I’ve heard about this . . . Many people think there is a predominantly English-speaking, partly French-speaking country (the idea! 
) somewhere to the north (or, in some versions, east) of the U.S. This is, of course, an urban legend. You’d have better luck finding the Seven Cities of Cibola!
Hey, I take offence to this. I assure you that Canada is just as real as Delaware.
Delawhere??
I’ve been to Delaware. Trust me, it’s not there.
Hah! That has it about right, except I’ve heard of people who didn’t know that Hawaii was in fact “More America!!”
From Stan Rogers:
Conceivably far more important (but let us hope not! :eek: ) in an age of Global Warming (in which the very concept of international shipping might well become thoroughly irrelevant).
Well I care about Canada. It’s been my favorite state for as long as I can remember and I hope to get there some day.
For some reason I’ve gotten into the habit of listening to the CBC’s radio news show “As It Happens” Mon.-Thurs. I like it because when they do an interview they’re much more hard-hitting, and generally their pieces go into more depth than anything on U.S. radio. So I care about Canada, if for nothing more than they have a good radio show. (Also, I’ve been there, and it’s a great country.)
What puzzles me is that they know so much about the U.S., to the point where they’ll say “Senator So-and-So” without mentioning that it’s a U.S. politician. I sent an email to the host (Barbara Bud, I think her name is) asking why they don’t say “U.S. Senator So-and-So,” and she actually replied in person. She said that it’s not necessary because Canadians generally know who they’re talking about.
So, if you don’t know who the Prime Minister is, are you going to know the names of the MPs?
It’s almost as though they think of themselves as part of the U.S., and that long list of Canadians who have become part of U.S. entertainment (with few U.S. people knowing they’re Canadian) seems to support it. How many U.S. people are famous in Canada?
Unitedstatesians might start to care more about Canada if this whole thing about mineral rights to the (more and more melting) Arctic escalates.
As for us Canadians knowing about the States, it’s all due to the media. We’re inundated with US media here. We can’t escape from it. So, yes, we don’t need to preface Larry Craig with anything other than you would.
Jon Stewart, Larry King, Oprah, Dr. Phil, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Stephen Colbert et al are part of our collective consciousness too.
I doubt you pay much attention to Peter Mansbridge or George Stroumboulopoulos.
I used to listen to that show nearly every day, but I got so sick and tired of the stupid intro music that I sent Barbara Budd (or whoever) an angry email telling her that I am finished with Canada because of it.
That was the day this Unitedstatesian quit caring about Canada. I haven’t looked back since.
I was just thinking today that if I were running the national news shows I would have a permanent slot assigned to Canada. Of course I have relatives in Canada and traveled there a lot over the years. But that’s why I think it’s a shame it’s treated as less newsworthy than other western nations.
Hah! I agree, that music is annoying.
But does that mean you listened to the intro only? It’s only about 45 seconds. If the rest of the show makes it worth putting up with, I don’t mind. There a lot of U.S. programs with even worse music, but I’m not going to leave the country because of it.
It IS less newsworthy.
What’s the old Chinese curse, or the cliche about there being a Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times?” The reason you don’t hear about Canada is that everything runs pretty well here.
We will now. The Northwest Passage just opened, and it’s partially Canadian waters. This is biiig huge.
Seriously. Look, just invade the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or something. Newberry for instance. I used to live there. Take hostages! Make whacky demands! Do something.
The thing you need to understand is that the Canadian Senate is completely useless and accomplishes nothing. It just rubber-stamps bills passed by the House of Commons and occasionally they’ll actually put together a commission to study something. So the only time that a Senator is ever going to be in the news is either when they’re talking hockey or talking about American politics, in that order.
It’s not so much that it’s not there, as that there’s no there there. There is Amtrak though.
Ha! I knew it! Canada is just a bureaucratic fiction created to give banks a tax haven where they can establish their corporate charter!
Aren’t there also bars called “pubs” where the working classes drink a strange sort of beer called “ale” and throw darts? And even though they claim to speak English, don’t they use a lot of funny words for things, like “lift” for elevator and “boot” for a car trunk?
Your “guide” reminded me of my first trip to the U.K. As we were landing in London, I realized most of what I knew about the country came from either John Le Carre or Monty Python.
As far as Canada goes - I’d agree that there would be a lot more attention paid to Canada in the US if there were problems between the two countries. I have the pleasure of working with numerous Canadians, and personally like them and Canada a lot. If it weren’t so darned cold in the winter, you’d probably see a lot more illegal immigration of Americans into Canada - although we’d probably want to get paid a lot more and would try to change everything so that it was like it was back home…
The Canucks insist it’s all Canadian waters. Of course, they’re only pressing the point in hopes that an ice-free-year-round NWP will become an important shipping route – forgetting that a world with an ice-free-year-round NWP would have so many horrible problems caused by global warming that international shipping might be a thing of the past.