Didn't realize it in the UK, but it's very difficult being an immigrant and constantly feeling like you don't have the right to be critical. I very nearly got a "if you don't like it **** off back where you came from" the other day because I suggested a Province being the last one to do something was not necessarily a thing to call out to be proud of. It got to the point of you chose to be here, I was born here when I decided to bow out of the discussion.

Sometimes you feel a long way from home even after 8 years.

I hear ya. Emigrating gives you a very different view. Have you noticed how many of these opinionated "loyal" Canadians spend much of the year in the US?

I'm afraid it's the same no matter where you live.
I knew a colleague who married a girl from a small north yorshire hill village and moved there. Years later he was still the outsider, I suspect forty years on he still is.
The issue with migration to another country can be argued on many fronts.
On the one hand, the local might use the argument 'well if you don't like it here then s*d off'
This can be countered with 'you're here by an accident of birth whereas I've chosen to live here'
And of course the First Nation citizen may say 'a plague on both your houses, go back home the lot of you'
No argument is to be applauded, we all have to get along together.

I have. They clog the roads in October/November and March/April.

Ah...the gender confirming surgery. To go with the last province for a catastrophic drug program and finally falling into line with the rest of Canada on abortion provision.

On the bright side, it's all happened fairly recently so perhaps the province is moving forward.

Perhaps NBers will see change and come to realise it's not Armageddon and be less resistant in future and then we can feel comfortable pointing out that "if it ain't broke don't fix it" doesn't apply when something actually is broken.

It's the opposite for me. My Canadian neigbours are always slagging things off. On occasion, I've actually had to defend the place if you can believe that!

I can.

From reading letters in the paper, comments on CBC blogs and a local forum, it's clear that Canadians knock the country - things ain't what they used to be - in the same way Brits do with the UK.

I often pointed out on the local forum that these complaints were by no means limited to Canada.

Maybe that helped avoid the "go back home" attitude when I did make some criticism or comment in favour of a proposal when everyone else was against it.

While you are living in someone else’s country that’s a bit of at defeatist attitude. Just slag the place off as much a possible with wildly inaccurate generalizations and when they protest tell them we invented Canada and they should naff off and go and naff a moose.

Well you don't have the right to be critical really. Of course you do on BE which is why this site is a good'un, but in general being critical of where you live now is just a reflection of what you knew to be the convention wherever you lived last.

I only just spotted this Tangram, so thought I would add my to cents worth. I could not agree more with your post. I think you are a Citizen now? It gives you just as much right to have your opinion, but you'll never get it!

I, as a mere woman married to a Canadian for the last 20 years, get this defensive mob down my throat if I even comment on the weather....as you know we've had a crap spring, and I ventured a jolly "I wish the rain would stop soon" and my neighbour told me "it's probably raining worse in England".

If there was a prize for being a defensive backward thinking bunch of cronies NB would get Gold, Siver and Bronze... And don't tell me about our much vaunted research initiatives etc., these words are just so much sticking plaster that is not even beginning to cover the festering wound that these smug people won't address.

<insert Alan's posted image here>

I used to get that. Bloody infuriating. Or the pervasive common knowledge that food in Britain is 'the worst'.

It's not that you don't have a right to be critical, its that you're not exerting it. Next time, don't bow out, hold the other person to account on why he's being so defensive. Very few non-FN Canadians have can claim ancestry beyond a century so that's something to explore too.

It's one thing to dismiss comments with a "that's how it's done here" quite another to add, "and if you don't like it, sod off". My two cents.

Of course everyone has a right to an opinion as it is just that - an opinion.

They all think that England is permanently pissing down and dont believe when I tell them that it rains less and less frequently where I lived (Bmth) than here.

You have summed up NBers to a tea. I have just been back to the UK for a week and always find it hard to come back to NB. I dont want to move back but I really cant wait to move out of this province. The people here are a factor in this. I just cant get on with the majority of them.