A lot of Americans think of Canadians as basically American, but a little different. For most people in the US, Canadians (except for those few with a noticeable French-Canadian accent) speak a variety of English all but indistinguishable from our own. (It is not, actually, indistinguishable, but Americans are famously insensitive to all but the strongest accents.) They like baseball. They play hockey (Americans are often astonished to discover that Canadians INVENTED hockey). They play a variety of football that is instantly recognizable, if slightly different, from ours. They call soccer, well, soccer. They drive cars that look like the ones we drive. Including big SUVs and such. The celebrate Thanksgiving, even if they do schedule it in October.
Every once in a while, however, we get a wake-up call, a reminder that Canada really is a foreign land.
Consider this, from The New York Times: Canadian police have filed criminal charges against Larry O'Brien, the mayor of Ottawa, accusing him of offering a payoff to an opponent if the man would drop a run for office. Now here's the really strange part: "Legal scholars said Mr. O’Brien appeared to be the first mayor in modern Canadian history to face criminal charges related to his office."
HUH?
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