Comparing Canadian and American cultures is a topic of little interest to anyone. Contrasting Canadian and American cultures, however, is a Canadian national pastime. That is why most of the literature on this subject seems to be for Canadians, by Canadians. This article will give an American perspective. I was once a typical American in the sense that I gave Canada little more than a passing thought, good for the occasional laugh or head scratch. Even today, I’ve yet to go to Canada. All of my knowledge and experience of the North comes from Canadians.

For a year of my life, I lived with 4 Canadians. Well, only two of them were my roommates, but I shared meals and many a time with the other two as well. There were about 30 of us living in a community in Central America, and the 4 Canadians had many of the Americans regularly saying eh by the end of the year. It took me a while to remove it from my speech when I moved back to the States. I enjoyed using it and hearing it, and I lament the lack of a suitable word to place at the end of sentences in the American lexicon. But eh is just too Canadian. It sounds like you need someone to back you up on what you just said, even if it’s completely uncontroversial. Just be confident that that’s the way it is, my Canadian friends! Can you imagine a tough guy or action hero in a movie that used it? He would have to wrestle a lot of bears and punch out a lot of moose to be taken seriously. Besides, eh would just sound weird in my native Kansas.

I am always interested in learning about different countries and cultures, and the Canadians in my midst were a great way to learn about Canada. I should qualify that by admitting that I was never very interested in Canada before, as I have still never met a Canadian in Kansas (unless one slipped under my Canadar), and the people that are the closest thing to Americans without being Americans always seemed less interesting to me than, well, all of the other countries in the world. I learned from my Canadian friends that Canadians tend to define themselves in opposition to Americans. Little did I know that our friendly neighbors to the north had been mocking us all along. The America bashing always seemed good natured, however, so I’ve never held it against them. The fact that Americans pay so little heed to Canada must be very frustrating. It would be like having an arch rival in sports that is completely oblivious to your existence. And the little brother or America Jr. analogies must seem maddeningly patronizing. In the same vein, Canadians generally don’t like it when you pat their heads and smile indulgently whenever they say anything good about Canada or bad about America.

The differences between Canadian and American cultures are interesting, but the similarities are such that Canadians can live, work, and travel in America undetected. If this concerns American readers, my advice is to develop your Canadar. Besides the obvious and previously discussed eh, Canadians can often be detected through pronunciation of a few select words. The two that come to mind are sorry and borrow. The vowel sound used is to my knowledge unknown in the American dialect. The best way to describe the pronunciation of sorry is that it is like saying the word sore, dragging it out a bit, and adding a y sound at the end. Borrow uses the same vowel sound at the beginning. It isn’t a perfect description, but you’ll know it sounds funny. Besides pronunciation, watch out for people who say North American when an American would say American. You generally hear this when they are talking about travelling or comparing other cultures. Examples include references to North American culture, or something along the lines of being a typical North American, I was uncomfortable when that foreign man kissed me on the mouth. Also, some Canadians refer to their butt as their bum! Finally, watch out for someone who never drinks light beer or American beer. Microbrews don’t count.

It would be a long and boring process to describe all of the similarities between Canadian and American cultures. Geographically, we are about as close together as possible, as we share one giant border at one end of our countries, and another large border at another. Our language, histories, and dominant cultures both come from the English, as well as many of our shared values. With all that being said, I encourage my fellow Americans to have a look up North. The differences are still worth a laugh or a head scratch.