four-sport state all-star in my prime.
Many of my Asian-American college students are below average students/have lopsided strengths (excellent math skills/poor writers and vice versa).
Many of my African-American students are very bright, especially the men.
Why would motor skills be lumped in with athleticism?
If your theory here comes down to “brains vs. brawn”, motor skills would fit more with “brains.”
Since Jews always seem to come up in these debates: there’s that stereotype of Jews collectively having more brains than brawn. Whether this is even true is debatable, but look at the military capability of the one and only Jewish-majority country in the world. It’s widely acknowledged to have some of the best fighting units in the world, yet their most superlative skill has always been aviation. There is no greater test of motor skills and brains than combat aviation. Despite Jews having been in a state of oppression and generally downtrodden for hundreds of years, they picked up the “ball” of aviation and ran it straight to the end zone virtually as soon as aviation was invented. I’ve often wondered if this is because it’s essentially a very high-stakes form of applied science, and Jews have always been good at science.
Yet look at the Italians as well. I don’t think anyone would ever argue that Italians lacked “brawn.” So many of the greatest athletes in history have been Italian. Lots of great bodybuilders, wrestlers, and boxers have been Italian. But who are the best racing car drivers and builders in the world? Italians. Who have consistently designed innovative technology for thousands of years? Italians. Collectively, Italy punches so far above its weight in the brains and brawn department, that it would seem to destroy the theory that the two things are opposite ends of a spectrum.
Who are consistently overrepresented in “strongman” competitions? Scandinavians. Yet who is also known for extremely high levels of education and scientific innovation? Scandinavians.
The theory just doesn’t seem to make sense to me.
Well, one might wonder what is especially “Canadian” about these particular values. I’m not saying Canadians don’t value them, I’m sure they do, but since you later claim that Canadian identity has been defined to mean identification with these values, then there has to be something in them that is unique to Canadians.
Also, as a Quebecer, I certainly have noticed the ambivalence of English Canadians towards my identity, which is what I was pointing out in my post. Do you think our identity violates or skirts one of these basic Canadian norms?
As I’ve said, this is so general as to be unworkable. Anybody can value hard work and civility, without having ever lived in Canada (or even heard of this country).
I know you’re trying to show how inclusive Canadian identity is, and that’s certainly admirable. But there has to be more to it. My perception is that Canadians require one to align with the Canadian nation’s goals (or what they believe these goals to be) to truly be Canadian. But if you want to define the goals of the Canadian nation with any precision, you risk creating a debate, especially given the diversity of the country’s population. But I see very few national-level debates or discussions regarding the country’s identity among English Canadians, which from the perspective of a Quebecer is a clear cultural difference. Hence, my conclusion that English Canadians shy away from such debates and leave the construction of a national narrative to elites, and then expect compliance and conformity.
Un-PC seems to mean so many different things! Depending on the day it can mean an unpopular opinion, or also an opinion that is baseless, outdated, and more than a little racist! Good to know.
It’s also probably wrong:
Being physically fit at age 18 is linked to a higher IQ, a new study finds. The researchers also showed that fitness predicts greater educational and professional achievements later in life.
Earlier studies have found links between physical fitness and mental functioning in animals, children and older adults. But the relationship in young adults hasn’t been clear.
…Okay, granted, that’s not examining fitness and IQ between multiple races, but it’s still not helping your baseless claims. But by all means, don’t let that stop you from parroting ancient racist stereotypes.
Airplane is definitely my favorite “problematic fave”. 
The racist jokes in there really are funny enough to merit going back to.