BristolUK

That TV show I recommended - Glacé/Frozen Dead - wasn't far from there.

DaveLovesDee

I'm suggesting that America was seen as the land of opportunity for far longer and to a wider pool of immigrants than Canada has.

The U.S. under Trump is further down my list of countries to live in than it was under Obama and previous Presidents..

Oink

[Thread drift] Why?

Shard

I already suggested some reasons. Europeans got to the East Coast, New York grew, trade grew, more people came. For one thing it's easier for ships to sail to NY than Montreal, and that probably accelerated the population lead. At the time there wasn't a Canada anyway, it was all just America and certain regions suited European invaders better than others. Perhaps the French colony in Quebec put other Europeans off. Not a historian so just guessing.

Danny B

Catholics and no rubber johnnies perhaps?

Oink

Europeans settled in Canda, especially Irish and Italian so I don't buy that thesis.
But there seems to be a fundamental difference in the national ethos or psyche. In the US there's a dynamism, intensity and inventiveness that appears lacking in Canada.

Shard

You'd need to look into what numbers and where they settled. The intensity and inventiveness comes from being in the bigger population zone. It's like asking why is London that much more prosperous and inventive than Bristol?

That's not to dispute the differing ethos, but surely the ethos derived from the society around it, and scale is part of that.

dave_j

Why? The thread questions the differences between thge US and Canada. I wasn't aware that Andorra was part of either.

Pulaski

Hollywood is in some respects a giant advertising agency for the US, Canada doesn't have anything similar. The biggest names in Hollywood have in the past, and continue to subconsciously promote the idea of "the American dream" to audiences around the world - Donald Sutherland, Keanu Reeves, Anna Paquin, Ryan Reynolds, Rachel McAdams, Michael J Fox, William Shatner, and Christopher Plummer, among many others.

jandro

Because the USA got the best bits of the North American continent and each country had a much different start.

By 1776 the 13 colonies already had a population of around 4 million and were a distinct entity from Britain while the part that would later be Canada probably had no more than 200 000 or so people who were mostly loyal to the Crown.

Americans have(or had) a sense of exceptionalism because they broke the yolk of colonialism through revolution and went their own way. They also had the best bits of land for massive population growth.

Canada's cultural development was always retarded first by the dominion of the UK and later by the over arching influence of it's southern neighbour.

kimilseung

The Revolution probably played a part too. It was the big political declaration of the Enlightenment and that stuck with it, as other countries, like Canada, reformed, America had a clarion call that survived. This links in to Pulaski's point of the propaganda of the American Dream. Truth or myth, we all have our opinions, but it has survived as a social meme.

bats

Canada doesn't like change or newness. " This is the way we've always done it" is a the at things are done here. A smugness about self worth but without the American evangelical need to tell everyone how good they are and to convert others to American ways.

MillieF

Because it's unspeakably cold for 4 + months of the year.

BristolUK

On the other hand, the more people that go to a place the greater the chance of a complete bozo running the country.

MarkG

That hasn't stopped Castro Jr.

I think weather is far more important than it's made out to be. Just imagine how many smart people from around the world would have wanted to move to Silicon Valley if it was in northern Saskatchewan, instead of California. Even BC probably wouldn't have had half the appeal (I know several programmers who never even considered working for Microsoft because they'd have had to move to Seattle instead of San Francisco).