We’re all a little more American than we think

It’s commonly known that it doesn’t hurt to carry a Canadian flag when you travel, whether you’re Canadian or not. The blatant 180 degree change in Ozzies’ demeanour once they find out we`re Canadian (rather than American) is unbelievable. Their eyes light up, they start smiling, and their voices go up an octave. We made friends with an American who is applying for permanent residence in Oz. She is really nice and you can see her physically cringe when she admits there is a stigma attached to being an American abroad. I feel bad for her because all of us are little more American than we think.

After visiting New Zealand and meeting the extremely down-to-earth people there, it made Oz seem like the American big brother in this part of the world. To me, Oz mirrors the US in other ways too. Violent acts of racism in Oz (example 1, example 2) are more likely to occur in the US than Canada. Their immigration policy didn’t allow any minorities to move to Australia until 1970s and presently uses loopholes to keep refugees trapped on Christmas Island in immigration detention facilities. That level of racism was certainly abolished and shunned decades ago in the US and many more decades ago in Canada. Ozzies think that they are very much like Canadians and I don’t have the heart to tell them otherwise.

Canadians mirror Americans too, but not in an offensive way. After observing European influences on Ozzie culture, I realize how Americanized we are at home. Canadian content in the media is embarrassingly low, we spell “organize”, “maximize”, “realize” with “z” instead of “s”. We know more about work than play. We’re not obsessed with soccer, cricket, or rugby. We think Starbucks makes awesome coffee. While these are not terrible things, they indicate that we don’t get off scot-free.