[kool maudit]

This is a good topic, but it's ill-served by letting be yet another venue for the working out of our national complex with the United States. I think the best metric is comparing the difference between large city and small town dwellers within countries rather than constructing yet another straw-filled US southerner and gathering in the town square to point.

In my experience small-town Canadians are tethered rather tightly to the metropolitan narrative they see on their various screens; there isn't an oppositional rural/local culture between them in the same way as there is in countries where more people live in small towns versus larger cities (like, yes, the US, but also places like Italy too). Our rural culture seems to be fairly at peace with our large cities and the views that emanate therefrom, and is I guess is in that sense 'sophisticated'. I would not use that word, but it's fine.