Second: I am one (curious!) person, but that's it. I experience a narrow slice of both countries. I grew up in suburban Toronto, then lived (primarily as a student) in LA and Boston. You're getting a snapshot of my filter bubble, caveat lector.
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Third: I like being corrected (ideally in a friendly way)! I'll quote-tweet corrections and divergent takes into the thread as best I can.
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1. People sometimes rhetorically refer to Canada and the US as "sister nations", and that's exactly the right lens for understanding them. Sister nations, born of a common parent, growing up side by side, but subtly different.
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2. The magnitude of the differences between Canada and the US are routinely underrated by Americans and overrated by Canadians. This makes both sides somewhat unhappy. ;)
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3. Americans mostly treat Canada as a maple-syrup-flavoured America, rather than a real place with real place with real problems/benefit. "You don't count as a foreigner" is a common refrain heard by Canadians in 🇺🇸, at least the ones who don't work for immigration services.
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4. When it's more than "America, but where they say 'sorry' funny", Canada is mostly a foil for American political/cultural battles; it's either a utopian land of virtue or den of vice and despair, depending on the proximal political point that someone is trying to make.
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For example: I've had American socialists tell me about how the Canadian healthcare system can do no wrong. I've been unfortunate enough health-wise to see that that's patently false.
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And of course that's just the mirror image of the bizarre discussion of "death panels" from the American right during the Obamacare debates.
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5. Canada is much more urbanized than the United States. The US is full of vast regions of rural/semi-rural areas. These barely exist in Canada.
(Map credit: NASA Earth Observatory earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/7052/un)
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6. As of the 2016 census, Canada's population was ~35 million. More than half of them (~13 million) live in the five largest metro areas (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Calgary).
For Americans: that is like having ~165 million people across NYC, LA, Houston, and Chicago.
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