Excellent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYoTJItSPt0

Excellent indeed.

Everything I know about Canada I learned from Doug and Bob MacKenzie.

I know I'm a lone voice crying in the wilderness, but when I hear people say America, I wonder if they're talking about north or south? I know it's a habit, and has become a tradition to refer to the US as America, but America takes up 2 continents and includes many countries. I live in the US. I am a US citizen. Those are the words I use. The US is a small part of the Americas. If I say America, it's with a clarifier as to which continent or country. Canada is American, too. North.

Me too Joe!

....and John Candy.

Joe,

That is too funny, it would be even funnier if it didn't hit so close to home.

Kevin

"That is too funny, it would be even funnier if it didn't hit so close to home."

I believe the correct phrase is this: "It would be even funnier if it didn't hit so close to home, eh?"

--B.G.--

Kathleen:

It isn't geographically (or even politically) correct, but the conventional usage equates 'America' with USA. After all, we call ourselves Americans -- while our neighbors call themselves Canadians or Mexicans or Chileans, etc.

Like it or hate it, it has long become standard, customary, and clear cut. Heck, methinks foreigners call our country AMERICA more than we ourselves do. In my travels, when people ask me where I am from, I usually say "US". And they usually respond with, "ah, AMERICA"!

Edited by ben2world on 02/23/2010 12:28:14 MST.

"I believe the correct phrase is this: "It would be even funnier if it didn't hit so close to home, eh?"
Hilarious.

With respec to "Americas" - no, Canadians do not think of themselves as part of the Americas. We are too good for that.

(Eh)

Yeah, I know. But it still bugs me! I think it's rather a pompous habit we've gotten ourselves into.

Pompous, maybe, maybe not.

But my guess is that we got away with it because we were likely the first to apply that term to ourselves. Going back to the 1770's, we were agitating for independence and had to come up with a new name to call ourselves -- British just wouldn't do anymore. And back then, folks living north and south of our borders were still calling themselves British, Spanish or Portuguese.

Edited by ben2world on 02/23/2010 12:49:39 MST.

The "New World" was donned "America" by a German geographer in honor of Amerigo Vespucci.

Or, according to this account: "the newly-discovered lands were named after an anglicised Welshman named Richard Amerike."

In any case, to the native peoples of these two continents, the term "america" hadn't existed until it was given by a European. Not terribly pompous on our part I'd say. "Our" meaning present day "us," not the historical "us." I'm not going to argue the points of the colonization of these two continents.

Edited by T.L. on 02/23/2010 13:06:56 MST.

But was it donned on just the USA or on two entire continents? Kathleen's contention is that we of the USA shouldn't have hogged the term just for ourselves.

Ya, I edited that.

Probably because we're the only ones who have America as part of our country name.

I'll just call you friends.

"With respect to "Americas" - no, Canadians do not think of themselves as part of the Americas. We are too good for that."

+1. And I'm not even Canadian!

At least you all have the good sense to drive on the right. Unlike, say, Australia. I'm not sure what kind of a Fisher-Price country THOSE guys are running.

:o)

Seriously, though, I am forced to admit that all of my best travel experiences were in Canada- and not just because we share many common cultural referents. Someday I'll get to Australia and New Zealand, and maybe that'll change. And in a lot of ways I'm trying to figure out how we Americans, alone among the ex-British colonies, somehow went wrong on the population thing. I mean, Canada has all of 33 million inhabitants, and Australia- an entire continent- has 22 million. And then here we are, cramming 308 millions into one little country. There's something basically awry with the way we are slowly become more and more European, compared to you guys, who are retaining your more intimate 'frontier' character a bit more gracefully.

We have to be friends with Canada.
We invaded them twice.
They beat the begebbers out of us twice.

Lesson learned; we'll just out-breed them!


:D

Dean:

I think you're the first to refer to the US as a "little country".