Are Canadians, Americans?

[matrixebiz]

Hello, not sure if this is the correct place to post this but it's been on my mind.

The U.S. and Canada are both in North America so are we not all American? Why when a reference to an American is made, it seems to designate a U.S. citizen?

It may be a stupid question but I never understood why Canada citizens being in North America we have a proper designate as a Canadian, so U.S. citizens didn't know what to call them selves? so they just go by Americans but to me, doesn't seem to be a proper designation because we are both in America.

Can someone clarify this for me the labeled designations for these two countries citizens, I probably just need a history lesson here   Thank you

[bush_cheney2004]

Mostly because of history and usage, as discussed here:

 

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/28425/why-are-the-people-of-the-united-states-called-americans-when-the-whole-contin

[matrixebiz]

Thanks for the link, that's what I was thinking, U.S. citizens don't really have a unique geographic identifier like "United Staters"  so their designation is derived from mainly tradition, usage and inertia. I was just curious.

Edited April 26, 2017 by matrixebiz

[Omni]

1 hour ago, matrixebiz said:

Hello, not sure if this is the correct place to post this but it's been on my mind.

The U.S. and Canada are both in North America so are we not all American? Why when a reference to an American is made, it seems to designate a U.S. citizen?

It may be a stupid question but I never understood why Canada citizens being in North America we have a proper designate as a Canadian, so U.S. citizens didn't know what to call them selves? so they just go by Americans but to me, doesn't seem to be a proper designation because we are both in America.

Can someone clarify this for me the labeled designations for these two countries citizens, I probably just need a history lesson here   Thank you

And just to extend the confusion, North and South America is actually a phony designation because the only thing that separates them is the Panama Canal which is artificial.

[Topaz]

Could it be that Canadians  are happy being Canadian and not American?

[bush_cheney2004]

Just now, Topaz said:

Could it be that Canadians  are happy being Canadian and not American?

 

Probably not...far more Canadians are dual citizens with U.S. citizenship as a percentage of the population.

[Omni]

1 hour ago, Topaz said:

Could it be that Canadians  are happy being Canadian and not American?

Most Canadians would agree with that. Depending on where you live in Canada you might head south in the winter to soak up some sun.

[Moonlight Graham]

Those smelly Americans...Venezuelans that is!

[AngusThermopyle]

4 hours ago, Omni said:

And just to extend the confusion, North and South America is actually a phony designation because the only thing that separates them is the Panama Canal which is artificial.

Yes and no. The vast majority of South America lies below the Equator. As you know the Equator designates the equidistant point between the North and South poles. So, given that 90+% of South America lies below the Equator it can be seen that for practical purposes the Equator separates them and the designation of South America makes perfect and logical sense. Yes in the sense that the Panama Canal is the man made designation for the separation of them.

[Omni]

57 minutes ago, AngusThermopyle said:

Yes and no. The vast majority of South America lies below the Equator. As you know the Equator designates the equidistant point between the North and South poles. So, given that 90+% of South America lies below the Equator it can be seen that for practical purposes the Equator separates them and the designation of South America makes perfect and logical sense. Yes in the sense that the Panama Canal is the man made designation for the separation of them.

Yep, I know where the equator is. I recall the first time I crossed it was heading south just off the west coast of Africa and I was watching the GPS keeping track of our latitude counting down N 5 4 3 2 1 0, then the N became an S and started counting up. Capetown here we come. 

[ZenOps]

To get to South America they had to go through North America.

So technically, Mexicans and those futher south are probably the oldest true Americans.  White people only showed up later.

[JamesHackerMP]

The term "American" was applied to us by the British during/before the Revolutionary War.  It was actually kind of an intended insult.  Residents of the 13 British colonies in North America called themselves "Britons" and raised a glass "to His Majesty the King" at dinner (even some revolutionary war generals on the US side in 1775-6 believe it or not).  Even before 1775 they felt the "colonials" weren't good enough to be called Britons so they applied the term to us.  As was pointed out above, "United Stateser" just sounds silly.

[Off topic, slightly: hould the "War of Secession" have been successful (for the C.S.A.), one wonders what demonym would have been invented to describe the citizens of the 11 Confederate States of America.  They considered themselves "Americans", too; in fact, more American than Americans themselves.]

[Slightly more off topic, one of Clive Cussler's "Dirk Pitt" adventures, Night Probe, involved the annexation of Canada by the United States.  Flashback to 1914.  The UK needs a bigger war chest for the coming war with Germany et. al., so Wilson and H.H. Asquith hammer out The North America Treaty, selling Canada to the United States for one billion dollars.  Alas, the only two copies of the treaty were destroyed before Wilson's signature could be affixed to the one copy, and King George's to the other.  Wilson writes Asquith to say "f**** it" since the negotiations were a politically complicated affair, and all mentions of the negotiations are erased from history.

Flash forward to 1990.  A historian doing research finds the only remaining references in Wilson's papers, and informs some friends at the White House.  There is a fuel crisis in both countries, as the middle eastern oil fields are scraping bottom.  There is also a KGB-backed (the book was written in 1984 if I remember correctly) secession movement in Quebec.  The President eventually makes an address encouraging Union between the remaining 9 provinces and the United States, saying we're not just Americans or Canadians or Mexicans, or [etc.] we're all North Americans.  HEA.  (For some people, at any rate.  Certainly not all those MPs and senators in Ottawa.

Let it cheer your hearts to know, however, they called the resulting union, the United States of CANADA.]

On 4/26/2017 at 10:37 PM, AngusThermopyle said:

Yes and no. The vast majority of South America lies below the Equator. As you know the Equator designates the equidistant point between the North and South poles. So, given that 90+% of South America lies below the Equator it can be seen that for practical purposes the Equator separates them and the designation of South America makes perfect and logical sense. Yes in the sense that the Panama Canal is the man made designation for the separation of them.

Back on topic: sometimes such titles are politically-motivated.  Therefore, it is more applicable to the situation to refer to South America as beginning with the Panama Canal, and anything north of that and south of the Rio Grande as Central America (offshore real estate included).  And more collectively, everything from the Rio Grande to the Tierra del Fuego as Latin America.  Politics will affect terminology; that's why archaeologists refer to the lands between Egypt and Afghanistan as the Near East and world leaders and the media refer to them as the Middle East.

Edited July 31, 2017 by JamesHackerMP

[taxme]

On 4/26/2017 at 1:16 PM, matrixebiz said:

Hello, not sure if this is the correct place to post this but it's been on my mind.

The U.S. and Canada are both in North America so are we not all American? Why when a reference to an American is made, it seems to designate a U.S. citizen?

It may be a stupid question but I never understood why Canada citizens being in North America we have a proper designate as a Canadian, so U.S. citizens didn't know what to call them selves? so they just go by Americans but to me, doesn't seem to be a proper designation because we are both in America.

Can someone clarify this for me the labeled designations for these two countries citizens, I probably just need a history lesson here   Thank you

There is not a hell of a big difference between American and Canadians. We pretty much play the same game when it comes to doing just about any and everything in our daily lives. After all, we did come from the same common mother as they say. At the Peace Arch border crossing in White Rock, BC/Blaine, Wash. it says in big white letters on the big white arch that we are all "Children of a Common Mother". And that is what we are? One big family living together in peace and harmony. 

[Dougie93]

The origin is the War of 1812, prior to the war,  the British North Americans called themselves "Americans" in just a people who live in America sense, bear in mind,  many of these people were Americans in the 13 colonies who were forced to flee, the United Empire Loyalists who settled here in Upper Canada (Ontario).

"Canadiens" was the French in Lower Canada (Quebec), but the War of 1812 incited the United Empire Loyalists to adopt the Anglicized "Canadians", because as the war progressed, it got pretty nasty near the end, the Yanks, in frustration from their inability to achieve the "just a matter of marching" quick victory they had expected, resorted to scorched earth and started burning all the farms down along the north shore of Lake Erie, and which point it became a viscous war against the people blood feud, and the United Empire Loyalists have been "Canadians" ever since, as "American" had simply come to mean "the enemy" here.

Edited January 6, 2019 by Dougie93

[Dougie93]

Assuming most people know, but just in case you don't, "Canada" is the French version of the Wendat word "Kanata" meaning "village", Quebec is the French version of the Algonquin word "Kebec" meaning "where the river narrows", "Ontario" is the Huron word meaning "Great Lake" and "Ottawa" is from the Algonquin word "Adawe" meaning "to trade".

 

Just FYI

[Iznogoud]

Here is an interesting challenge.  Pretend a foreigner has just asked what the difference is between a Canadian and an American and list 10 things that you would use to describe the difference.  Try it without accessing the rest of the internet. 

[GostHacked]

Only Americans ever ask that question.

[Dougie93]

There is really only one significant difference, Americans know the central narrative of their history and are steeped in their national religion, Canadians don't know the central narrative of their history and have no national religion but ice hockey.

[bush_cheney2004]

10 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

There is really only one significant difference, Americans know the central narrative of their history and are steeped in their national religion, Canadians don't know the central narrative of their history and have no national religion but ice hockey.

 

Stranger still, many Canadians have a better understanding of the American narrative than their own.

[Dougie93]

7 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

Stranger still, many Canadians have a better understanding of the American narrative than their own.

Well it's a better narrative, Canadian Confederation is not what Eskimo Communism asserts it to be, it's not a nation and it doesn't have a narrative.  

The Shot Heard Round The World simply fills the void of the Eskimo Communism fake narratives.

[bush_cheney2004]

1 minute ago, Dougie93 said:

Well it's a better narrative, Canadian Confederation is not what Eskimo Communism asserts it to be, it's not a nation and it doesn't have a narrative.  

The Shot Heard Round The World simply fills the void of the Eskimo Communism fake narratives.

 

But it goes further than that....one can see it here in this forum.

Some Canadians fight their ideological battles using American ammunition....American issues...American politics....today.

 

[Dougie93]

1 minute ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

But it goes further than that....one can see it here in this forum.

Some Canadians fight their ideological battles using American ammunition....American issues...American politics....today.

 

Yes, play acting.  Canada is a Potemkin Village, an Eskimo Communist gulag holding the people down lest they reach for the light of civilization and forsake their CBC overlords.

Instinctively tho, all peoples yearn to breath free, so the Canadians mimic it where they see it, although freedom still frightens them, Eskimo Communism having indoctrinated them to fear it as all communism does.

[Dougie93]

It was the same in the Soviet Union, it's the Beatles & Bluejeans effect.

Stop looking at Canada as if it is a Western Country, the House of Windsor is the country, Canada is a soviet.

Edited January 21, 2019 by Dougie93

[bush_cheney2004]

Just now, Dougie93 said:

It was the same in the Soviet Union, it's the Beatles & Bluejeans effect.

 

Sure seems that way....strident positions and views can be experienced vicariously through American spectacle, otherwise smothered and squelched in Canada.

[Dougie93]

2 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

Sure seems that way....strident positions and views can be experienced vicariously through American spectacle, otherwise smothered and squelched in Canada.

Well, the Canadian soviet cannot shoot its Empress, she is protected by UKUSSA, so they're stuck with her.  So what Canadian soviets do is build an Eskimo Communist Potemkin Village in order to blind Canadians to the fact that they don't have to live in it if they don't want to.  Otherwise known as an Iron Curtain.