I received my new issue of National

Geographic Traveler in the mail today. On the cover: "Canada's Last Near

Frontier: Escape to the Land of Polar Bears & Earth's Freshest Water."

Imagine my excitement as I flipped to page 74.

It was an interesting article about

northern Québec, but something about it left me dissatisfied. I thought about

this as I made dinner tonight, and my conclusion is that the word "Canada"

triggered images of home, diverse cities, soaring trees, snow-capped mountains,

pristine lakes...

This one magazine article cannot

even begin to cover travel and tourism offerings in Canada, and I was silly to

even expect that. At the same time, I am constantly surprised at Americans'

perceptions of Canada and Canadians. When I meet people and they ask where I am

from, I tell them I grew up in Canada -- you should hear the reactions I get.

"Canadia?"

"Do you say "eh" a lot?"

"America's hat!"

"I should have known."

"Korea?"

What I mean to say is that for

being friendly neighbours, Canada to me, seems to be swept under the rug at

times. Like Sarah Palin on Africa, my experience is that Americans know

surprisingly little about Canadians -- enough to make a joke. Yet, we have a

beautiful embassy here, one of its largest, if not the largest of Canadian

embassies around the world. Our trade relations are the strongest in the world,

our borders are safe, our cultures and ways of living are undeniably

similar.

Why the need to differentiate? As a

Canuck living in the US for the better part of the last eight years, being

Canadian is strangely exotic, a topic of conversation, a reason to rejoice, a

bureaucratic nightmare.  This last point especially has shown me that I've

had to learn lessons on being Canadian in the US the hard way, but the most

important take away is that both nations would fare better if we cooperated a

little more. And as much as some staunch Canadian patriots may big to differ,

the only real differences I see between my American friends and me is that I say

pencil crayons, and they say colored pencils. I say runners, they say sneakers;

I say garborator, they say garbage disposal; I say zed, they say zee; I say

Prime Minister, they say President. Tom-ay-toe, tom-ah-toe, can't we just be

friends?

I don't necessarily have a point

here, just a suggestion to start looking at Canadians as more than just a

neighbour. When I started writing this entry, I found an interesting website

United North America, which is a non-profit organization calling for the

unification of the US and Canada. It is an interesting idea, and one that

perhaps worth exploring?!

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