[rootusrootus]

When I was younger (decades ago...) Canada felt more 'exotic' than it does today. That may just be me getting older and less awed by new things, but I'm struck every time I visit by how much like America Canada is. Maybe that's why I like it so much. America but with universal health care :).

Disclaimer: I only ever go to BC (and I have lived in the PNW most of my life), so this might be a very biased hot take. I bet Quebec is a little bit different, as well as the other provinces & territories.

[qball]

There are between 4-7 major subcountries in Canada (for reference, the US has 11 of them) depending on how you count them.

Those are the West (everything west of Upper Canada), Upper Canada (triangle formed by Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal), Lower Canada (Quebec), and the Maritimes.

If you're going more granular, you have Newfoundland, which is very different from the rest of the Maritime provinces (they have their own dialect of English), the North (sparsely populated but the kind of Canadian that lives there is different), and to a point Vancouver and Vancouver Island.

Of those, the West is functionally the Midwest (Vancouver and Island are not meaningfully distinct from Seattle/Portland/Bay cities in terms of politics) where each province is flavored towards the State to its immediate south, Upper Canada is culturally NYC-DC North (and for that reason is as hostile to the rest of the country as NYC/DC are to the US in general), Lower Canada is French (obviously), and the Maritimes are the Rust Belt.

The reason for Upper Canada's insularity (and to a point, Lower Canada's) is its age and geography: as the US found out in 1812 it's very difficult to reinforce across the Great Lakes. As for the West, there might as well be no border at all, so commerce and culture move freely (it also helps that, because plentiful natural resources and space causes a freedom-focused outlook on human rights, most people who live in the West will naturally have that in common with their southern counterparts).

[nullhole]

The north-south cultural group is correct, but I'd disagree with some of the specifics you mentioned.

The cultural division between BC and the 'west' (AB, SK, MB) is pretty strong.

Southern Ontario is a lot closer to upstate ny / the midwest than NYC, I'd say.

The Maritimes is much more like New England than the rust belt. Newfoundland isn't even part of the Maritime provinces - it's part of the Atlantic provinces.

[mb7733]

> you're going more granular, you have Newfoundland, which is very different from the rest of the Maritime provinces (they have their own dialect of English)

Just a heads up, Newfoundland isn't a part of the Maritimes at all, and those from Newfoundland will certainly remind you of that if you lump them in :)

[nightowl_games]

> Those are the West (everything west of Upper Canada),

Definetly need to split this further:

Prairies - Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta

Mountains - Everything inside the Rockies

BC - Its it's own thing

[switchbak]

Canada is being "Americanized", and the media and entertainment landscape is at the forefront of that.

I will say though, weighing in on a neighbouring nation while only having visited one of its provinces strikes me as a little bit conceited. A visit to BC is not going to give you much of a perspective of the diversity of this country.

Also: our health care is amongst the worst of the western nations at this stage. Subsequent governments have carved it away to be a shell of its former self.

[rootusrootus]

> conceited

That's a little harsh, I admitted as much in my post. I figured that my disclaimer would clarify that what I really think is "The PNW is very similar no matter which side of the 49th parallel you find yourself on."

I withhold any opinion on your health care; I've heard negatives, sure, but I've got no skin in the game. Philosophically I like it better than what we're doing in the US, even if the results have been lackluster so far.

[joshlemer]

Canadian here, and I think that especially on philosophical grounds, the Canadian system is terrible.

The state has a monopoly on the purchasing of healthcare services, it is illegal in most provinces to buy any healthcare for your family. The official marketing is that services are given out in priority order. In practice, it's rationed according to a lottery, your connections, whether you can afford to live near medical center, your ability to advocate for yourself, ability to show up an hour before a facility opens and wait in line for 5 hours, push through constant gaslighting by doctors whose goal is to dissuade you from receiving care (they'd rather you just give up and go home, here take this antibiotic and get out of my face), willingness to embellish symptoms to get higher priority placement, etc.

When the system utterly fails you, you have zero recourse. You just accept that you won't get to see a specialist for 6 months (if you're lucky, often a year). There is no escape hatch. Only if you're lucky enough to afford paying out of pocket and be able to get out of the country to get medical attention.

Millions of Canadians have no access to a family doctor (25-60% of British Columbians, for example). With increasing frequency, Emergency Rooms themselves are closing their doors (can't operate a whole 24/7 rotation).

On a philosophical level, I think it plainly evil that, even after I've paid such high taxes to fund everyone else's treatment, and then after the government refuses to provide me with adequate healthcare, after already paying for services not received, they then make it illegal to use whatever money I have left to provide basic healthcare to myself and my family.

[takinola]

> The state has a monopoly on the purchasing of healthcare services, it is illegal in most provinces to buy any healthcare for your family.

Why is it illegal to purchase healthcare privately? When I lived in the UK, I skipped the NHS and used my private insurance all the time to avoid all the issues you listed. Why not make it available to those that can afford the option?

[joshlemer]

Well, obviously I strongly disagree with this justification, but it's thought that if you allow for private healthcare options, that will suck resources out of the public system. If I use my own money to pay for the attention of a doctor, that's me taking that doctor away from the public system, making everyone else worse off.

[mensetmanusman]

Just cross the border for medicine like millions of Canadians do.

[rootusrootus]

Thanks for that perspective. That does seem like some serious downsides.

[gopher_space]

> On a philosophical level, I think it plainly evil that, even after I've paid such high taxes to fund everyone else's treatment, and then after the government refuses to provide me with adequate healthcare, after already paying for services not received, they then make it illegal to use whatever money I have left to provide basic healthcare to myself and my family.

The evil part seems to be where they bilk you out of your tax dollars a few steps up the chain.

[ksenzee]

Downvoters may think this is an argument against universal healthcare, not realizing that it’s really an argument against a particular style of universal healthcare. Some countries, such as France and Switzerland, have a private sector that parallels the public sector, providing that escape hatch that Canadians are missing (unless, as you say, they cross the border to Bellingham or Buffalo, and can pay the US’s astronomical out-of-pocket expenses).

[switchbak]

Most Canadians of sufficient age know that our healthcare system used to be the envy of the world. Sadly that has not been the case for 30+ years, and every government of the last few decades has compounded that problem. Some of it isn't even about funding per-se, but greed, bureaucracy and institutional power grabs.

We don't really have "universal healthcare" at all anymore, I don't know what you'd call such a dysfunctional system.

[joshlemer]

We have a universal guaranteed access to wait lists system now.

[SllX]

Don't worry, there's arguments against every system of health care, including the American health care and insurance industry. Doesn't mean there aren't productive reforms that can be done.

[switchbak]

Fair call, I could have used a less zingy word, though you could have made less of a sweeping judgement as well :)

[paretoer]

This is nothing new. I grew up going to Canada every weekend in the summer.

Canadians have known more what is going on in America than Americans for at least the last 35 years.

I love Canadians but never in my adult life have Canadians not been just salivating to have a conversation about American news with an American.

[ThrowawayTestr]

Whenever I visit the states it feels like Canada just bigger

[rootusrootus]

I'm going to interpret that as a compliment.

[willhslade]

That is accurate. 10x population.

[peab]

I feel the same. Just look at accents of people back in the 90s compared to now

[486sx33]

What you talkin aboot eh?

[hermitcrab]

I went to Vancouver last year. It my first time in Canada and I was surprised how similar to an American big city it felt.

[astrodust]

It's probably because all kinds of movies set in American cities are filmed in Vancouver.

[gosub100]

> America but with universal health care :).

And much lower wages and opportunities, but the same (or higher) housing prices. There's a reason you don't live there.

[486sx33]

All democrats should move to Canada to experience socialism lite, which is what people voted the Democratic Party in for.

[bparsons]

A linguist friend once told me that language patterns in North America run north/south. For whatever reason, culture and migration seem to work the same way.

If you are from BC, you are more likely to travel to or move to California than you are Nova Scotia or Florida.

Likewise, if you are from Montana, you probably feel more comfortable in Alberta or Saskatchewan than you would in New York or Alabama.

While our governments function very differently, NAFTA has removed most of the institutional barriers preventing the natural movement of money, people and culture between the two places.

[bobthepanda]

time zone and climate vary much more east west than immediately north south considering the populated zones of Canada are almost entirely 100km from the US border.

[b112]

What radio and then TV did, the Internet has continued. The world is shrinking, its cultures are merging, one day there will be one language, and one culture, or... maybe two yelling at each other.

I once heard, in the early 2000s, that more than 1/2 the languages spoken 150 years ago are gone.

[bobthepanda]

eh, the internet also provides plenty of ways to split off into subcultures. maybe the subcultures cut across traditional nationalities but they're still there.