Canada

At the weekend, I took a 10-hour bus ride across the Canadian border to Toronto, my third trip to the USA's northern neighbour. The world's 216th most-densely populated country is sometimes overlooked as a possible source of excitement by the non-ski enthusiast tourist, but after my experiences, I beg now to differ.

It is not the scenery that I find particularly exciting (though I probably would): I've not battled bears in the Yukon, or Canoed up the St Lawrence River, or made a pilgrimage to the Field of Abraham. Though I love scenic Montreal and realise how difficult it is not to fall in love with the many beautiful Quebecan women, it is the character of the people that I find most interesting about Canada. Or to be more specific, quite how UNLIKE Americans, Canadians are.
Until relatively recently, I could not tell them apart. Of course, wishing to avoid offence, I would try and remember to ask people with North-American accents, if they were from the USA OR Canada (Americans being unoffended by this) But basically, to the European ear there's little difference between an Ohioan or Ontarian accent.

There are two key tricks to picking up a Canadian accent, that I have now picked up upon. First, the way they say words like about, house and out with an uh sound, rather than auh, as Americans do. The second key difference is their tendency to liberally sprinkle their sentences with the exclamation "eh"'. This is important. To generalise, Canadians (like we Brits) are less keen on being seen to show off excessive personal confidence. This national expression, illustrating a sense of diffidence, is indicative of it. Americans (generally) are positive, expressive and confident. This isn't necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, but it is a big cultural difference from Britain and Canada. Like Brits, Canadians have a more sober attitude, they are a bit cynical, drier in wit and not constantly peppy with enthusiasm.
The funny thing with Canada is that it is just up the road from America and these differences are more stark.

Canada has the large advantage over the United States of having had a good century's worth of extra fostering by the British Empire, before it became independent. This means that British attitudes are shown more obviously in things like Government policy (a more European style role of the state( eg health care for poor people). Other characteristics it shares are Imperial sized pint glasses (25% bigger than those in the US), pronouncing the letter 'Z' like 'zed', rather than the US way, zee. It still has the Queen as a Head of State (I can't understand why Britain still seems to want a monarchy, let alone why another country 3-6,000 miles away would want to retain it, but anyway) and it still has Elizabeth on all its currency.

An important aspect of the Canadian psyche is quite how anti-American they are - and unlike most of the rest of the world which has a more existential phobia to the US - it probably has a more legitimate motivation. Americans basically don't really care that much about Canada and often look down on it as irrelevant. They tend not to regard it as having much of a reason for being, other than being an American backyard. People in the US are extremely ignorant of what's going on north of its border. It was interesting in October (just before the US Presidential election) that there was virtually no reference in the US News media - at all - that Canada was in the middle of a tightly fought national election.

Talk to Canadians about the US, and you often get a sense of animosity. "Americans basically treat us like ***t", a drunken homeless man at Toronto bus station tossed my spare change back across the street at me when I said that I had no more money as I was heading back to New York. When I first arrived in a Gas Station in Quebec a few weeks ago, my toilet cubicle had the words "F**k of USA" drawn across it.

In the lead up to the Iraq war, when anti-Americanism was far more de rigeur, there was an interesting analysis of the Candian attitude in the Guardian and examples of it. Also, for obvious reasons, Candians abroad often have the misfortune of being mistaken for Americans. They must have had a few problems travelling abroad in the last few years: I remember riding on the Picadilly Line a few years ago with a school group from Canada. All the kids seemed to have very large Maple leafs stitched on to their luggage, presumably by their anxious teachers and school teachers, apparently keen - like the Red Cross painting their building rooftops during a bombing raid - to be clearly seen as neutral parties.

Well, things aren't so bad between the two countries, they obviously have a lot in common and need to get along, considering all the trade they do but this little neurosis is interesting (and quite amusing).

Any way, I have now been to Canada's three biggest cities. Torontarians describe their city as being "New York on dial up" which is still a massive exagerration of how exciting the city is. It's built up in the middle, (to me) surprisingly cosmopolitan with a big Chinese population and the city has a decent music and artistic scene (lots of good grafitti around the city). It's a much cheaper and far cleaner version of New York. It lacks the buzz of New York, the sense of urgency and energy you get on every Manhattan street corner, but in Toronto's defence, nowhere does. All in all, it strikes me as a pretty decent place to live.

Though I like Toronto, I greatly prefer Montreal in Quebec for a weekend visit. Scenic and pretty, a lot more spread out and laid-back than NY, but with a good variety of cultural activities and business life to make life more than interesting. I knew that it was the world's biggest French speaking city after Paris and Kinshasa but I was still a little surprised by quite how Francophone it was. Though there are English speaking nightlife enclaves and though McGill University is in the city and Anglophone, most people seem to speak French. The Quebecois version of the language has apparently got a few vernacular differences from that of France, and though they lack the Gallic flair and effusive facial expressions of French-French speakers, it is a surprising contrast from the rest of the country. Quebec has a very different sense of identity to the rest of the country, and only voted against independence by a percentage point during the 1995 referendum, Cosmopolitan Montreal was in fact decisive in voting against independence.

You can tell a lot about country by its politics. Canadian politics is often characterised as being more European and socialised. That said, A lot of American fiscal conservatives talk about Canada as a good model, considering the relative state of its own deficit. Canada worked hard during the mid-90s to pay a large deficit off by cutting government spending in certain areas. I can't help thinking that it was something to do with a more level-headed approach to spending. In the US, people there is a more optimistic attitude that you can carry on spending and having everything and as such, less aversion to debt than in the rest of the world. In the Bush years, the government started an expensive war whilst cutting taxes; in a different manner, but with the same mindset the Obama administration has pretended it can spend lots of money and cut tax unsustainably.

So, Canadians realistic and grounded in reality? A crude stereotype like all stereotypes are. But they generally are much more European and a trip to Canada felt like a weekend at home, after all this time in the US. Good cultural acclimitisation, for returning to GB at the end of Sep!