Due to some rather odd circumstances my father who was the oldest of 10 children moved to Toronto, Canada from Dublin as a young man. His parents moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. and the rest of our rather large family stayed in N.Y. State. I love them and visit them often.

Perhaps as Canadians we are overly senistive to the general lack of knowledge about us and our ways displayed by people living only a few hours away from us. Sure I'm generalizing, but to be told by an upstate New Yorker that he wouldn't visit Canada because 'they only speak french there' was disturbing, but not surprising. This conversation was held in English, after I had mentioned that I was Canadian. Trying to convince this person that the vast majority of Canadians speak English was futile.

Most of my relatives know a fair amount about Canada as they have visited us and found we don't live in Igloos and drive dog sleds. However we do meet friends of theirs who are often not only surprised to find out that our climate and there's is virtually identical, many don't believe it. As the crow flies we're only a few hundred miles away.

Then there was the guy in the bar in Pa. who asked my buddies and I where we were from, we replied Toronto. He went on about 'you Ohio Guys' We tried several times to tell him that we were from Toronto, Canada, it turned out that his confusion was that there's a Toronto, Ohio, a small town when compared to our city. This guy didn't realize that there was 'another' Toronto. He thought the World Champion Blue Jays were from smalltown Ohio. I love visting the U.S. (would like it more if you could get a real beer or cup of coffee there). But I would never want to live there.