When I was a kid, we were Canadian. We were Quebeckers. We were North American. We were part of the British Commonwealth. We were also whatever our parents and grandparents had been. In no particular order. We were less chauvinistic than Americans, because we were never sure what to be chauvinistic about!

Our history teacher used to read to us from an American history text, for laughs. It was all written in the first person plural, which seemed ridiculous! "We (Americans) bravely and nobly did this, while they (whoever) wickedly did whatever..."

We couldn't use "we" because we wouldn't have been sure who the we was.

(Secret stuff: Recently a major initiative by a government organization attempted to create a Canadian History web-site. It fell apart, because nobody could agree on what Canadian history was!)