My husband is a firefighter so he like to visit fire stations occassionally when we travel. We were travelling with another couple from Calgary (we are from the Toronto area). The Phoenix firefighter said he knew where Calgary was and wans't Toronto nearby? I replied - yes - just hang a right and drive for about 1500 miles!

I had a European friend state that she really wanted to "get" Canada -- really experience all of Canada when she visited. She had 8 days.

What a neat thread! Like others, I have been asked by Europeans, "Do you know so and so from Toronto?" Then I respond, "Sorry - I am from Saskatchewan which is a 3-4 hour flight from Toronto." I once did get asked the igloo question.

Recently I began making arrangements for my employer to fly from the U.S. to Canada. Turns out they booked their own flight to Calgary thinking I would just drive over to the next "state" for eight hours to pick them up from the airport! They actually called me from the Calgary airport to ask me to pick them up right away!

Lastly, I was on the phone making a linen order from the U.S. When asked where I was from (mailing address) I responded Saskatchewan. The lady said, "Which country is that? Is that in Europe?" Then she laughed when I said we had a postal code - she insisted it had to be a zip code. I promised her I wasn't lying. She told me she would ask her manager if it was true. When I asked where she was from she said New York (not teribly far away from Canada!). Funny. Some are just more geographically challenged than others, I guess!

I can imagine, being from Texas we get silly questiones. Do we still carry six shooters? No thet's Arizona.
So here goes my silly ? to you Canadians. How do you feel about Texans? The reason I ask is we are not very well liked in Colorado and I am hoping to have a better winter vacation this year.
Each and every one of us humans are different no matter where we come from. I dont belive saying hello or pardon me on the street is invading anyone's space. Some people look at you as if you have, but when a whole city looks at you that way you gotta wonder what the heck is going on here!
Boy! a couple glasses of wine and I am gettin brave! Honey get a rope!
I sure hope I meet some funloving and really neet Canadians, or from other.
As my wonderfull Carribean friends say NO WORRIES MON! my accent only gets really heavy after a few Wild Turkey and Coke.
Take care to all, Viv
Meet us for a drink so we can exchange silly questions

>>>>>>to you Canadians. How do you feel about Texans? The reason I ask is we are not very well liked in Colorado and I am hoping to have a better winter vacation this year.<<<<<<

I hope you find the Canadians at Whistler to be friendly (i.e., whichever Canadians you can identify amongst the Americans, Britons, Australians, and New Zealanders, etc., who will be there too :) ).

But coming from a place that is unpopular in some quarters can be a useful turkey filter. If people judge you on the basis of where you come from, are they the sort of people who are worth spending time on anyway? If that's the way they are, it can be kind of helpful to have an automatic device that teases that information out of them right away. :)

I like Bourbon too, but I think you might be hard-pressed to find some Wild Turkey up here.

Rain at Niagra falls? By golly it was raining. Not to be concerned, I had my rain suit on. With it raining, fewer people were jammed in the overlooks.
So we got a better view.

With a good rain jacket, who cares.

I will sign off with two more. After we returned last year from our trip to Canada, I told someone we flew from Toronto to Calgary where we got a rental car for our visit to the Canadian Rockies. The question I got back was this: Canada? Why didn't you just get your rental car in Toronto?

Duhh. Its a 4 hour flight from Toronto to Calgary. If driving, one has to travel about 2,200 miles.

I will share the worst one because it hit right close to where I live.
Three drunken police officers from a town near where I live boarded the same flight that I did to fly from Toronto to Atlanta.

First they complained because the Canadian authorities had relieved them of their pistols and kept them until they returned to claim them. (They were going hunting.)

They were going to write the president about it. (George Bush)

Then the flight attendant made an announcement first in French then in English. They wanted to know during the French version "What in the xx are you trying to tell us?" Unperturbed, she repeated the announcement in English.
Then she asked if they understood it!!

They wanted to know what she jabbering in to start with. She said that was French. Response: "How come you say it in French. We ain't French."
The flight attendant said politely that French was one of two official languages in Canada and that some of the passengers were French speaking.

Response: You mean Canada is part of France? I thought it was part of England.

For me, that was more disgusting than it was funny. Talk about the ugly American. Those three would win the prize without entering the contest. Ignorance at rest is bad enough; ignorance in action is terrifying.

Ok.. here's my silly American question:
Is there such a thing as "Canadian" bacon? Or is it just one of America's silly marketing gimmicks? (Sort of like
"Amish" -this or -that..)

What is called "Canadian bacon" in the USA is the name of a certain cut of bacon. The name does not, in and of itself, indicate that the product comes from Canada. In Canada the same cut is called "back bacon."

AAAAGGGGHHHH - BACK Bacon (making Homer Simpson noises!).
Yummy!

I agree, Aaaahhhhh Back Bacon! LOVE it.

NOw when visitors tell me Canadian food is the same as USA, one of the first things I point out are BUTTER TARTS Mmmmmm, strickly Canandian... and then Tarte Sucre ( sugar pie) to die for in Quebec.
Smarties too... mmmm.

Ok I must be hungary. STop thinging about food!

Kodi

Funny .... Or " american " cousins in Boston always had us take cheese and butter with us when we visited .... I was young and always perplexed ..?

Thanks to all for the bacon lesson. I will be visiting your country this June and will make it a point to try some
back bacon. I suspect it will be much better than what we have here.

An elderly woman friend of my mother told this story as truth with a totally straight face...

When they decided to name Canada, there was fighting over which name to choose, so the government decided to put letters in a cloth bag and let fate decide.... one man was picked to pull the letters...the letters were announced...

"C...eh?"
"N...eh?"
"D...eh?"

She was totally unaware of this old joke and was convinced it was true.


The other story is a quote from a High School student on a French Club field trip...
"How do they make the French people stay in Quebec? ... the teacher answered... "good Food".

Dear Shry:
I hope you have a wonderful time in Canada. Where are you going? Those of us on this thread may have some great tips (and wishes) for you!

" have been asked about whale watching"

I overheard a tourist asking a deck hand, on the ferry to Mackinac Island in northern Michigan, about whales.

With a straight face, he said it was too shallow in the Straits, that you had to get out farther.

Tourists ask stupid questions everywhere.

Keith

Hi all!
I have the ULTIMATE silly thing said about Canada.
Imagine the opening of this 1954 film, which takes place in Canada--
Beautiful panoramas over the Rockies, focusing on Athabasca River, the high meadows with horses and riders, more panoramic shots of the mountains, and then the title superimposed over the panorama --
SASKATCHEWAN!
Yes, this really happened. The movie in question, "Saskatchewan" was a western about clashes between the Sioux indians and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The original title was "Alberta", which made a HECK of a lot more sense, but the head of Universal Studios thought the name "Saskatchewan" sounded better.
Sigh...

Several years ago I was in a hardware store in Canmore. I was joking with the owner (who was also acting as the cashier) about various subjects when an American came in and wanted to know if he could pay in American dollars. (The exchange rate at the time was much more in favor of the US $ than it is now.)

The cashier said with a straight face that he would accept the dollars on an even exchange. The guy asking much have had his numerator in place of his denominator because he was ready to pay that way. I said, "Hold on. I will give you $1.10C for each US dollar.
(I had just gotten a wad of Canadian dollars from an ATM in the same shopping complex.)
The cashier then made a counter offer at $1.15, which was still considerably under the rate of exchange. I made a second offer of $1.20, which still was profitable for me. In fact, it was still a ripoff of an offer.

By that time, the guy was so confused he did not know which one of us to believe. Finally, I started laughing and the cashier told him that he could get Canadian currency at the bank or use his credit card, but that he was not set up to handle US dollars.

I am not sure that the guy ever figured out that we were joking with him and that had he made the exchange at our prices he would have paid a very inequitable rate of exchange.

Let me sign off with one that I found very amusing for a variety of reasons.
One night in Lethbridge we were eating in a good restaurant. There was a small party going on not far from where we were seated. Perhaps a dozen Canadian wheat farmers and their wives were having a good time.

They were talking loudly and what they were saying was clearly audible. I heard them use the term "Rednecks" several times. Being from the South I truly wondered what an Alberta wheat farmer meant by Rednecks. So, I asked our waitress. She blushed and said, "They mean Americans." I started laughing and wondering just what subset of the American population was included in the term "Redneck." Some of our fellow citizens I think would be shocked to know that they were so classified.

I decided not to press for clarfication.

My landlady in Perugia, Italy -- a fervent Catholic suspicious of all religious developments since the Reformation -- asked me quizzically:

"Ma voialtri in Canada, che Dio amate?"

"But you Canadians...what God do you worship?"

(She also invited me in one night to see singers "from every country -- even yours" competing in ... the Eurovision song contest!!

BTW, that was the year ABBA won, so it tells you how long ago this was)

Hi all!

I've been lurking on Fodor's for awhile and just started posting. Thought I'd chime in here! Someone mentioned they had gotten the "igloo" question.

When I moved to Montreal [from California] I was asked more than once if I was going to need a snowmobile to get around. Around to my igloo maybe?

Well. I arrived in a very cold and snowy December and I will confess I made my husband buy me an "emergency kit" for the car trunk replete with blanket, candle, water, food. He humours me well.

We were in Portugal at a fort and there was a lady there from the U.S. and we asked her to take our picture. She was very nice and asked where we were from and when we said Canada she was absolutely amazed that we spoke "such good English"

This is sort of on topic - one of my favourite web sites is "An American's Guide to Canada" written by an expat American

http://emily.icomm.ca/index.cgi

What a fun site. Emily has left out toasted western on the food list - isn't it a "Denver" sandwich in the US?

nospam wrote:
<<Trying to convince a European friend that the term "Americano" does NOT imply all Canadians, Americans, Central Americans, and South Americans! >>
Actually, I am from Argentina, and we DO consider ourselves "americanos". I learned in geography class that there are 5 continents, and one of them is called America. Hence, everyone who lives on it is an "Americano". The funny thing is we from South America don't call ourselves South Americans at all, just Americans (but we use this term in very special contexts). We usually call ourselves Argentinean, Chileans, etc.
I've been living in the States for 5 years now and I always thought that that was one of the "ignorant" comments regarding "South America"... similar to the ones posted on this thread.
By the way, I loved learning more about Canada's misconceptions and silly questions, since I will be moving there in the summer. I won't be asking any of those!
Thanks for initiating this thread, it's so much fun!!!!

Hi there!
Yup, the continental divide strikes again -- are there 5? Or 6? Or 7???
ANYWAYS, usually in Italy (at least), the word Americano refers to those from the U.S. Although I HAVE seen "gli Stati Unitis" used before...
Sigh!

We lived in Italy in a very small town for a year and I was asked on a number of occasions, when I said I came from Toronto,Ontario, Canada if I knew_____, the asker's cousin, friend, ex-neighbour.

As Toronto has a population (CMA) of 4 million,Ontario 8 million and the country overall about 28 million, this would seem very unlikely and I would always answer politely while sighing inwardly.

In the last week, when I said goodbye to my butcher, he shyly asked me if by any chance I knew his sister. I stopped sighing when it turned out she was my dentist back home.

Ok, so I have something funny from a Canadian about Canada. A friend from Montreal (English)was coming to spend a week with me in Victoria (she has been here before). She wanted to arrive in Vancouver about 10:30 pm (Pacific time)and could we pick her up at Vancouver airport. Told her this wasn't very good for us because the last ferry to Vancouver Island leaves at 9 pm. She said - seriously - couldn't we just take the bridge!

When I was getting ready to go to Canada for the first time, my son told me the canadians always say "eh" at the end of each sentence. I thought it's just a usual joke.

When in Toronto I met a local guy (through the Internet), he was born and grew up there, and he really said "eh" at the end of each sentence. When asked why, he couldn't explain. He hadn't even noticed!

Now I am asking seriously, why?

"eh" is a very rural thing for Canadians to say. I never say it, nor do my friends, but head out into the country, and everyone says it.

It's similar to how Americans say "uh-huh" and "ya'll". Not everybody does, but a lot do... it's just local slang that locals don't notice, but if you're not from around here, you will.

p.s. I don't think anyone says "eh" after *every* sentence... it has to be in context, just like "uh-huh", or "alright?".

Carmanah

I must contradict. I've heard that "eh" in the most unusual places. Totally out of context and almost as if it just had to be said even though it was unnecessary. :)

I've always assumed people that say it out of context are joking...

ie: "Hey, what's up EH? How are you doing, eh? Are you going for lunch, eh?"

And what I mean by joking is, just playing along with the stereotype ;)

I was told once by a Canadian linguist that the term "eh" is used most commonly as a substitute for the phrase "do you agree?"... as in "It's cold oot today, eh?". ... It is not limited to rural areas and is very common in English Speaking eastern cities... I live an hour from Toronto and have heard it countless times...eh?

As a Western Canadian I hadn't really heard "eh". When I moved back to Ontario in the 70's I was introduced to it. Then it seemed to be that the person telling a story would stop every once in awhile and say "eh" as a way to be sure I was keeping up with what they were saying (or making sure I was really listening) as opposed to agreeing with them.

"Eh" -- which I use -- is not unique.

Surely most forms of English have a grunt-like sound that is not a word but gives meaning to the rest of the sentence.

e.g. "Huh" as in "Wise guy, huh?"

Or in other languages: "hein?" in French, which sounds quite like "eh" and means the same thing.....