Canada vs. America

            Many people believe that Canada has become to “Americanized” and that our roots are based entirely on theirs. I believed that as well to a certain extent. After coming to university and taking a few political science courses, I realized that Canada is made up of a lot of different parts of the world including France, Britain and America. I feel as if we take the best part of each of these places and incorporate it into our country. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, if you look at these countries; they’ve always had some sort of problems, especially America. Canada on the other hand is a calm environment, a place that most people would like to raise families in. With the recession in America, not many people who choose America over Canada. When you compare aspects from America and Canada, Canada wins most of the debates. We have a better health care system, we have a more peaceful environment and we don’t have any major enemies. America on the other hand is quite the opposite. I think the main difference would be that people in America, specifically the youth, vote more often than Canadians do. They believe in more political protest, more involvement and are more in tune to what is going on in the news. Young Canadians, not so much!

            When we think about identity, along with thinking that we have been “Americanized”, we also think about all the other symbols that identify what it means to be Canadian. The best example of this would be Tim Horton’s, maple leaf and the Toronto maple leafs. All of these things are symbols that Canada has created on it’s own, it hasn’t been adapted from another country. Basically, Canada is a great nation because we got to take the best parts of the different countries and incorporate it into our own, but at the same time, create our own identity, which makes us Canadian.