Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
The first law of geography (not a real law): all things are related, but close things are more related to others.
Also not a real law, but a useful rule of thumb: language = culture. A cultural gulf is proportional to differences in language, with the widest gulf being entirely separate language families with no historical connection (Korean & Basque) and the closest being accent differences (Queens accent vs. Brooklyn accent).
In that sense, of course, Canada and the US are going to be close to one another culturally by global standards.
But, given all their commonalities, living in Canada is a very different thing than living in the US (I have lived in both), and I was surprised how a lot of cultural features on one side of the border don't travel into the other. These aren't minor trivialities like comparing Exxon to Esso, or Tim Horton's to Dunkin Donuts. These are major life-defining things like rates of church attendance. There are things that can't actually be explained by simple regression models: why does suburban, postwar Scarborough have a higher transit ridership than inner city Philadelphia? Why does Connecticut have a higher gun ownership rate than the Northwest Territories? Why does British Columbia have 1/3 lower rates of obesity compared with neighbouring Washington? I think these differences are more stark than the differences in similar metrics between, say, Wallonia and France or Austria and Germany or Uruguay and Argentina.
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I've lived in both Canada and the US for some time, and I suspect that many posters here have similar experiences too based on how many people are familiar with and talk with ease about both countries.
I find our experiences all vary in whether we see Canada and the US as super different or super similar.
I personally feel that on a day to day basis living as a Canadian in the US, I don't sense a difference unless some thing comes up that reminds me among my American peers that I'm not "one of them" (eg. someone brings up say the Constitution in a political discussion and I still find it hard to relate to their reverence for the Constitution as a mythologized, almost sacred document, in and of itself).
I think the differences are also less in more big cities or more left-leaning cities. The religiosity thing isn't too different I find between Canada and the US in the largest cities (people have tried to convert me to their religion in both countries but in most big cities people are "live and let live").