Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
Bartlett J. Brebner
Canadians spend half their time trying to convince Americans that they’re not English… and the other half trying to convince the English that they’re not Americans.
Carl William Brown
It’s a Canadian custom, calculated I suppose for the climate, for the young men to visit all the ladies on New Year’s Day, who sit dressed to be kissed.
Frances Brooke
If an American were parachuted into almost any Canadian city today, it might take him some time to realize that he was in a foreign country.
Carl William Brown
I don’t even know what street Canada is on.
Al Capone (1899-1947, American gangster)
Canada has never been a melting pot, more like a tossed salad.
Arnold Edinborough
Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
We moved from British influence to American influence without much feeling of purely national identity in between.
Lester B. Pearson
Canada has no identity and it never has had an identity. You can be a French Canadian or an English Canadian but not a Canadian, We know how to live without an identity and this is one of our marvellous resources.
Marshall McLuhan
Living next to the United States is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twist and grunts.
Pierre Trudeau
The Canadian-American situation is one something like that of living with your wife. Sometimes it is difficult and even irritating to live with her, but it is always impossible to live without her.
Lester B. Pearson
Perhaps the answer to the much-asked question “What is a Canadian?” will be found. I hope so, though my own instinctive reply is “A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question ‘What is a Canadian?”
Irving Layton
A Canadian is somebody who knows how to make love in a canoe.
Dick Brown
Canada is the only country left in the world which is pure colony; colonial in psychology, as well as in mercantile economics.
Northrup Frye Canadian literary critic
The only way to get away from the influence of the American economy would be to float our half of the continent off somewhere else.
Kenneth Galbraith Canadian economist
The difference between Canada and the United States is that the United States are a great country with a great people, who are not as great as they think they are; and Canada is a great country inhabited by a great people who are much greater than they believe themselves to be.
Beecham Trotter Canadian writer
If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.
Margaret Atwood Contemporary Canadian writer
Canada is one of the few places left where the small decencies are observed. If, as a young man, I was scornful of the country because we always seemed so far behind style-setting New York, I now thank God for the cultural lag”. Ours, after all, is the good neighborhood. A society well worth preserving. Looked at another way, yes, we are nicer”. We are nicer. And suddenly that’s important.
Mordecai Richter Contemporary Canadian novelist
America is essentially an entrepreneurial culture: the sizzle is the steak, because, after all, if you buy the sizzle, the steak comes with it. Canada’s, in contrast, is a primary-producing culture: we’ll buy the steak and hope to get a little sizzle with it. But we know we can’t eat sizzle.
Wayne Grady
In Canada, we have so much land, so much space, and so few people.
Philippe Falardeau
Americans are a decade behind Canada when it comes to sex education and understanding their bodies.
Sue Johanson
And in Canada we, you know, it costs us three or $400 million to have an election. You know, it’s always been my position that we shouldn’t complain about that; that’s the price of admission for a living in a great democracy.
Rick Mercer
And in English Canada, no one really knows where the support is coming from, but Conservatives would assume that it’s bleeding from the Liberals. So we have a divided left in Canada.
Rick Mercer
As a people, we know what we can do, we know how to do it, and we just want to get on with it. How? By ensuring that Canada’s place in the world is one of influence and pride.
Paul Martin
Australia and Canada were settled by adventurers, they had to break new ground. I think that is indelibly etched on our cultural spirit.
Tom Cochrane
Basketball isn’t as popular in Canada as it is in the US. Hockey is by far the most popular sport in Canada.
Steve Nash
Between 1939 and 1945 you produced weapons and war equipment valued at thirteen billion dollars, 70 per cent of which you shipped to your allies. The same process is going on today in Canada’s much larger and growing industry.
Arthur Hays Sulzberger
Canada and the United States are also working at the World Trade Organization and in our own hemisphere with negotiations for a Trade Area of the Americas to try to help countries create a positive climate for investment and trade.
Paul Cellucci
Canada evolved within the British Empire: it inherited the Parliamentary system, the Cabinet system and all the other features of the British constitutional system which had been in place, for the most part, for several centuries before Canada was even thought of.
Stockwell Day
Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.
Alanis Morisette
Canada has always been a strong supporter of China’s accession to the WTO… We look forward to playing a constructive role in helping complete China’s accession.
Pierre Pettigrew
Canada has great natural resources, and its people have the spirit and ability to develop them.
Charles E. Wilson
Canada has two emblems – the beaver and the maple.
John W. Dawson
Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world.
Jack Layton
Canada is currently the only major industrialized country in the world that does not allow any private administration of health care services that are provided by the public system.
Cliff Stearns
Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.
Stockwell Day
Canada is like an old cow. The West feeds it. Ontario and Quebec milk it. And you can well imagine what it’s doing in the Maritimes.
Tommy Douglas
Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour – we’re more like celery as a flavour.
Mike Myers
Canada is the homeland of equality, justice and tolerance.
Kim Campbell
Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante’s scheme, Limbo is to Hell.
Irving Layton
First of all, when you live in a country like Canada, it’s quite different from America in the sense that it’s very tied to traditions that were born in Britain.
Geddy Lee
For those who aspire to live in a high cost, high tax, big government place, our nation and the world offers plenty of options. Vermont, Canada and Venezuela all offer you the opportunity to live in the socialist, big government paradise you long for.
Marco Rubio
God has made Canada one of those nations which cannot be conquered and cannot be destroyed, except by itself.
Norman Angell
I am a subject of the British Crown, but whenever I have to choose between the interests of England and Canada it is manifest to me that the interests of my country are identical with those of the United States of America.
Wilfrid Laurier
I am sure that in Canada the people appreciate this principle, and the general intelligence which prevails over that country is such that I am sure there is no danger of a reactionary policy ever finding a response in the hearts of any considerable number of our people.
Alexander Mackenzie
I don’t even know what street Canada is on.
Al Capone
I grew up in kind of the last generation of Canadians who thought things that were happening in Britain were more important, almost, than what was happening in Canada. And my mother was fervently of that opinion.
Robert MacNeil
I lived in a small town. It was 2,000 people in Canada. A little river that went through it and we swam in the – you know, there was a lot of water around. Niagara Falls was about four or five miles away.
James Cameron
I think Canada, our industry is still somewhat based in America’s industry.
Scott Speedman
I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.
Robertson Davies
If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.
Margaret Atwood
In 1628 came the first English attack on Canada.
Harry Johnston
In Canada you grow up – we’re next to the United States. We’re watching whatever you’re watching. We’re following your news. It’s obvious that we are inundated with American cultural information and political information. Whereas the opposite is not true.
Rick Mercer
In Canada, nobody is ever overthrown because nobody gives a damn.
Mordecai Richler
In the late 1950s a major topic under discussion was whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons.
John Charles Polanyi
Scotland is the Canada of England!
Rainn Wilson
South Africa is the most beautiful country I have been to. Canada is also hugely underrated.
Honor Blackman
The thing about Canada is, you’re not really considered a Canadian actor unless you do something with the CBC.
Lexa Doig
The tide of immigration in Canada has not been as great as along our frontier. They have been able to allow the Indians to live as Indians, which we have not, and do not attempt to force upon them the customs which are distasteful to them.
Nelson A. Miles
When you think of Canada, you think of hockey and you think of Wayne Gretzky.
Joe Sakic
When you think about the day-to-day, positive impact on the lives of U.S. citizens, there is no relationship that we have in the world that is more important than our relationship with Canada.
Paul Cellucci
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