camwyn | How To Pass As A Canadian.

This posting came about as a result of being mistaken for Canadian when I was in Alaska. It happened even after I stopped wearing the hat that said "RCMP - GRC - POLICE" on it, so I figure I must be doing something that gives off Canadian vibes... anyway. Here's a bit of a list.

1. Start by finding something about Canada that you definitely, genuinely like. It doesn't matter what it is. There has to be at least one thing about the nation that you really, really like, or it won't work. It can be anything from one of their sports teams to a city you visited to the fact that they use sugar in their soda instead of corn syrup to their beer. Doesn't matter. Pick something about the country that you really and truly like.

2. Now memorize the names of the provinces and territories. It isn't that hard. There's only ten provinces and three territories, although they're going to set aside a fourth fairly soon. You have to be able to recognize the names of provinces or else they'll spot you for an American in a second. Provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick. Territories: Yukon Territory, Northwest Territory, Nunavut. Bonus points for calling British Columbia 'BC' or knowing that officially it's 'Newfoundland and Labrador' - but you'll find people calling it that about as often as residents of Brooklyn, NY refer to their borough as 'Kings County', so don't worry too much. Provincial capitals are nice things to know but you don't need them necessarily, although you'll look like an ass if you get one wrong.

3. Now make damn sure you know that Ottawa is the national capital, Ontario is the province, and Toronto is the big city in Ontario that thinks it's New York. Toronto is also the provincial capital of Ontario. It is not, not, not the national capital. Make that mistake and they will laugh at you and tell you to go back to Texas.

4. Get yourself some Canadian friends. For preference, there should be at least two from different provinces, and it works much better if at least one does not live in the most famous city of their province. Any ijjit can claim to know someone in Toronto or Vancouver, but being able to casually say 'oh, I know someone in Nanaimo' gives you a bit more cred, since most Americans have only ever seen the city name on a map in an excite.com commercial. Being able to point to your friends' cities or towns of residence on a map is a definite bonus.

5. Learn the current prime minister's name. If you are talking to a Canadian and they suspect that you are an American, they will ask you what you think of Prime Minister Poutine. Should this happen, give them a Look and say you saw that episode of Talking To Americans, then say that while you have your disagreements with (insert PM's name here), you think he's doing a decent job, or stinky, or whatever. Right now the prime minister is a man named ~~Jean Chretien. Find someone who can pronounce the name and make them say it for you until you can pronounce it reasonably correctly. You don't want to sound like President Bush, do you?~~

EDIT: As of 12 Dec. 2003, the Prime Minister of Canada is an entirely separate man named Paul Martin. Carry on.

6. Look up some Canadian bands and get to like at least one or two of their songs. Barenaked Ladies count, but only barely, and if you are asked about them you must say that you liked one of their very early albums years before they became popular in the States. If you decide on Moxy Fruvous, pick at least one serious song of theirs, because any fool can say they like their rendition of Spider-Man. Rush works too. Tom Cochrane of "Life Is A Highway" fame is Canadian, if you'd rather a bit of country flavour. You get double bonus points if at least one of your bands of choice is a Canadian hip-hop band, since most Americans don't believe such bands exist; you also get double bonus points if the band's music is primarily in French, although you may catch some flack for that if you talk to a Canadian who has reason to dislike Quebec.

7. Learn metric. I cannot emphasize this enough. You need to know metric, or at least be able to do fast approximate conversions in your head, if you are going to pass as a Canadian. The numbers you need to know most are volume measures and distance measures. Going 110 to 130 on the highway is fairly reasonable, since 110 kilometers per hour is around 55 mph. 3.2 miles comes out to around 5 kilometers. A standard can of soda or beer is 355 milliliters. They do not sell anything in quart measures, at least not in the English-speaking provinces; you can get a liter of (beverage) instead, which is smaller than a quart, though not by much. You really need to know volume measures because that is how they charge for gas; gas looks cheap for all of two seconds when you're up there and see signs saying '76 cents regular unleaded'. This is not what it looks like. That's 76 cents a liter, and there are more than four liters in a gallon, and even though the Canadian dollar is smaller than the American it's still pretty damn expensive by American standards. Bottom line: know metric.

8. Oh, yeah, when you write you need to remember that it's not 'color', 'flavor', 'honor', etc, but 'colour', 'flavour', and so on. Canadians use the letter 'z' more often than British people do - they're willing to spell it 'civilization' - but they refer to it as zed. You must not say 'zee' when reciting or singing the alphabet because that is an American thing to do and it will give you away faster than Prime Minister Poutine.

9. There are a number of Canadian-American word conflicts but they are not as numerous as British-American ones. It's still a truck, not a lorry - but in Canada the thing you wear on your head in winter is a toque (get someone to pronounce it for you) and if someone asks about your Chesterfield they mean your couch, not your cigarette. A summer home or weekend home or other place you own or rent for vacation purposes is a cottage. You occasionally hear 'about' pronounced 'aboat', but it's not as prominent as American imitators of Canadian accents would like you to believe. Neither is the use of 'eh?'. If you say 'eh?' instead of 'hmm?' or 'huh?' you're in good shape, but if you push it too far you sound like a damn fool hick. Also, do not say 'y'all'. I don't care where you're really from. Don't say it if you're trying to pass as Canadian.

10. Since I brought him up, Prime Minister Poutine is a good example of Canadian foodstuffs, and you must recognize at least some of them. Poutine is, in fact, a French-Canadian dish designed to kill off all the Anglophones by plugging their arteries. It is French fries upon which some demented escapee from Wisconsin has dumped cheese curds, which are then liberally doused in gravy. It tastes really good but it'll kill you really fast. You can get it at Burger Kings as far away as Vancouver, so it's something you kind of need to know no matter where in Canada you look like you're from. Other Canadian foodstuffs - well, let's see. It's not 'Canadian bacon' up there, it's 'back bacon'. The stuff in a blue box isn't Macaroni and Cheese, it's Kraft Dinner, and it's practically the national dish, so you had better call it Kraft Dinner. You'll probably also need to recognize sugar pies (they're from Quebec) and beaver tails. Only hunters actually eat the tails of beavers - in the rest of the country a beaver tail is a big flat sweet pastry and you will really look like a fool if you are not aware of this. Canadians also have a lot more in the way of Nestle chocolate than Americans do, so don't bother looking for or mentioning Hershey products; if you want something like M&M's, ask for a box of Smarties. They're smaller and a bit sweeter but they're basically the same thing. American Smarties are small chalky vaguely fruity things, and no real Canadian would ever confuse the two.

11. Learn a few Canadian political issues and decide on some kind of stand about them. You need to have an opinion about Quebec, which keeps trying to leave - sort of. Look, I ran into a member of the Partie Quebecois (the pro-independence people - scary bunch) in bloody Florida, so they're everywhere and you had better get used to it. You should probably have some kind of an opinion about SARS and Toronto, although that's relatively recent and not all that important. Acid rain is something else you need to know about, since it's a very big thing for them. You may want to learn a bit about the issues surrounding Native fishing rights, the territory of Nunavut, the new territory they're working on that has the diamond mines in it, long-term drought in the prairie provinces (Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan), and so on. Definitely look up the current Canadian position on any big international thing the U.S. has gotten itself involved in, because they will either ask you about your opinion or kvetch about the States' behavior, and either way you will need to at least know what the Canadians think even if you agree 100% with the American way of handling it.

12. Speaking of issues - even if you are in a political argument you are going to have to be reasonably calm and polite. You may have one issue that drives you to froth at the mouth, but that's it. Even really acrimonious debates in Canada are generally conducted calmly, which makes them even scarier than American ones. Which is scarier, someone yelling his fool head off on the O'Reilly Factor or someone very calmly saying to the press that the election would've succeeded if it weren't for all these damn immigrants, and meaning it? When you are not in political arguments you should still make an effort to be reasonably calm during big discussions. Sports, however, are an okay thing to get emotional over.

13. Find out what both Toronto and Vancouver look like, because amazing amounts of American TV and movies are filmed in those two cities. You make a very convincing Canadian if you snigger at recognizable Canadian landmarks during X-Files episodes or Jackie Chan movies. Bulletproof Monk, however, is such a gimme that you only get Canadian cred points if you howl with laughter; they didn't bother hiding the Ontario license plates on the cars, a night shot of the city shows the CN tower, and at one point a character says "This is America!" while standing in front of Toronto City Hall.

14. Do not pester the damn Mounties. Yes, their dress uniforms are very pretty and yes, you probably want a picture of one. They're police, okay? They want to do their jobs just like anybody else. They will pull your sorry ass over for speeding faster than you can say 'boo', just like a state trooper would in the States. Unless you have a very compelling reason to want a photograph of a policeman (the equivalent of 'my brother was rescued from the World Trade Center and you're a New York City cop and I was hoping...'), leave the poor buggers alone and smile faintly at anyone who does bother then, for lo, the people doing the bothering are Tourists. And since you are passing as a Canadian, you are not a Tourist.

15. If you are wrong, or if you irritate someone, or if you ask a question and you are not quite sure how it will be received, apologize. A basic "I'm sorry" will do just fine. Since the perception of American manners is very poor, you will stand out as being less likely to be a Yank should you make a point of apologizing regularly. Don't do it too much or they'll think you're weird, but apologizing is generally a pretty good 'background radiation' thing to do.

16. Eeeee, I almost forgot... Memorize a good chunk of one or more famous lists of differences between Canada and the United States. The "Molson's Rant" is a good choice; you can probably find it by looking up the phrase "My name is Joe, and I am Canadian" on Google. Dave Foley, of Kids in the Hall, did a very good humorous one on an episode of MAD TV but you must be able to cite him as the source. If you cannot memorize these things, then get hold of a Canadian TV program like Talking To Americans and watch a couple of episodes so that you can at least cite that; if nothing else, Canadians generally know things like, oooh, which of the provinces have access to the ocean and which don't, whereas most Americans could probably be made to say that you get real fine surfing in Alberta.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Current Mood: weird
Current Music: One Night in Bangkok, Murray Head

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

yfdp.livejournal.com

Haha this stuff cracked me up, esp. stuff like "apologizing is generally a pretty good 'background radiation' thing to do."

Hmm, Kraft dinner. Due to its sound and how it has to do with food, it reminds me of Craft Service, but that's Hollywood and not Canada.

From:

akawil

Learn metric ... you can get a liter of (beverage) instead, which is smaller than a quart, though not by much ... there are more than four liters in a gallon

$ units
You have: 1 quart
You want: ml
        * 946.35295
You have: 1 gallon
You want: ml 
        * 3785.4118

If you're pretending to be Canadian, you can probably sucessfully claim not to have known what a quart was, though.

From:

there is light at the end of the frog

How To Pass As A Canadian.

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