Since my ex and kids live in Canada, I travel there quite frequently. I’m probably exaggerating, but at least half of all Canadians I meet feel the need to start describing why Canada is better than the US, in every possible way. My interactions are mostly limited to people in south eastern Ontario, and most often the GTA, so it could just be this particular region. After so many years of experience with this, I just keep quiet. While I used to feel like I need to defend my country, entering a debate is invariably a mistake. This never ends well, since I’m always alone.
My last trip last weekend, I met:
The border guard who accused me of having my ex and kids live in Canada for the free healthcare. She naturally assumed that I didn’t have any health insurance.
A stripper in Niagara Falls who thinks the US sucks because of our marijuana laws. I swear that I need to start lying about where I live when anyone asks
A security guard at my divorce lawyer’s office who thinks the US sucks for raising children because of all the crime he experienced when he lived in Philadelphia :rolleyes:
An employee at my hotel who thought that the US is only good for making money, but terrible to live in. Quote: “Canadians just go there to make money and then come back home. We wouldn’t want to ever live there.”
I will say that the few wealthy conservative Canadians I’ve met also make unprovoked comparisons, but with opposite views. I played golf at the Taboo Resort near Muskoka a few years ago, and these guys just loved George Bush and felt Canada needed to become more like the US. There I got caught in a debate for 18 holes in which I was defending Canada.
Your particular recent examples are weird, and I’m not sure that I agree with the original hypothesis to begin with, but when it comes up, I’d venture that Canadians compare and defend our country to the US because we are constantly surrounded by “USA! USA! We’re #1” bullshit and we have some good things up here, too, dammit!
Ok, it’s probably not all bullshit, but the amount of American news, pop culture, tourism etc we are exposed to is huge, to the point where many Canadians seem to know much more about what’s going on in the States than in Canada (though both sets of knowledge/opinions may be very misinformed!) In the same way that most Americans are proud to be American, we are proud to be Canadian, and there are a lot of good reasons for that. We have all, it seems, had poor interactions with Americans that like to rub how awesome they are in our faces, and I suppose certain people can get defensive rather quickly and assume most Americans they meet will behave that way too.
The GTA is also an odd place; the whole “world class city” issue seems to have creeped into people’s subconscious, and it seems to have become a provincial sport to try and find ways in which Toronto is just as good as New York City or Chicago or wherever.
In a way, we are the insecure little brother following behind his brother’s footsteps, saying “See, I can do that too! AND I did it better than you that one time!”
Boarder guard, stripper, security guard, hotel employee, hardly a cross section of worldly, informed, intellect.
Truth is that American’s have somewhat perfected the ‘loud and proud’, and for many, many years if you met an American, chances were you would be hearing his views on all the ‘funny’ ways our countries are different. Eventually that pendulum had to swing back.
In my experience, American’s never tire of announcing, “We are American’s!”, when there is no real need. That’s just insuring unsolicited opinions, in my view. Not saying that’s what you did, of course.
At least when you travel overseas the whole world doesn’t assume you must be a Canadian!
We continually hear rhetoric in your political speeches, TV shows, etc. telling us that the US is number one, and we know it’s not true. The Scandinavian countries usually rank highest, and sometimes Canada or Australia, or New Zealand will pop into top spot, but the US never gets ranked first overall, in any sensible report.
Rude people want to tell you that you’re not number one, and will tell you why your country sucks, usually replete with evidence of crime, and guns, and war, and lack of health care, etc. I think the idea is to point out to you that there are better countries in which to live so stop going around saying you’re number one.
I want to go on the record as stating the US is a fine country. I’ve traveled to many of your great states and could easily live there. I mean, it’s essentially the same culture, including language, shops, sporting events, restaurants, cultural expectations, etc.
So, we’re rudely reminding you that other countries exist, and that some are even nicer.
It was actually the border guard comment that inspired this thread. That was especially annoying. I’ve crossed that border at least 100 times and never heard that before. She was literally grilling me. What made it worse was that she asked to see my health insurance card, which I didn’t have with me. I ended up showing her my prescription card.
This trip was out of the ordinary because I ended up having to small talk with different people. Normally, I grab my kids for the weekend just hang out with them, so I don’t enter into many conversations with adults.
But when I was married and went to various social events up there, I swear at that every bar, wedding, ballgame, etc., if someone found out I was American, I would invariably get into this type of conversation.
I think that you’re right, that as an American, I must have a different perspective. I can see how constant exposure to media, news, etc. from another country could cause some kind of resentment and defensiveness.
I see your point. And maybe I’m different in that I tend not to care about where I happen to live. Plus, I love Canada. My kids live there and will most likely grow up there, so I always wish the best for your country, sometimes even more than my own since my kids always come first.
If Canadians are repeatedly exposed to the “USA is #1” chant, I could see the reason to “fight back”. And maybe by being American, I just don’t notice that chant.
I think it comes out of that same complex **mnemosyne **mentioned… the little brother complex. Furthermore, there are a lot of Americans that show some disdain for Canada, as if it really were some sort of mentally handicapped little brother. A lot of Americans are pushy, loud and over confident that AMERICA ROCKS!! When I’m around people like that, I feel the need to defend my own awesomeness, too.
Granted, most Americans aren’t like that, but there are enough to give the rest of us a bad name. And that stereotype, for some reason, is okay. I mean, if that border guard said to a Latino border crosser, “Hey, I think you’re pushing drugs because you’re from Mexico and us Canadians don’t like your type bringing drugs here,” that would be racist. But because Americans and Canadians are so, well, similar, for some reason it’s okay?
That was uncalled for. As far as I am aware, being uninsured is no barrier to being allowed to enter Canada. If you do need some health services, and you are not covered by any insurance plan, you’ll simply be billed for those services.
I think there’s a lot to the “little brother” argument, as well as to the “USA is Number 1!” that we get from all the American media that surrounds us. But like Serenata67, I think there is a defensiveness as well, which likely stems from times when Americans in Canada have been pushy, rude, or dismissive of Canada in some way when making their own comparison. Often, such American remarks have displayed an ignorance that most Canadians find surprising. Some examples from my own experience:
– You should get rid of the Queen. How much do you have to pay her each year?
– We have the right to say what we like and the right to own guns to defend ourselves. That makes us freer than you.
– You know that your health care system is sub-par because it’s socialist.
– If we wanted to, we could take you easily. Your military sucks.
I’d suggest that some Canadians, having faced these statements in the past, take things a step further, and lash out at an American before he or she has the chance to make any such statement. We can call this the “I thought he was going to hit me so I hit him back first” argument. Of course, in doing so, they often display their own ignorance, as with the border guard who apparently thought she had to see the OP’s proof of health insurance before she could let him in.
Doesn’t this sort of thing happen to some extent wherever an American goes? I’m not sure it’s a Canadian-specific phenomenon. It’s just an inevitable result of the global reach of American culture. People are naturally going to make comparisons.
Well, never in anything that you WANT to be ranked first in.
“If?” Trust us, it happens. Repeatedly. From my outsider’s perspective, I’m surprised at how thoroughly US Americans are indoctrinated into the idea of their own superiority.
Toronto doesn’t impinge on my consciousness, except the weather, since every time we turn the Weather Channel on, they’re telling us about the weather in the GTA.
My favourite response to that is, “A little socialism goes a long way” because it’s so true.
On a recent car trip, Jim and I hashed this out, and we came to the conclusion that the US can never successfully attack Canada.
I have to admit, though, I was much more anti-American before my time on this board. Hanging out with youse guys has opened my eyes to the fact that you’re a lot more like us than you are different. But you’re still going to have to take your shoes off in my house.
Some Canadians strike me as having a major chip on their shoulders about this. It’s very boring. To be fair, they’re probably the small minority of Canadians I’ve met, but it’s annoying enough that they’re the memorable ones. Like this one guy from Edmonton I knew when I was studying abroad in college was super irritating about this. There were probably 20 Canadians in my program, and the rest were all normal and didn’t need to trump their superiority over Americans all the time, but of course he’s the one I remember.
As a country regularly informed of American culture/media/politics we certainly get a huge dose of “The U.S. is #1”. What amuses me is that many U.S. sitcoms include jokes that are derogatory towards Canada - and yet are written tongue-in-cheek by Canadian writers.
I lived in Ontario for a year. There’s definitely some inferiority complex going on with a lot of the people there. It’s not deserved. Some details aside, Ontario is a perfectly nice province (akin to saying, some details aside, Michigan is a perfectly nice state). In general, I feel more “at home” in Ontario than in certain parts of the United States, given the general similarities.
Outside of conservative talk radio, Fox News, and glurgey country music, is there really that much “AMERICA IS NUMBER ONE!!!1!!!” chest-thumping going on in the media, as so many claim? I really don’t see it. In fact, I encounter the opposite; the nation’s faults are on open display for all to see, and they’re presented front and center in the news.
When I cross the border, I see far more “We’re number one!” chest-thumping and national symbolism on the Canadian side than on the US side. Sure, Americans fly flags on Independence Day, but the maple leaf is incorporated into the logo of practically every other business west of the Niagara River. If some celebrity dies, the tributes go on and on about how Canadian they were; something you don’t see here except maybe for the likes of John Wayne. Compare the obit for Ernie Coombs (who was actually born in the US) with that of Fred Rogers. Which one is more nationalistic? Which one mentions the subject’s country the most?
Canadians visitors to Buffalo don’t have the best reputation. They often come across as being smug, and often criticize or making fun of the city to our faces. The tired old comments about Irv Weinstein and fires are still being dragged out. It’s not the most endearing trait of an otherwise fine people.
Yep happens down here as well. It is a reaction to the US media telling us how good they are and also in business a backlash against American CEOs coming in and telling us we can’t run a business! Thanks Sol Trujillo.:mad:
It is boring. America-bashing is a favorite activity among some Canadians. I am reminded that there is an organization called something like, “Friends of the CBC”. Now the CBC, when I moved here from the US 42 years ago, was a wondrous radio station. I mostly listened to it from when i got up to when I went to sleep. Over the years, the quality declined somewhat, but until about 3 years ago I still listened much of the day (I don’t watch much TV). Three years ago, the asshole Conservative government decided to dumb it down producing a station that has five or five and a half hours of classical programming between 9 AM and 2 to 2:30 PM. The rest is the worst kind of rock. So when I received a mailing from the Friends of the CBC I was receptive. But they had a questionnaire that only wanted you to answer questions about American influence on the programming. It was pure America-bashing. No one in the US would ever try to run a radio station with such a mix. Be a hard rock station, be an easy listening station, be a pop classical station, be a classical station. But never try to make a station with this mix of programming. There will be no audience. The Friends only want the programming to be the result of American influence. Idiots.
Actually, I think the government wants to destroy the audience so they can close the network and save money. It is the only explanation I can give.
FWIW, I would rather live here, but my wife would rather live in the states. But we stay here on account of health care.
