Essays on Canada

[Nirvana]

Originally posted by flighterdoc
On that trip, 8. On others, probably a cumulative 20 or so.

And, if it's an overgeneralization, it was pointed out to me by my Canadian friend. I would have never noticed, myself.

What data do you have to support a different conclusion?

Wow! Even if you spent a 1/6 of your 3-week vacation in Quebec, I don't see how you managed to get inside 8 houses? Are you a Canadian? Or do you just make friends that fast?

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[Caerulea]

I agree. This just sounds like pure prejudiced statements. You call an entire group of people "stupid" because you don't see a book on a short trip to their country? And these people were nice enough to have you into their homes and then you call them stupid? And you notice one person driving badly with Canadian plates as if that should mean something regarding other Canadians?

Poor taste.

Originally posted by flighterdoc
What an interesting discussion!

I visited a friend in Kingston, ON over the christmas holiday. I spent 3 weeks there, visiting (as well) Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto, Hamilton, and Montreal. My friend is a medical professional of 20+ years who recently got a job in a non-medical field, for the Canadian government.

It was interesting. Being a retired USAF Officer, I was interested in visiting the Royal Military College (the "west point" of Canada). It was surreal. It's not a "military" school at all, as near as I understand it. It was more of a college with a lot of statues around. Queens University had the usual assortment of slackers and ner-do-wells, as well.

The way that history is handled is funny, too. In case the point passed the Canadians, the war of 1812 (between the US and the british) was pretty much a win for the US. The memorials at the RMC, Ft. Frontenac, etc seeme to think that it was perhaps a win for the brits, or at least a draw. Sorry, no.

My friend finally gave me a book on Canadian military history to read - after reading it, I still can't figure out why Canada's military is as screwed up as it is, except that canadians dont care to have one - so, they should probably quit wasting the time and money on having a pretend military.

The whole bilingual thing is simply insane. The government of Canada doesn't have a lot of resources to start with, and they spend a huge portion on bilingual everything. According to a couple of military staff officers I visited with, a substantial (5-10%) of the defence budget in Canada is wasted on bilingual everything. It's so bad that Canadians can decide neither on what the words are to their national anthem, OR what language to sing it in. But, since the only time they sing it is at hockey games (drunk), it doesn't matter much.

I saw a LOT more pan handlers on the streets of Kingston than I expected. Kingston and Santa Clarita have about the same population, and I can recall only two or three hustlers asking for money in Santa Clarita - every block in downtown Kingston seemed to have two or three. In Los Angeles (population 3 Million+) I can go days and days without being approached.

As far as prejudice, try going to Quebec (the hinterlands, say the south-east shore of the St Lawrence) and stopping in a store. Nobody speaks english, their french is awful (I can get by in Paris, but not Quebec?), and go out of their way to be a-holes to anglophones. And stupid? How many francophone homes have a book in them? Except for a bible, perhaps - very few. They're prejudiced against everyone, even their own countrymen.

The weather was certainly OK, at least while I was there. Of course, as soon as I left, the temp dropped to -20F or lower. But, further north the weather is even worse - which is why most Canadians (who "hate" the US so much) live along the US border - check out a picture of North America at night, you can find one at NASA.

As far as culture, I did find an excellent pub in Kingston - the Kingston Brewing Company. And I think that Tim Hortons should be on every corner in Los Angeles - no attitude, just good coffee, in and out in under a minute. I was disappointed to not see a mountie, my friend pointed out some cops she claimed were mounties, but no red uniforms and pistols with strings, so I knew better (lol).

BTW, Southern California (Ventura and Los Angeles Counties, in particular) have more Canadians than any cities in Canada except Van and Toronto... Not good. Thats NOT counting the snowbirds that visit slab city every winter (and go buy their drugs in Mexico).

Anyway, I enjoyed my trip to Canada. I'd never been to eastern Canada before. I hope to visit again, although my friend and I will visit Death Valley this summer - her request, Canadians are insane!

So, if Canadians want to immigrate to the US, and become valuable members of our society, welcome!

If Canadians (except I guess Quebec) want to become the next 10 states in the United States, thats OK with me too, welcome! If the Quebecois want to join as well, learn english (or spanish), and learn to drive. I drove 8000 miles on this trip and the only time I almost had an accident was when a car with Quebec plates (in Indiana) made an unsafe lane change and almost hit me.

 

[aric_taylor2000]

Im not sure about all the greedy ones here, but Canadian doctors make more then enough to live an excellent life. Like stated in the first post, $106 000 is a lot higher then an average paying job. And if all of use Canadian doctors decide to move away what do you expect to happen to others, (like your family) they will have no care being provided to them.

 

[dmdmd]

This thread is biased. Montrealers are extremely friendly, unlike how you described. I do not know why you say so? Life standard is higher in Can than across the border. Less money but less gun shots

I agree with most everything Clue has to say. There are some things that growing up as a Canadian, you take for granted living in the US. I do miss the hockey (ESPN/ABC just doesn't compare to CBC), the skiing (although you can get that here I suppose... this is more of a regional thing), but I don't think these things are enough of a draw to make me want to live in, say Toronto (is there even skiing in Toronto?), over Seattle.

Americans are also a lot less overtly racist than Canadians. Canada preaches this multiculturalism crap but their own citizens are so overtly racist whenever I am back (whether it be Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal (especially) or some hick town). Americans may be ignorant but at least the majority of them don't make it a point to discriminate.

 

[Koppertone]

This thread is pretty entertaining! Nothing like some good solid nation bashing to brighten your day. I'm proud to be Canadian, but a lot of the things said on this board are pretty true. I've never lived in the US, so I can't really comment, but here in BC I had to move to Vancouver for school for a couple of year and that was one of the most cliquey cities I've ever been in. It was really hard to make friends compared to my hometown because a) people only hung out with their own race and b)there weren't that many white people like myself to hang around with. People were far more friendly in my hometown where there wasn't this great divide between races, and coworkers would actually offer to go out to the pub or workout with you instead of ignoring you because you were another race. I had no negative opinions about any of the different racial groups in Van, but the cliques that formed in that city were unparalleled to anywhere else I've been. It is cool that Canada is so multicultural, but assimilation is a good thing because it helps reduce racial tensions instead of leaving this big divide between races.

There are things that bug me about the US, such as invading Iraq. I was glad that we didn't participate because I didn't think that freedom could be promoted by invading a country and it just seemed like a way to promote more hatred towards Western countries. I didn't want to see more American lives lost as this seemed to be exactly what Al Quieda has planned to begin with. However I don't think that not going to war really defined us as Canadian. I mean, we helped invade Afghanistan which was pretty much under the same premises.

And we have our own culture here, it's just not as strong as in the US. People say we just adopt American culture and call it our own. It's true to a limited extent, such as with movies and music. However, you never see any Canadian idolizing the US President and you'd never find one pledging allegience to the US flag. We don't idolize our PM here either, it's just something that comes with living in small country. So what... our PM runs a country of 30M... big deal? I think that laughing at ourselfs and knowing how small we are is something that makes us Canadian. Kind of like Ireland. Take away the accents, booze and potatos and you pretty much have Brits. But they know that they're small and have this ongoing rivalry with the Brits like we do with Americans, not to start a war (well apart from the IRA) but just for fun and to set us apart. Comparing US nationalism with Canadian nationalism is pretty pointless anyhow; One is a global empire with far reaching arms, the other has limited sway with a tiny population and pretty much just supplies other countries with raw resources. When you have 300M people and you're trying to fight wars you need to continually reenforce a pride in your country.

As for Quebec.... well I went there for 10 minutes when I went down to Ottawa. A homeless person came and yelled at us in McDonald's for being "filthy Americans". I'm Canadian! Regardless, that left a pretty negative impression on that part of the country and I have no plans to return.

 

[moo]

Koppertone, there's an interesting article in the Vancouver Sun about the problems in Canadian schools and it merely affirms my views that Canada's open immigration policies is creating more problems than its intended purpose.

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/van....html?id=dab7b83a-685d-4326-bed5-0a3ebf7de931

Regardless, as someone who's lived in both Canada and the US, I stand by my observation that Canada as a whole is more racist than America. I have never felt out of place in America, or that I, as a visible minority, was taking away American jobs. It's ironic that this very same newspaper ran an article a few weeks ago praising our own "diversity" and now, an article describing racism in schools.

 

[Koppertone]

I'd think that too, though, if I grew up in Vancouver. I couldn't believe when I was driving with my landlady, who seemed like a nice, 30ish woman, and out of the blue she started talking about bad Chinese drivers and how Asians didn't deserve to be on the road. I was like.. guh? There really are great racial divides in that city, and a lot of it gets hidden and just boils under the surface. Not so much in the smaller BC towns and cities. There is still racism out here, but you don't see a lot of those odd stares out here that you see in Van when different racial groups are mixing. Vancouver is just bizarre that way, and from my travels across Canada I must say it felt as thought Van was the LEAST Canadian city out of any city in the country. To Vancouverites.. the rest of Canada doesn't exist (except maybe Toronto ).

As for open immigration, I have no real problem with it except that the number of people coming in seems to exceed the available resources that we have for people right now. Med is probably one of the best examples. The population on the Lower Mainland has skyrocketed in the last decade with open immigration and yet the number of spots at UBC med has remained the same until just this year. There's been no opportunty for our schools, health care or infrastructure to catch up. Just look at the roads in Vancouver. The roads haven't been updated in 20 years and yet the population has grown 10x. Everywhere you go it's perpetual gridlock. I don't think this means that we should be restrictive on immigration, but there should be some sort of allocation to cities to prevent everybody from simply entering either Vancouver or Toronto. Imagine if 90% of US immigrants only went to one city? This would be a city planner's nightmare.

 

[driedcaribou]

Regardless, as someone who's lived in both Canada and the US, I stand by my observation that Canada as a whole is more racist than America. .

I'm probably going to get flamed for this but I find that the racism that exists in Canada and the racism that exists in the US are toward different ethnic groups.

I think it also really depends which part of Canada or the US you are in.... it varies so much.

Koppertone: Traffic in Vancouver sucks. They have a major issue that I don't think they are going to be able to rectify until they do some radical changes to the roads. And there are huge racial divides in the city... it started getting really bad around 1988ish....

It's a shame... Vancouver is in such a geographically wonderful place too.