Davey, I'm as nationalistic a Canadian as they come, but we're not as self-effacing as we used to be. Part of the proof is that we are always going around explaining to the Yanks how modest we are even though the UN says we have the best country in the world to live in--year after year. That's getting embarrassing! When we talk about it that much we're not being it any more. (OK, maybe I'm being a typical Canuck here.)

Also we have this simplistic notion of Americans as you outlined above. The US has lots of diversity in its population and their opinions and its kind of silly that we go around stereotyping them--also a media-propagated notion. (For Example, I heard a CBC interviewer describe Molly Ivins as "the last liberal in Texas", which is just plumb ignorant. Texas has lots of ropers, ranchers, roughnecks and rednecks but also lots of smart independent -minded thinkers, immigrants, a big New Age scene, hippies, the Austin music scene and the Kerrville Folk Festival which is my experience there.)

Its kind of fun to go down there and sing trad (and contemporary) Canadian material, which they don't know--your point is quite correct on that score.

Getting down to the thread title question, Canadian music has been vaguely but truthfully characterized as having "a sense of space." Fewer big bands, more lone folkies or duos, driving long ways from gig to gig, a tendency towards economic migration, it shows in songs like Four Strong Winds, Make and Break Harbour, Summer Wages (OK I'm an Ian Tyson partisan), and I don't know, Jane Siberry or Kim Stockwood (the ironic outside observer thing).

Y'know what I mean eh.

W-O