Canadians are very odd people. It takes a long time to figure out how profound the differences really are. I was brought up in England, the U.S., and Canada, so speak from personal experience. They have a complex history that has made it impossible to settle on a national mythology, and so their relationship to their past is very fragile -- quite unlike the U.S. Their relationship to the natural world is not one of a conquering people -- more like a series of temporary dwellings in a vast terrain that is indifferent to them and that is prepared to kill them if they do anything really stupid. The huge size of the country is always there, even if it is muffled under the city lights, and people forget about it in their consciousness. The dying older Anglo generation was very British; the under 50's are more Americanized, but still retain some of that rule-based culture. This rule-based culture makes it very hard to get people worked up over basic infringements of rights that wouldn't be tolerated in America; but, on the other hand, it has provided a strangely sympathetic space for ethnic immigrants to retain their own culture at home and among their own communities, as long as they conform at the most generic level. The closest people to English Canadians in American culture, not surprisingly, are people in Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc.; and French Canadians are a world unto themselves. Cape Bretonners are from Mars.