Reflections on Vancouver, British Columbia and other topics, related or not

 

No fifth column here

Canadians will assert their non-American individuality,
thanks to an American president

Greg Klein | May 12, 2025

 

This is a country that tried to distinguish itself from the U.S. by imitating that country’s Flag Day. But as an American goads us into national consciousness (defined solely as non-American), Canadians will surely stop imitating Americans. Here are just a few examples of upcoming Canadianization we’re certain to experience.

 

Canadians will stop using American slang and actually develop our own vernacular.

Truly Canadian slang seems to be limited to one (1) word: “hoser.” It’s not used much anymore and “pogey” (meaning “unemployment insurance” and likely a Canadian derivative of “poke,” as in “bag” or “pouch”) has become extinct.

“Cheers” as an e-mail sign-off might be distinctive to B.C., and seems to derive from the British use of “cheers” as “thanks.” Another B.C. distinction comes in the Australian term “no worries,” commonly used here to mean “no problem” or (inappropriately) “you’re welcome.”

Other countries produce volumes of slang and vernacular. These four examples, weak as they are, pretty well exhaust Canada’s contribution to English.

Okay, here are a few others: “Grow-op,” “grow-rip,” “loonie,” “toonie” and “double-double,” a longtime Toronto term given nation-wide prominence by Tim Hortons. Also there’s “Digby chicken,” a term probably not used for a very long time (and, in almost all of Canada, probably never) but mentioned in some obscure dictionary of Canadian terms that I can’t even find now. That well-meaning but somewhat strained book listed words that must have been extinct by the time of publication (prior to the early 1980s, I think), if they ever existed at all.

Appellations like “Team Canada” and “Service Canada” show an Ottawa French usage that began in 1965 with “Air Canada.” Initially considered odd, the new name inspired a cartoon by the Vancouver Sun’s Len Norris showing a guy asking over the phone: “Air Canada hello? Leave does when flight the Toronto to?”

But even the Yanks came to imitate us on that, with “Team USA.” Impressive, eh?

“Eh,” by the way, never was uniquely Canadian.

 

Canadian entities ranging from B.C. Transit to Revenue Canada and a host of others will stop using American pronunciation.

Recorded voices on PA and phone messaging systems often substitute an American soft “a” sound instead of a Canadian soft “o.” Even more noticeable is a diphthong used for the letters “an.” A similar sound pops up among a minority of Newfies and Cape Bretoners, but it’s almost entirely an American noise.

B.C. Transit recordings, for example, order “pyayssengers” to hold on while “styaynding or moving on the bus.”

The annoyance can be heard most insultingly in the word “Canada,” which the Yank accent pronounces something like “kyaynyedah.”

We won’t allow that to continue, will we?

 

Canadian commercials will stop using American announcers.

Egregious examples can be heard in advertisements broadcast over Air Canada entertainment monitors during taxiing. The ads promote not just the airline but other businesses too. Maybe in a pitch to foreign visitors, many of them associate their products and services with Canadian identity. But the off-camera announcers couldn’t be more obviously American.

Canadians will stop broadcasting American dialects just as soon as Canadians notice the difference.

 

Canadian broadcasters will fire their American-accented announcers, starting with CTV’s Vassy Kapelos.

 

A Canadian—Jewish, black, Torontonian, any Canadian—talks like that?

 

Toronto’s favourite celebrity will stop affecting an American accent.

Or else Torontonians will stop idolizing the egotistical Yank-wannabe.

 

Canadians will stop driving American cars.

In Western Canada especially, people consider their vehicles to represent their self-image (or personality, if they have one). So Canadians will stop adopting American self-images. Right?

 

 

Canadian men will drop their overriding enthusiasm for American sports.

Typical sports fans are attracted less by athletic ability than a vicarious sense of identity. That explains the attraction of American sports to Canadian fans. Canadian men will now stick to hockey and find other distractions from their vacant lives. They’ll even develop less-vacant lives.

 

Canadian businesses will stop accepting American money.

Canadians will do so as soon as they realize that deference to Americans isn’t obligatory.

 

Canada will end its American-style preoccupation with blacks.

Canada celebrates Black History Month not because the subject is so important to Canadian history but because Americans do it. Blacks proliferate on Canadian TV and advertising not because they’re so numerous in Canada but because they proliferate in American media.

And Canadian portrayals of blacks imitate American portrayals. They’re almost always wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people—because Americans say so. Canadians will stop this American nonsense. We’ll treat people without regard for race or ethnicity.

 

A map shows locations of Canadian George Floyd demonstrations
with 100 or more participants within two weeks of the American
criminal’s accidental death. (Source: Wikipedia)

 

Canadian political activists will stop aping American activists.

Along with Canadian media and politicians, Canadians will stop exercising themselves about American issues like gun control, which we already have, or abortion, which is permanently enshrined in our country.

Canadians will ditch their American-style Trump derangement syndrome. That began more than a decade before his tariffs and 51st-state idiocy, and only out of slavish imitation.

Canadians will stop mimicking every wave of American ideological hysteria. George Floyd didn’t matter. Incomparably more serious was the death of Myles Gray following a 10-minute beating by seven Vancouver cops using fists, knees, boots, truncheons, a chokehold and mace. They got away with it.

Canada’s sole contribution to the West’s tendency for moral panics was the mass graves hoax. Way to go, Canada!

 

In fact Canadians will have to reject that George Floyd bullshit for the sake of national defence.

Should Canadian military ever have to fight American invaders, the Canadian elite would treat every dead black American soldier as a Canadian George Floyd.

 

Vancouver media will stop sucking up to Yankee poverty pimps.

Ex-pat whites, who declined to try their self-serving machinations in the black and Hispanic inner-cities of their own country, founded and built B.C.’s poverty pimp industry. Vancouver media will no longer praise them for their “American social conscience.” Instead, B.C. journalists will expose the enormous harm these foreign opportunists inflicted on our country.

Journalists will also ask why Canadians let the Yanks get away with this.

 

 

Canadians will stop defining themselves with American references.

Canadians will stop referring to Canada as “cold” and “north” simply because it’s generally colder and farther north than most of the U.S. They’ll stop using terms like “Nashville North” and “Hollywood North.”

Canadians will also stop referring to American events and institutions as if they’re ours. No longer will Canadians refer to “the civil war,” “the south” and “the president.”

Canadians will stop trying to express their politics in American terms like Make Canada Great Again. Canada’s we’re-all-the-same politicians will stop implying, and Canadian voters will stop believing, that the leaders of the slightly different parties (federally and provincially) are Trump knock-offs.

While rejecting much of the U.S., Canadians will reject anti-Americanism. Canadians will realize that our anti-Americanism just imitates conventional American self-hatred.

 

Canadians might, just might, maybe maybe maybe just might (this is really a longshot) realize that China’s a far more dangerous threat than the U.S.

 

Canada will repeal our U.S.-style constitution.

Canadians will end their complacent ignorance of such matters and revoke the right of judges to overturn legislation. In granting the bench that power, Trudeau I let Canadian judiciary act as if they’re intifada’s legal department.

As do American judges. But Canadians will no longer consider that as justification to do the same.

 

Canadians will learn about our country.

They’ll read Canadian history (actually quite interesting) and Canadian literature (okay not much there except...); they’ll find out what they can about genuine Canadian folklore and traditions (which include distinctly Canadian country music that’s not Nashville North). They’ll travel their own country, not just to the ski resorts but to different regions, provinces and territories, and do so out of a trait that Canadians will finally develop—curiosity.

They might not like what they see. But the experience could cure what’s left of Canadian complacency.

 

Canadians will embrace a world beyond the U.S.

They’ll even realize a world beyond the hot-weather attractions of the Caribbean and Latin America, where fortified resorts insulate Canadian tourists from Caribbeans and Latinos. Canadians will visit, among other places, Nordic countries (besides the tourist traps of Iceland), and do so in winter, partly to see how other “cold” and “north” countries compare with our own. Canadians will wonder if their failure to thrive in Canadian winters results from Hollywood portrayals of perpetual summer as the American norm.

Canadians will stop seeing the U.S. as the real world. Canadian politics, arts, pop culture and overall society will find influences from other countries while looking within to develop our own identity, not just in comparison with the U.S. but as something distinct, maybe even unique.

 

We can do that.

Canadians are truly a distinct and vibrant people, aren’t we!

Aren’t we?