A friend once noted that people from the United States have this habit of answering the question “Where are you from?” with “I’m American.” While perhaps there’s some beauty to this nationalistic pride, my friend couldn’t help but respond, Really? I’m American too, and I’m from Costa Rica. In case you weren’t aware, there are two entire continents called the Americas.
I tried to explain this to my Canadian friends when they called me an American, noting that technically, they are Americans too. It didn’t go over too well.
These days, I usually say that I’m from the States, but is that unfair to the Federated States of Micronesia? And any Canadian from “The Provinces” would sound awfully pretentious.
Culturally speaking, I didn’t find it hard to move to The Provinces. I wouldn’t even say it ever felt that different. There’s a lovely air to the population that I suppose has earned them the descriptor “Canada nice”. They even do this funny thing in the grocery stores where, if they notice you pushing your cart towards where they’re already headed, they’ll pretend to notice something interesting and stop so you can continue without having to feel bad about cutting ahead of them. Or maybe, they know that if they wave you ahead, you’ll shake your head and wave them ahead, and the whole kerfuffle simply isn’t worth the hassle. Or maybe I have an overzealous imagination.
Yes, the country leans more left than the US (refer to Figure 1), and cares about the environment and animals (refer to Figure 2), but I certainly don’t feel out of place!* Folks are friendly and don’t even sound that different – I feel like I fit right in. Still, the inner skeptic wonders if in reality, I’m still just a loud, obnoxious American and they’re simply too nice to tell me.
So here I am, doing my best to assimilate into Canadian culture. In China, I played the how-long-can-I-go-before-people-realize-I’m-not-Chinese Game. Here I play the are-people-surprised-when-they-hear-I’m-not-actually-Canadian game. I’ve gotten pretty good at apologizing when other people bump into me, throwing in a well-placed “eh” here and there (though I confess to horrifically misusing “eh” when I first arrived), and sorey-ing my sahrrys, but I’ll still forget that it’s a washroom, not a bathroom. Fortunately, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if I sound like a Canadian or someone from the United States of America (so wordy!). I’m here for a reason, I’m making the most of it, and to top it off, when I travel somewhere and everyone’s complaining about those loud, obnoxious Americans, I can say I’m visiting from Canada.
* Not meant to get into politics or imply a political stance. That’s for another day.
Words & Things 