Quote:
Originally Posted by mistercorporate
I believe JHikka's post was made tongue in cheek and sarcastically, given the center of the universe stereotypes.
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Yes and no.
Some of it was sarcastic, of course - Ontario being the end-all, be-all for many regarding Canadian culture. Going to the cottage in the summer, playing hockey in the winter, etc. Media, entertainment, whatever else. I joke that, coming from the Maritimes, I sometimes feel like a temporary foreign worker in Ontario at times. It's tongue-in-cheek, obviously, but I don't think it's too far from the truth.
Maybe i'm just stubborn because Canada doesn't, and never will, fall neatly into some sort of nation-state definition, but for the longest time i've always felt as if the Maritimes were my Canada and all the rest of Canada was inherently different. The Maritimes fit that definition much better than the country as a whole does, as does Newfoundland, Quebec, and to a lesser extent the western provinces. We can probably conjure up some things that we can find regardless of where we live in Canada (Tim Hortons, hockey, arenas with Rogers or Scotiabank sponsorship) but beyond that, ethnically, culturally, linguistically...much of Canada is vastly different from its other parts.
The way that I look at this thread is: If a tourist from some far away country visited Canada for a week and could only go to one place, what place would best represent the country as a whole? I don't really have an answer to that question. Visiting Montreal is neat but the rest of the country isn't exactly like it. Same with Toronto, Vancouver, St. John's, or any other place. It's tremendously difficult to try and pin down what a Canadian microcosm really is. For some people it's Muskoka cottage country in July, for others it's Whistler in January.
Much of this thread is focusing on the linguistics of Canada which I think is a bit of a far reach. There are things in this country far more important than that to focus on.