Canadian Stereotypes
When most people think of the term ‘group’ they think of a sports team, a church group or even the “popular” group at school, but not everyone classifies their race, culture or religion as a group. Spending eleven years of my childhood growing up in Canada I never classified myself as being apart of the group of Canadians since most of everyone I knew, all my friends, classmates and neighbors were Canadian, but that all changed as soon as I moved to the United States. Being the Canadian in my classes, on the street and now even in my dorm is apart of who I am and I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. I take pride in being a Canadian but sometimes it gets hard with the jokes, the comments and all the Canadian stereotypes. Hearing the stereotypes every time I meet someone new gets old, so it made me wonder, why are American’s so uneducated on other nations, especially their neighbor. I want to prove through personal experiences and secondary sources that Canadian’s are not as different than Americans as everyone believes by comparing the similarities between the two nations.
Not to long ago here at Virginia Tech I met a guy and we were getting to know each other, I proceeded to tell him that I was Canadian and the first thing he said was “do you say Eh?” After that I decided to look into the thoughts that American’s and Canadian’s have on Canadian stereotypes. ‘Canadian University Student’s Stereotypes of Canadians and Americans’ is the journal I found related to my question being asked. This journal was written to explain the stereotypes that American’s and Canadian’s have on Canada and to analyze the factors that the stereotypes are based on. The comment that stood out most to me in this article was “the reaction to the psychological effects of this competitive disadvantage is apparent in the Canadian self-image which stresses maturity, conservatism, and more and intellectual depth and integrity rather than the efficient, opportunism and...