I AM CANADIAN! (Having fun with the OTHER Americans!)

If you ask anyone from Canada what their nationality is, they would most likely say that they are American...  How can this be true...  They don't even live in America? 

They don't live in the United States, BUT they do live in North America, thus they are Americans.  They also quickly point out that they are nothing like those of us from the States.  They like to point out that Canada is completely different from the U.S.  Other than our T.V. shows, cartoons, the Gap, Banana Republic, Mc Donalds, Sears, Walmart, KMart, Starbucks, Burgar King, KFC, ect...  Canada is quite different from the U.S.

The few cities that I have been to in Canada, (Ottowa, Toronto,ect), have an European flair and flavour this is lacking here in the States.  Then there is Montreal.  That city is in a catagory all on its own.  Montreal is NOTHING like the rest of Canada, and the people there pride themselves on being that way.  With their own French dialect (le Quebecqois), and heavy European influence, being on Montreal feels almost like someone dropped you off in a lost section of France, that was stuck in the middle of North America.  In spite of the Anti- U.S. sentiment shared by most of the residents of Montreal, I have to say that it is one of my favourite cities that I have visited thus far.  Having had the oppourtunity to spend some time with an aquaintence who was born in raised in Montreal, I was able to see Canada, and Montreal.  Not from the view point of an outsider, but to be immersed in his culture, which was so unlike my own.  Canada and its people are so much more than funny hats and accents, hockey fiends, maple leaves, pountine and steamies, lumber jacks and moose.

Being a flight attendant, I have had the oppourtunity to interact with people from all over the world.  Though it has all been from the saftey and familiarity of my own homeland.  It wasn't untill I visited Montreal, did I see just how ethnocentric and typically American I really am.  I was in a way the American Stereotype.  No matter how much I tried to hide it, the red white and blue showed right through me.