How do you get an accent in the first place? From hearing it spoken around you. It's not in the soil or the water, and it's not written down, you get it through your ears. These days a lot of people don't spend their entire life, or their entire youth, in one place, so don't have a "pure" accent.

Which leads me to wonder: I grew up in suburbia in central Canada where, in my perception, there is no accent to spoken English. For most of my adult life I have lived in the Ottawa Valley, 1-3 hours from where I grew up, where there is very much a regional accent and phrases. "Saw the young lad over on the next line, eh, he drank a two-four an' put 'er in the ditch agen, eh."
This is obvious to me (and I talk like that with my neighbours, but I can also just turn it off and revert to suburbia-speak when in the city).

So does everyone have that perception--where you're originally from, there's no accent?