Anglo-Canadians closer to the modern UK or French Canadians to modern France?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

Here is another question: do people think that Canada (or various parts of Canada) are socially more like the UK or more like the US?

.

I find that Canadians (especially Anglo-Canadians) are really their own thing in this respect. They're not really exactly like Americans or exactly like the Brits, but something of a mix that contains elements of both and also some of their own traits obviously.

French Canada has its own "way of being" (façon d'être) that is also distinct from the rest of Canada.

It's centred on Quebec but also spills over into parts of New Brunswick and to a lesser degree in Ontario.

I see all of this at play in my family where many of these demographics are present and when we have gatherings the Québécois and Northern New Brunswickers tend to socialize and party pretty much the exact same way.

The Franco-Ontarians can for the most part play along with the QC-NNB crowd as they're familiar with all of that jazz, even if it's not really their cup of tea and that's not the way things would be if they were the majority and running the show.

And the anglo side of the family, at the end of the evening, is often like... "WTF just happened?"

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by FrAnKs

I can confirm you that, my friend. Even if my love for France is HUGE and I still recognize it as my motherland, I feel much more like a stranger there. Not because it's France, but because it's European.
When I go to USA, I feel like home. The only difference is the language. Other than that, there are very few adaptations for me, the roads, the architecture, the lifestyle are the same (especially in New England)

I'm a North American who speak French, that's it.

Well in terms of infrastructure and everything that is "pratico-pratique" in life, I agree.

In terms of human relations, I think it's a mixed bag.

We do have a lot of "new world" traits that the French don't have but OTOH I would strongly disagree that in terms of social behaviour Americans and Québécois behave pretty much the same way except for the language they speak.

I am not even sure that Americans are truly closer to us than the French are.

In any event, as I mentioned in my other post I do find that the "façon d'être" in Quebec is quite unique and isn't really someone else's simply implanted here.

Having grown up francophone in Anglo-Canada that "Québécois Way" took some getting used to, but once I did strangely enough I found I was also "getting" those members of my family in New Brunswick (and a few in very francophone parts of Ontario) more than I used to.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The anglo media in Canada do not do this for the UK. They also don't do this as systematically for the U.S. July 4 holiday either, although most Canadians are aware of it by virtue of being tuned in to U.S. media.

This is pretty debatable. Some of our holidays like Remembrance Day are the same as in the UK. Others like Victoria Day are explicitly British Empire themed. Other major special occasions relating to the British monarchy tend to be heavily covered in Canada. I think Guy Fawkes might be the only one that is a much bigger deal in the UK than in Canada but I don't know if it's mentioned in the news. It probably is.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by someone123

They also said "de Québec à Vancouver", which is slightly annoying but also surprising in that they acknowledged that you might move from France to somewhere in Canada other than Quebec.

Making sure to legitimize their use of that picture of the Rockies...?

[Nantais]

Originally Posted by someone123

Are there many major physical monuments to Quebec or Canada in France? If you go to say, La Rochelle, is there a statue relating to Canada that is at least as big as, say, one of the thousands of statues dedicated to a comparatively minor continental military victory?

We have a rue des Acadiens here in Nantes, with two murals commemorating the expulsion of the Acadians by the British in the 1750's-1760's. Thousands of them took refuge in Nantes.

https://www.google.fr/maps/@47.20207...2!8i6656?hl=fr

[Acajack]

Another thing about Americans vs. Québécois vs. the French on a human level is that it's hard to claim we're that tied to the Americans when most of them never think about and barely know we exist.

Except for a teeny-tiny rapidly vanishing minority withing the minority of Franco-Americans who still retain a bit of the culture, to 99% of Americans we are simply faceless foreigners. They know basically zero about us. No more than people in my city know about Japanese tourists whom they see in the summer getting off tour buses at the Canadian Museum of History.

We're totally off the American radar except for the vague notion that they are a bunch of "French" (sic) people living somewhere up north of them.

And you really don't have to go that far from the border for this indifference to manifest itself. (Even those people who know we exist never anything beyond the fact that, yeah, we exist.)

The French, on the other hand, generally have enough interest and knowledge about us to have *opinions*. Good or bad - it doesn't matter. They still have something to say.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

Making sure to legitimize their use of that picture of the Rockies...?

We have a pretty sizable number of French immigrants here in Vancouver, something I would not have expected and that didn't exist until recently. My workplace is probably 5% French immigrants and this has been common to everywhere I have worked here. But it is also likely I work in an area that has more of this group than average; I don't think if I worked in Save-On in Langley it would have 5% French employees. They are actually more numerous than Francophones from Quebec where I work, although that group exists here too.

If you go to the Okanagan or places like Tofino you find a lot of adventurous Quebeckers bumming around. Whistler meanwhile is full of Australians ("Whistralia").

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

This is pretty debatable. Some of our holidays like Remembrance Day are the same as in the UK. Others like Victoria Day are explicitly British Empire themed. Other major special occasions relating to the British monarchy tend to be heavily covered in Canada. I think Guy Fawkes might be the only one that is a much bigger deal in the UK than in Canada but I don't know if it's mentioned in the news. It probably is.

Yeah, but they're covered here because they are CANADIAN holidays. (Is Victoria Day even a holiday in the UK?)

July 14 isn't a holiday at all for us. It actually means nothing to us since we never went through the French Revolution. We'd been "British" for 25 years when the revolution began.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nantais

We have a rue des Acadiens here in Nantes, with two murals commemorating the expulsion of the Acadians by the British in the 1750's-1760's. Thousands of them took refuge in Nantes.

https://www.google.fr/maps/@47.20207...2!8i6656?hl=fr

This is interesting. Thank you for sharing.

But I also cannot overlook how the example we get is basically an alley with murals.

[Acajack]

Just checked and the British don't appear to have Victoria Day.

They do have something called Spring Bank Holiday around the same time (actually about a week later) and that sounds like great fun!

[Nantais]

Originally Posted by someone123

This is interesting. Thank you for sharing.

But I also cannot overlook how the example we get is basically an alley with murals.

An alley located in the heart of the area where the Acadians settled in Nantes in the 18th century.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Just checked and the British don't appear to have Victoria Day.

They do have something called Spring Bank Holiday around the same time (actually about a week later) and that sounds like great fun!

I think they have about half a dozen "bank holidays" every year in the UK and that the dates in England and Scotland don't always coincide. I've never been sure what they're actually about, other than the banks being closed.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I find that Canadians (especially Anglo-Canadians) are really their own thing in this respect. They're not really exactly like Americans or exactly like the Brits, but something of a mix that contains elements of both and also some of their own traits obviously.

We all have a thin veneer of British/Scandinavian reserve compared to Americans, but otherwise, when it comes to the Canadian continuum between the UK and the US, proximity to either appears to be mostly dependent on social class and education.

You get an American cultural facsimile with the working class (NFL, country music, Nascar etc.), while there seems to be a greater correlation between higher education and an awareness of and/or affinity for things like the Guardian, and British TV shows and music, etc. Not exclusively, of course, but as an adjunct to the regular American cultural diet.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

We all have a thin veneer of British/Scandinavian reserve compared to Americans, but otherwise, when it comes to the Canadian continuum between the UK and the US, proximity to either appears to be mostly dependent on social class and education.

You get an American cultural facsimile with the working class (NFL, country music, Nascar etc.), while there seems to be a greater correlation between higher education and an awareness of and/or affinity for things like the Guardian, and British TV shows and music, etc. Not exclusively, of course, but as an adjunct to the regular American cultural diet.

I would say that I find working class (Anglo-) Canadians way less rambunctious than their American equivalents. Though obviously still moreso than your Margaret Atwood-CBC Radio-Globe and Mail types.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I would say that I find working class (Anglo-) Canadians way less rambunctious than their American equivalents. Though obviously still moreso than your Margaret Atwood-CBC Radio-Globe and Mail types.

Yeah, that's true. Probably the show Letterkenny gets the distinctively Canadian register right in that regard.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by rousseau

We all have a thin veneer of British/Scandinavian reserve compared to Americans, but otherwise, when it comes to the Canadian continuum between the UK and the US, proximity to either appears to be mostly dependent on social class and education.

Originally Posted by Acajack

I would say that I find working class (Anglo-) Canadians way less rambunctious than their American equivalents. Though obviously still moreso than your Margaret Atwood-CBC Radio-Globe and Mail types.

Regarding the perceived national character of Canadian reserve, I don't know how seriously people take this, but whoever came up with this cultural categorization scheme has a rather... interesting idea of where Canada fits relative to the rest of the Anglo world.



Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-lewis-model-2013-9

[Xelebes]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

I think people from France look at the french from Quebec as backwater hillbillies.

That's a narrative that comes from Anglo-Canadians, especially during World War II. I have a couple books which clearly articulate the beginnings of that rumour from that period. They're not very nice books.

People from Toulouse or Normandy aren't going to view people from Quebec as beneath them. It's just another place that they could move to if they wanted. Perhaps even better job opportunities. Is there possibly some snotty French blue-bloods in Paris who might have that opinion? Perhaps, I don't know.

[Xelebes]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

You think that would be an interesting question? If you lumped the UK + US together and asked whether English Canadians had more of an affinity with the UK+US or Quebecois with France, I think the answer would be obvious and not really debatable.

Heck, I even think that French-speaking Quebecois have much stronger connections to the US than they do to France.

The answer is that French Canada is roughly 4 times bigger in terms of share in the Francophonie than English Canada is in the Anglophony.

[urbandreamer]

It depends who you mean by Anglo-Canadians? As in those of us with roots to England, Wales, Scotland dating back 300-400 years ago, then yes.

Not so much if you're German Mennonite via Pennsylvania and the Conestoga wagon trail.

I grew up reading the Daily Telegraph, FT and listening to the BBC.

[Proof Sheet]

Originally Posted by rousseau

We all have a thin veneer of British/Scandinavian reserve compared to Americans, but otherwise, when it comes to the Canadian continuum between the UK and the US, proximity to either appears to be mostly dependent on social class and education.

You get an American cultural facsimile with the working class (NFL, country music, Nascar etc.), while there seems to be a greater correlation between higher education and an awareness of and/or affinity for things like the Guardian, and British TV shows and music, etc. Not exclusively, of course, but as an adjunct to the regular American cultural diet.

Well put. Sounds like my b-i-l in Hamilton wishes he was an American. Not far from the truth actually.