I’m from Canada. Don’t believe everything you hear about the trucker protests
Ari Blaff - Saturday
Americans know very little about Canada. Fewer than half of Americans surveyed in 2011 knew where Canada’s capital is (hint: it’s Ottawa), and two-thirds acknowledged they learned next to nothing about Canada’s history in school. (Truth be told, it’s not as interesting as America’s). In another study, nearly 40% of American eighth-graders thought Canada’s government was a dictatorship.
A Canadian flag is strapped to the hood of a semi-trailer truck that is part of a protest against COVID-19 measures that has grown into a broader anti-government protest, in Ottawa, on Feb. 14, 2022. © Justin Tang, The Canadian Press, via Associated Press A Canadian flag is strapped to the hood of a semi-trailer truck that is part of a protest against COVID-19 measures that has grown into a broader anti-government protest, in Ottawa, on Feb. 14, 2022.
As a colleague of mine recently said, there’s an untapped market for a book about Canada written specifically for our neighbors to the south. But then again, making Americans care about Canada has been a losing battle for centuries.
So it came as a pleasant surprise that when Canada recently made international headlines because of protests over vaccine mandates, Americans started to pay attention. The problem is, many people sought to compare and contrast a country they know little about with the only country that most Americans know something about: America.
Poster Comment:
All I know about Canada is that it is the Great White North and they talk funny.