I mean, sure, it’s not as population dense as the USA, or Mexico, but Canada is huge, your people are nice, you have some of the best entertainment companies on the planet (namely Cirque du Soleil and Pornhub), your natural resources and attractions are unbelievable and your actors are the best (especially the BSG/Chronicles of Riddick cast).
And yet, as an Italian with an international perspective (lived abroad for the last 16 years and visited the USA and South America repeatedly), I have been not “Canada-aware” for most of my life.
I get it that you are not boasting like your neighbors (and that alone makes you better than them imho), but how come that I was left to realize only today that the Manitoba flour I used to make pizza all my life takes its name from one of your provinces, while I know about all the shitty pizzas the US made up in a century.
Same thing goes for Latin American countries, even the ones I never visited, like Mexico or Argentina.
I shall visit soon and I hope you can take the chance to teach me more in the meanwhile.
And you forgot to mention, we are a lot SMARTER than the Americans.
It s true, Americans have hugged the limelight for 70 years, always, ahem, Trumping the news. No matter how loud we shout, it is always the American voice that is heard in Europe. But really, the reason lies not just in America’s behavior, or even Canada’s, but in the complete disinterest of Europeans in even bothering to learn anything about Canada, the assumption in Europe being that we are just ‘not significant’ compared to the US. Even though we did a lot more to defend Europe in the two Great Wars than America did. We were the ones that developed the strategies for the new technological warfare (Vimy Ridge, for example), the Americans simply copied them. It’s just that the Americans took all the claim.
Just remember that it was a Canadian who invented the Hawaiian pizza. So, sorry about that.
(for the record, I like Hawaiian pizza)
Ha! I love bringing up Hawaiian-style pizza.
Canadians also invented the Football, Basketball, Baseball (1838), and the absolute most deadly ‘modern’ sport there is: Lacrosse, a ‘gentrified’ form of the most brutal aboriginal sporting action seen since Pokolpok . Lacrosse is honestly just handball with quarterstaves.
The meme about hating pineapple pizza comes from Americans that hate eating anything that’s recognizably plant-like.
It must be ultra processed or meat.
you’re the goddamn ambassador with that username, this is the dude!
Happy to hear you’re thinking of us! I think the average Canadian thinks more about our country’s international reputation than mindshare. Personally, it doesn’t bother me hearing that someone in another country doesn’t think about us very often, but it does make me happy to hear that when you do it’s positively. Please do visit!
I don’t think your experience is unique - I think because the U.S. has been so dominant economically, culturally, and certainly militarily, much of the world overlooks us. It’s not in our national character to be boastful, we just get things done - but never mistake our quiet nature for meekness. We’re fiercely proud of our country and our accomplishments - and of being very unlike our neighbors to the south.
You should definitely come visit if you get the chance, there’s a lot to see, and a nation of friendly people to help you enjoy it. Ciao!
To be honest I never knew we shipped our flour that far. (I live in Manitoba)
I think for the most part we realize that we are not perfect by any stretch, and instead of bragging about what we do or don’t have, many of us would prefer to just try our best to make our corner of the planet as nice as we can. We are, after all, made up of people from all over the world and I think that’s one of our greatest strengths.
Ney, Manitoba, prairie flour is shipped all over the world. It was one of the first commodities from Canada shipped to the Soviet Union during the height of the cold war. I remember the hype that was caused when we started shipping it. You young-uns would be a lot better off if you read a bit more of your history than just about oil and gas fields. You have much more to offer the world than these.
I think it is not always produced in Manitoba, but it is the name of the kind of wheat flour that is best for pizza.
Ya, I would assume that although the name originated from here, it’s grown throughout the prairies and probably the states as well.
Still interesting to know that our name is attached to it though. I’ve always thought that “manitoba flour” was just regular flour that was local.
It is a Canadian hybrid wheat developed specifically to grow in the prairies, Completely developed in Canada by Canadian agriculturalists. I learned that way back in elementary school. That was way back when the Canadian teachers actually knew something about Canada.
I probably learned that as well but just don’t remember it. I do know we’ve developed a lot of different hybrids from the Morden research station over the years. (I used to live across the street from there, years back.)
Goes back to the early 1900’s.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/marquis-wheat
I’ve never heard of Manitoba flour.
Why is it good for pizza?
It is a strong white flour, it builds quite a strong glutinic net (I am translating from Italian here) and therefore keeps a good elasticity after rising, while being stretched and pulled.
It’s hard to be aware when most everything in Canada has basically been sold to the US by the greedy. I mean the last shred of our heritage is the French on the packaging. If it weren’t for that, you could never tell between products from either nation.
Hockey? We have like 3 teams left in the NHL. Superman? He’s American now. Alaska, which is the landing point for a staggering amount of goods coming into Canada, American now too. Tim Hortons? American.
We sold our heritage long ago. You can say whatever you want to farm karma but the sad reality is we basically are the 51st state. And as mad as Canadians get hearing that, especially now (I loath Trump and have always had a tenuous opinion of the US), it’s the sad truth.
And if you’re hoping for Carney to make this place great, he won’t. The whole “we are building a better world” is the biggest lie told because people have long realized you die. Legacy or not. No one wants to spends their lives in agony so three generations down will get it easy. That’s a hackneyed trope for a sci fi movie, nothing more.
I cannot really relate to hockey or Tim Hortons, but c’mon Shuster was only born in Canada.
And he stayed true to Canada right to the end.
How?
Are we talking about the same Schuster?
The author of the Superman comics. Joe Shuster.
Sorry, I thought you meant ‘Wayne and Shuster’, the great Canadian comedy duo.
Pornhub, like poutine, is Québécois!
(Though I’m not sure why we’d be proud of that…)
why not be proud of that? sex is great… don’t be ashamed of it just because it’s sex
It was okay up until they allowed videos of non-consensual sex, child porn, and truly ‘hidden camera’ video where the other person had no idea their privacy was being violated.
Honestly we forget about Canada, in a way. Having the US so close geographically and culturally has made it hard to see anything else. I can think of three distinctly Canadian dishes, and two of them have only stayed Canadian because they involve ingredients Americans can’t get.
The Anglo-Canadian identity is pretty much just “we’re not American” and having an inferiority complex. It’s been weirdly natural for people to switch to thinking of America as the enemy.
while I know about all the shitty pizzas the US made up in a century.
Yep, none of that was us. For sure. /s
ingredients Americans can’t get
Horsemeat? What are the other two dishes?
The dishes in mind were actually butter tarts, Nanaimo bars and poutine. Cheese curds are hard to come by in the US (so they make a much worse version with cheddar or whatever), and Bird’s custard powder for the filling of the bars is a British commonwealth thing. Butter tarts just aren’t exciting enough I guess.
I have no idea how prevalent horsemeat is anywhere. The white people in my area are loudly butthurt it exists at all.
Many years ago I worked in food logistics and we would send a pallet tote of horsemeat from somewhere in Quebec to somewhere in BC every few months so I wouldn’t think that horsemeat is in huge demand by any stretch of the imagination.
Meat is meat, if we raise it we should be eating it. Just because it is a beast of burden/pet doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be on a plate when it has served its other purposes. They can’t just be glue afterwards.
Beer that actually has alcohol in it.
We Canadians call American beer ‘that non-alcohol stuff’.
Smarties.
And, recently, large eggs.
Oh and hormone free chicken.
And the really important one, a Harvey’s Hamburger with grain-fed beef…
American beer is like sex in a canoe. They’re both fucking close to water.
God… American beer…
Obviously not a scifi fan. So much filmed there most significantly various stargates.
The Canadian film industry is so huge that a great majority of ‘Hollywood’ films have at least part of the movie shot in Canada. Night at the Museum (all of them) was a big one that very few people realize was shot in Canada. I Robot, also parts of it shot here. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Chronicles of Riddick (all of them) was shot in Canada. The list goes on and on and on. The reason why so few Canadians recognize Canadian cities and settings in the American movies is that the sets are aways ‘Americanized’ - American flags, American money, American license plates, American road signs, American brands, American store branding, American iconography. Even if you knew it was shot in Canada, you would hardly recognize it as Canadian. The sets are purposely designed to look American. Even when it is supposed to be a Canadian city in the movie.
Chronicles of Riddick (all of them) was shot in Canada.
Pitch Black was shot in Australia… I was at a bar in Coober Pedy (the only bar in town, I think) stepped out for a smoke and there’s the spaceship from Pitch Black just sitting in the parking lot LOL.
Pitch Black was indeed shot mostly in Australia. It was the next two that were shot in Canada. I forgot that Pitch Black was part of the Chronicles of Riddick franchise, it had so little in common with them except Vin D. Almost nothing in the story line followed through the next two, it was a stand-alone movie. I should have said ‘both of them’ instead of ‘all of them’. Maybe the next one will be filmed in Canada as well.
Almost nothing in the story line followed through the next two, it was a stand-alone movie. I should have said ‘both of them’ instead of ‘all of them’. Maybe the next one will be filmed in Canada as well.
I don’t know about that… the primary motivation of Riddick in the second one was to help the girl from Pitch Black. She’s in the prison mentioned in Pitch Black because she wanted to get eyes like Riddick had, which was something she asked about in Pitch Black. He finds out where she is from the priest from the first one. The Necromonger plotline was new, but that plotline and the prison plotline felt like they were from different movies.The Necromonger plotline was abandoned in the third movie (which was disappointing since I liked that part) and the third movie has more in common with Pitch Black than the previous Chronicles of Riddick movie.
I think it’s more accurate to say the Necromonger plotline in the second movie was the outlier in the series. Which is unfortunate since I would’ve like to see where that went, but it wasn’t a good fit for a “Vin Diesel is an awesome baddass” kind of movie.
The only connection between the two (or three or maybe four) movies is to promote Vin D’s public persona as a ‘badass action figure’. The franchise is all about Vin D, not anything related to a plot.
The franchise tag ‘Chronicles of Riddick’, or even the promotion of the character ‘Riddick’, did not jell until the second movie. I tis like ‘The First World War’ only became ‘the First…’ when the Second World War started. Without the second, there would be no purpose for the term ‘First’.
If you had to wear the ‘Necromonger’ costume, you would know why it was impractical to do another movie featuring these creatures.
Well it was actually called the First World War before the war ended because people already knew there was going to be another one.
Anyway, only three characters survived Pitch Black and Chronicles features two of them prominently, only the priest didn’t have a big part. But it’s a priest, not too much they could do with a character like that in an action movie.
Sure they did. That’s what they called it. If you say so. You are the expert. I suppose you were even around then, so you know first hand.
But here is al the history books saying it was called The Great War.
And of course they expected there to be another war. That’s why they also nicknamed it The War to End All Wars.
Historical revisionism, replacing historical reality with a mythical fantasy world.
I think it has to do with an old saying.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick”
Generally we as Canadians on the international level speak softly, while the US speaks very loudly. It is of no shock to me that you only remember us when we have to bring out the stick because we aren’t as “interesting” to watch as the US is.
We may have Cirque du Soleil but everyone knows the real circus is US politics, and it is hard to compete on the world stage with the best of the best. haha
- Quoting Theodore Roosevelt very funny in context
- What big stick?
The big stick of “we own most of your natural resources and energy so you probably shouldn’t fuck around”?
What big stick?
The one between every Canadians legs causing Trump the penis envy required to invade our beautiful nation.
“Speak softly, hide behind America’s stick and hope they never notice us”
I preferred being out of sight out of mind actually, especially the lack of tourists. Hell is other people.
When I visited Scotland, I felt the city core of Edinburgh wasn’t for the locals anymore and it turned me off tourist reliant locations entirely for context.
the lack of tourists.
It’s a big country, that’s definitely not the case coast to coast.
You can do tourism wrong (as Italian cities do), and do it right, like Amsterdam started to do now. I was there in April last year and I was able to take pictures of the canals with no one in them but me effortlessly. They literally paid ads to tell British low cost flight tourists not to come visit.
It’s called self-care.
I’d agree, with my limited experience anyways. I’ve only left Canada once and it was a trip to Scotland, Netherlands, Austria, Czech Republic.
All in one trip? That sounds like a fantastic holiday!
Sounds like hell to me, not being able to settle your mind in one city is something I abhor in tourism. Bringing that to country level is just criminal.
It was spread over 3 months. I agree anyways, it’s very stressful.
This was aging mother’s bucket list not really mine.
