It reminded me of my own thoughts about an American's experience living in either New Zealand or Australia. Having visited both more than once, and more than briefly, my sense was that an American would experience less culture shock in Australia than in EnZed, but would find New Zealand a more beautiful place by far.
Let me share my mental cultural model. Imagine a continuum from Britain to the U.S. I view New Zealand as being closer to the British end and Australia closer to the U.S. end.
If the four countries were beads on a wire, we'd find Britain on one end, then about 1/3 of the way along but closer to Britain we'd find EnZed, and 2/3 of the way along we'd find Oz, closer to the U.S. than to the U.K., and finally at the far end we'd find the U.S.
Let's say you wanted to place Canada on that same continuum of English-speaking countries, where would it fit? I'd place it perhaps half way between Australia and the U.S., quite close to the U.S.
Most places in the world anglophone Canadians would be mistaken for Americans unless they have maple leaf flag badges sewn on their jackets or backpacks, or show their passports.
I wonder how many CIA operatives masquerade as Canucks? Plenty, I bet. Get a subscription to Macleans, teach yourself some hockey lore, learn to say "eh?" and "aboot," to spell "labor" as "labour" and convert to metric and you should be able to pass.
