They freak out about snow in lots of places in the USA. Most southern cities aren’t equipped with the plows etc for snow removal.
Here in Chicago, we’re ready for just about anything that Canada sends us (and we get it from the Gulf of Mexico as well). 
I do wish there were Tims here as well–wonderful food. Nummy.
Depending on what sort of work you do, money could be an issue, and job prospects.
Firstly, income tax is higher in Canada, which could be a turn-off for some people. Sure, this comes with better social services and other welfare and public works benefits, but people who make decent money might prefer to stick with a lower-tax system.
There’s also the fact that, depending on your career, there may be far fewer opportunities in Canada than in the US, due to both the sheer size difference and the different business environments.
For example, i have a cousin from Vancouver who came to the US and got an International Relations MA at Georgretown, and who now works for a non-proft organization in DC. She won’t even consider returning to Canada, because there are so many more opportunities for her in the US, and the remuneration for her work is better here than in Canada.
I have dual Australian/Canadian citizenship, and i’m married to an American. When i finish my dissertation, i will certainly apply for any available jobs in Canada, but i’m much more likely to end up remaining in the US simply because there are about ten times as many colleges in the US as in Canada, and the proportion of likely positions for someone to teach American history is about the same. It’s just far more likely that i’ll find a job in the United States.
That’s not exclusively a Seattle thing, you know. I love Vancouver and Victoria, but we don’t know how to deal with snow here either. I got sent home from work when it snowed last winter - they were worried people wouldn’t be able to get home safely, so they just shut down for the day.
Actually, its original spelling in French was tuque, as in La Tuque, Quebec (named for a local hill that has that shape). In English, it’s come (to my despair) to be assimilated to the unrelated name for a different kind of hat, which is spelled (and pronounced) toque.
The spelling “tuque” is also used in English, and it’s the one that I prefer, since it’s the original French spelling and is also phonetic.
Are there any 'Canadian" restaurants? I’ve found that food in canada is pretty bland…very little use of spices and flavorings. And Quebec-I’ll take Cajun New Orleans any day…poutine…bleeechh! :smack:
“Pronounced” toque? As in “Toak”? No, it’s spelled “toque,” but pronounced “Took,” close to the French “tuque.”
And how does it refer to different hats in French and English? A toque is a tuque. A knitted, tapered, brimless hat, with or without a jaunty pom-pom.
Maybe so, but you have to take into account that we needed food that would stick to our ribs when we went and did 12-16 hours or work in the woods (or the fields, according to the season) in -20 or 80 degrees of temperature. That is why we tend to have heavy traditional foods.
No no no, a toque (pronounced “toak”; toque in French) is "a woman’s small brimless hat; a small cap or bonnet for a man or woman; a tall white hat with a full pouched crown, worn by chefs.)
A tuque or toque (pronounced “tuke”; tuque in French) is a knit winter hat. The spelling “toque” is by assimilation to the above. The two French words are etymologically unrelated. My source is the 1998 Canadian Oxford Dictionary.
Put that in your toque and fumez-le. 
Was that deliberate?
They’re here in Canada. I seem to recall (although I have no cite for it) that during the last US Presidential campaign, John Kerry had some Democrats at work up here, looking for the mail-in votes of the approximately 200,000 Americans known to be living in Canada. Now, as I said, I have no cite, and that figure may well include any American who lives here–from, say, those who dodged the Vietnam draft forty years ago up to those who just arrived. But if true, at least it gives us a figure.
Anyway, my wife is one such American. She’s been in Canada about 15 or 16 years; she originally came because she was offered a job here.
She noticed all the typical things fairly quickly, and got used to them (for example, the bilingual packaging and the metric system). And she admits to missing some of the things she liked in the US (candy treats, for example, although one of her old friends sends her a package of such things every Christmas). But overall, she’s pretty happy here.
One thing does tend to bother her though, and it has to do with how it’s always open season on criticizing the US up here. Sometimes that criticism is reasonable, justified, and constructive; but she has put up with a lot of people who, when they find out she is American, promptly seem to think she has some kind of influence on, say, US foreign policy and proceed to tell her what the US should or should not be doing. (We always have a good laugh about this. Like she is supposed to pick up the phone and dial the White House: “Hi, George, it’s Spoons’ wife. Yeah, listen, I was just on an errand here in Calgary, and some Canadian guy had a really great idea for what we should be doing in…”) Of course, she also puts up with some folks’ superior attitude (“We have health care. You don’t. Nyah.”), but such things don’t really bother her any more; she mostly ignores them. Or she might retort, “I live here now. I have health care too. Nyah.”
Curiously, for a country that prides itself on its multiculturalism, we (that is, my wife and I) find that Canada falls down when it comes to American culture. Oh sure, Canada gets all the TV and movies and music, and we have more than our share of McDonald’s, Wal-Marts, and Coca-Cola, but we don’t seem to celebrate American history and culture the way we do that of other places. Toronto, for example, has a celebration of Caribbean culture every summer (Caribana), Chinese New Year is always celebrated in the Chinese community, and the Scots have their Robbie Burns Day in January. Even expat Australians and New Zealanders have invited me to their celebrations of Anzac Day, in April. But nobody up here seems to want to celebrate the Fourth of July, for example. It’s almost as if Canadians, who genuinely seem to enjoy joining in with the celebrations of other countries’ cultures, deliberately set out to ignore the Americans’ major holiday.
Maybe if those 200,000 Americans that John Kerry said were here decided to have a Fourth of July celebration, that might help.
That’s a bit silly, isn’t it? I mean, we’re saturated with July 4th celebration stuff.
Everybody knows it’s the fourth – it’s all over the television. The last time I celebrated American Independance was last year, because I live with a fella from Alabama. The celebration wasn’t elaborate – just ritual consumption of hot-dogs, corn-chips, and Budweiser. (The things you do to make someone feel at home.) For contrast, though, three days earlier we observed Canada Day by… doing absolutely nothing, apart from looking at a little obligatory Canadian Content on the boob tube.
Which reminds me – I spent one July 4th on Whidbey Island. The orgy of conscpicuous nationalism actually weirded me out a little. I mean, it seemed like there was nowhere you could look that wasn’t totally covered in red, white, and blue bunting – and the number of flags in evidence was downright psychedelic. Holy cow!
Maybe this was exaggerated because of the military nature of the town (which was also disorienting,) but it struck me as very surreal. I’m sure that Canadians are every bit as nationalistic as Americans in own way, but I think it has a somewhat different tone. (Or maybe many of our nationalist signifiers would stand out to non-Canadians but we have a sort of fish/water relationship with them.)
Uh, well, exactly.
You don’t think it was whitebread Canadians who came up with the idea of Caribana, do you? Hell, no. It wasn’t the Protestant elite that came up with the Danforth festival. It wasn’t long-standing Canadians who said “Hey, let’s celebrate Chinese New Year!” It was Caribbean, Greek and Chinese people who popularized those things.
If American ex-pats want to popularize the Fourth, then they have to do it, not wait for everyone else to do it for them. Of course, the reason they haven’t bothered to do so up to this point is likely that it would be pointless in a country that’s mostly saturated with American culture anyway. But it’s still up to them.
So, where does George Of The Jungle’s tookie-tookie bird fit into all this? Was the cartoonist Canadian? 
Oh, suuuuure. Pull out the interpreter to bloody interpret something correctly. :rolleyes: 
Wow. That actually makes me very happy. Tuque tuque tuque…
As for the lack of 4th of July celebration in Canada… I’d think that people probably get most of their “celebrate independence from Britain via fireworks and grilled food” urges out of the way on Canada Day. Three days later is a little soon to do it again.
Totally Vancouver moments: little kids speaking Chinese running around with hockey sticks. Sikhs playing cricket next to the totem poles.
Ok, I don’t get what is supposed to be so exciting about Tims. I mean, the ‘canadian maple donut’ concept is proof of a higher being, but is the coffee decent? I’ve been afraid to try, actually.
I also haven’t figured out what I’m supposed to casually call the people who live here who were here before the Europeans came. . . I’ve heard that ‘native American’ is not PC here. Does one say something like “a first-nations tradition”? Is that the adjective? I like how the government and media here are more open/ acknowedging about the existence of the first nations-- “Oops. . . we fucked you over. Let’s talk reparations or something.” The United States’ west generally sticks fingers in ears and goes lalalala and tries to forget about it all. This is just the impression I get from papers/ campus, though.
I’m also gobsmacked when I think about how big BC is. I mean, I’m from the west so California is something I can grasp. BC is really fucking big. It just. . . keeps going up there. I mean, it goes past SE Alaska. I came to feel like Oregon was the open west. THIS is way beyond that. You get north of Whistler and the universe ends. I love it.
Curling! Brilliant!
Well, duh. They’re not American.
I generally hear “native” or “native Canadian” in situations where the name of a specific tribe is unknown to the speaker or not applicable. But I didn’t grow up here, so I may have the wrong idea.
Yeah, that is pretty cool. My boyfriend’s mom’s side of the family is Algonquin, so he’s rather interested in native issues. He was complaining a while ago about unfairly negotiated treaties between various First Nations and the Canadian government… I asked him if he’d like a nice blanket for his trip to Oklahoma. 
(we tease each other all the time about this kind of thing, I’d obviously never say that to anyone else)
I also have an amusing Ottawa moment to go with your Vancouver moment - earlier this winter, on a particularly cold day, I saw a middle-aged Muslim woman wearing a knitted [del]tuque[/del] hijab. It looked very warm.
I think you’re making one mistake in your logic. In all things, money is the driving factor. There’s two simple truths, there’s more money to be made in the US (more jobs, higher pay) and there’s lower taxes. Everything else, even that pleasant socialized health care, it a very very distant second when people decide these things compared to money.
Vastly more people come to the US (not just from Canada but from everywhere) compared to those who leave for the simple reason that you can make more money here in most ciscumstances.