In general, I would say no - I've met lots of people here, in the Maritimes, Ontario, and Manitoba who aren't particularly well-traveled. However, I've met very few people who aren't conscious of the world.
I think living in the shadow of a country as dominant as the United States gives people an instinctive understanding that there is a world, as opposed to being from and living in that dominant country. Just today jeddy1989's fiance (they're living and working in Prague right now) was bitching about an argument he had with an American client who told him the phone number provided for the United Kingdom was wrong because it didn't start with 1-800. The client, even after being told repeatedly, simply could not grasp that other countries would require different number codes.
That sort of thing you don't encounter much in Canada, even in its hickest parts. But that doesn't mean they're particularly well-traveled.
The rest of it, that's a very complicated class thing. It's like when the government here encourages people to go see Come From Away on Broadway (literally happened, several times) - that exemplifies a class divide. Half the population here hasn't even heard of it. And the other half can go to New York City for a weekend and check it out.
And then there's history. Even the old, illiterate people are intimately familiar with Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Russia, etc. if only from having met thousands of them while they were in port. The work-boot wearing day labourer here probably spent, all totaled, two decades in New York City, Dubai, and wherever else. I'm am very, very often impressed by the far-off places our lowest, working class is very familiar with.
As always, Mary Walsh sums it up best - this one from her piece about growing up in the newly-Canadian-and-pissed-about-it St. John's of the 1950s.
Quote:
I don’t remember meeting or seeing any other Canadians. There were Portuguese, Spaniards, Russians, Poles, Americans off the ship, and you’d see them down on Water Street. But in school, except for Janet, it was just basically us. The us sprang, as the great Newfoundland satirist Ray Guy put it, from a genetic pool the size of a pudding bowl.
My next encounter with Canadians didn’t go much better.
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http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/...hings-canadian