Make sure you get this companion: https://store.walrusmagazine.com/products/the-story-of-canada-in-150-objects-special-canada-150-edition
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holy crap thatâs awesome, thanks for the link!
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Iâve preordered the book, but havenât downloaded it yet. Looking forward to reading it.
I love my adopted country (Canada), but still it has done some really shitty things in the past and is still doing quite a few of them. Just like our good-looking prime minister, on the surface everything looks awesome, but dig a little deeper and you find that the rhetoric does not match the actions.
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Oddly, London drivers are better at this than drivers in our quiet semi-rural area. I attributed it to the size of insurance premiums in London, which are three times ours, because the idea that it might be due to niceness of London drivers seems fantastical. But the North American North-west may be different.
Bless your heart! 
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Realy? Seriously?
If thatâs true then I agree that might be a part of it. But⌠I canât wrap my head around the idea that the default state of a stereotypical American in public is to treat people impolitely by default.
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Not saying that itâs accurate, but it is a well-established national tourist stereotype.
Germans are loud and selfish, Japanese are obsessed with photography, Chinese do nothing but shopping, Australians are drunk and obnoxious, Americans are offensively/destructively ignorant.
Theyâre all simplified and inaccurate stereotypes, but theyâre also all based in some facet of reality.
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We have to deal in stereotypes here because that is the entire premise of this conversation. That stated, it could be that the impression of USians as not civil / polite is that they donât think they should keep their opinions to themselves and are quick to have and express an opinion, no matter how ill informed. This, along with a cultural tendency to frame everything as a sport leads to hostile encounters with people who think differently and hold different opinions than themselves.
How is that for turning the conversation around to be about the US rather than Canada. Stop poking holes in my cultural identity, letâs talk about the US instead.
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Info like this needs to be more present in the popular mind up here. The two main political parties get too much traction by simply paying lip service to our self-applied stereotypes.
But thereâs no shame in knowing that whatâs good about you today was learned from past mistakes. And openly acknowledging where you fall short today helps prevent resentment while you search for a just improvement.
Jesse Brown is the Canadian equivalent of Howard Zinn? Wow, I have no idea how to reply to that.
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Self-loathing is a Canadian cultural specialty.
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And of course youâve all heard that
In heaven -
The police are British, the chefs are French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and the governmentâs run by the Swiss.
And in hell -
The chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, the police German, and the governmentâs run by the Italians.
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When I was a kid, it was a big deal to take the tunnel from Detroit to Windsor. Or cross either the Ambassador (Detroit to Windsor) or the Blue Water (Port Huron to Sarnia) bridges, for that matter.
Iâve had a lot of fun there in the past. But since I donât have an enhanced license or a passport, I donât go any more. And when me and my friends would sit around and talk about our ancestries, I would include Canada in my list; this wouldâve been in high school. And others would look at me as if I had just grown a stalk of asparagus from my ear.
Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou! A local pizza parlor was selling the above printed on the back of t-shirts, with their logo on the front. And Iâve forgotten the correct order, and itâs one of those things I never think to look up on Google.
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So, that explains at least one-quarter or so of my depression!
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Has anyone here ever read Jon Stewartâs âDemocracy Inactionâ? This made me think of that. Itâs funny now, because Samantha Bee has sidebars about comparison between Canada and the US every chapter or so.
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Used to own it. A real eye opener
The operative word is âshortâ. Believe me, Vancouverâs good reputation does not stem from its inhabitants.
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Iâd also recommend Why I Hate Canadians by Will Ferguson. Itâs pretty fantastic.
When I visited Victoria BC, it was so quaint I decided it was a Canada theme park, and started calling it Canadaland.
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