There's a 23-year-old young woman who's in the midst of a 8-game run on Jeopardy from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and other than making me jealous of her trivia abilities that surpass mine (even though I'm about to turn 35 in a month) and reminding me that Canadians seem to know more about the U.S. than Americans know about Canada, has made me think that I don't know all that much about Canada. Pretty typical of Americans, actually: we think we're the best country (Make America Great Again!) so we tend not to learn about other countries, and the predominant language is English, which other countries learn as their second language, but America doesn't really reciprocate in learning other languages. I notice this when watching trivia shows like "The Chase" from other countries like Australia and U.K. versions: they'll know a bunch of facts about America like the names of all 50 states of America, but try asking Americans what all 10 provinces of Canada are, or even better one of the 3 territories....the lesson being that certainly America is home to a large portion of the world's culture, but it's important to still keep track of other countries as well in case something like Russia invading Ukraine happens, or for some reason one day Canada stops being the friendly neighbors and welcome Americans anymore within their borders....(kind of happened during Covid when U.S. was one of the worst-performing Covid countries in the world).
I think most Americans think of Canada as "America's Hat," our neighbors to the North who occupy a huge area of land between us and the North Pole, and in general are like friendly neighbors who look like us (Caucasians) and don't cause much of a ruckus, and say "eh" a lot (I indeed witnessed this when I've visited a few times, this general tendency to be friendly and give an "eh" at the end). Much of what I know about Canada is through Jeopardy, and I find that most of it is about Canadian geography, as alas Canada has not been that consequential in world history. Makes sense when you realize the population of all of Canada is less than that of California. The country has so much land area up north with some of the world's largest islands like Ellesmere Island and Baffin Island, but it's just too darn cold, even with global warming, you're essentially living with polar bears.
Lacrosse is the national sport of Canada! NOT hockey! Unbelievable! Just like I had a misconception that the moose was the national animal of Canada for the longest time......nope, it's the beaver.
MJ and I are visiting Canada in a couple weeks! To the great city of Montreal, where I know the 1976 Summer Olympics was held, partly at the Jacques Cartier stadium, and the Canadians play their ice hockey games there, but otherwise I'm very open to what's in store. We might also skip on over to Quebec City, which was featured prominently on a popular Korean TV series called "Goblin," giving evidence that Canada is definitely on the map of destinations to go for other nations, maybe just not THE destination to go when given any choice of locations. That whole line of Montreal-Quebec City-Ottawa, which lie on the same stretch of Ottawa River/empties into St. Lawrence River, is just a little too far from the big populations on the U.S. East Coast, otherwise it could be a splendid weekend destination for large swaths of car trip travelers in the summer. Montreal is 7 hours from New York City, even further for Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C., making it not that appealing......I think the threshold for most people is like the 4 hour trip from L.A. to Vegas, or 5-hour trip from L.A. to San Francisco....any more than that and you're risking spending the whole day in the car and having that sinking feeling of wasting your whole day sink in. Fun fact: Quebec City is the only walled city in North America. Never really thought about cities that are "walled," but it does give a nostalgic medieval vibe to a city, like "in case of invasion" or at least makes it a candidate to film a battle scene from the Lord of the Rings/ Game of Thrones/ other old England-based fantasy show.
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