Is there a Canadian-American community?

May 27, 2004 5:24 PM

Is there a Canadian-American community? [More inside.]

I'm finding it difficult to track down information on Canadian immigrants to the U.S., apart from message boards, Canadians who fought in the American Civil War and other partial data. It seems easier to find information on immigrant communities of far, far smaller countries than it is for those originating from Canada.

Specifically, I'd like to know if there any Canadian-American traditions (language, gastronomy, sports) and what the long-standing Canadian-American culture is, if there is one. If there isn't one, why is this? Or do they all sort of fit in/shy away from celebrating their common heritage with other Canadians, like Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and so many comedians and actors?

I realize this may be a very ignorant question but it fascinates me. Thank you for any help in this matter.

posted by MiguelCardoso to Society & Culture (43 answers total)

I think a bunch of them became Cajuns...
posted by contessa at 5:30 PM on May 27, 2004

I have a suspicion that Canada is just too large, and much like America, too full of various different cultures to allow for anything along the lines of Canadian-American restaurants, grocery stores and social clubs.

I'm sure there are Canadian-American expat groups out there, though.
posted by cmonkey at 5:31 PM on May 27, 2004

Response by poster: For instance, why doesn't the extensive New York Times restaurant list, which includes virtually every cuisine on earth, not mention Canadian restaurants?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:37 PM on May 27, 2004

It's because no New Yorker in their right mind would wanna eat this.
posted by contessa at 5:43 PM on May 27, 2004

hey! i love poutine!

What would a Canadian restaurant serve? maple syrup stuff? I can't think of a uniquely Canadian food except for sugar shack things, and poutine.
posted by amberglow at 5:47 PM on May 27, 2004

Response by poster: Amberglow: I've only been to Montreal and (twice, for long periods) to Halifax and there were a lot of great dishes I haven't found elsewhere - the many chowders alone were a cuisine all of their own.

My parents had about twenty Canadian cookbooks but I haven't got them here. I did find, on an interesting web site a tantalizing list by abw namely:

"Well, defining what is Canadian food depends on what part of Canada you're from! The traditional cuisine varies from British Columbia (Salmon & Wild Rice, and Nanaimo Bars) to Newfoundland (Cod Cakes and fish cheeks), to Native dishes (maple sugar pie) to French Canadian Foods (Tortiere, Yellow Pea Soup).

Speaking of Poutine, did you know it is almost uniquely Canadian to have gravy on your fries? In England, that's how they can tell Americans apart from Canadians - Canadians ask for gravy on their fries.

From the East Coast - Irish Stew, Fish Chowders, Bangbellies (a pork/rice bun), Toutons (Pork Bread), and Duffs (like a dumpling), Molasses Tarts and Partridge Berry Coffee Cake, chocolate bread pudding, oat bread, Cape Breton scones, Creamed Potato Balls, Baked Stuffed Lobster,

Native - Posole Stew (uses hominy), corn casserole, Frypan Fork Bread, Cornmeal pudding, Maple Fudge, Wojape (a berry pudding)

Quebec - Cr?me Caramel, French Onion Soup, Split Yellow Pea Soup, Garlic Pork Pot Roast, Cipate (Chicken, meat and vegetable casserole with biscuit topping), 3 crust blueberry pie P?t?s de vois gras.

Ontario - Pine Nut Stuffed Quail, pickled yellow beans, apple butter, headcheese, smoked ham, creamed potatoes, vanilla pie, ice wine, BBQ's, hot sauces, doughnuts

Prairies (I'm not too familiar with foods from this region of Canada) - Crusted Pork Tenderloin, Wild Mushroom Barley Ragout & Summer Vegetables, Grilled Asparagus, Saskatoon Pie


B.C. - Goats Cheese Terrine, Raisin scones with clotted cream, sablefish, Nanaimo Bars, Poached Salmon, Maple Glazed Chicken Breasts, Oysters, Flatbreads, Vegan cuisine and anything disgustingly healthy (i.e. tofu, miso soup, etc.)"

Plus there's a lot of other fantastic, unmentioned stuff from the Maritimes.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:58 PM on May 27, 2004

The only restaurants iin Canada that I've ever seen advertise "Canadian food" are the chinese restaurants. "Chinese & Canadian Food!"

But I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you asking about what a Canadian who moves to America would do to "get some down home" cookin' (or whatever) while in the states? Are you using Canadian-American like someone would use African-American? If so, I've never heard that term before.
posted by dobbs at 6:04 PM on May 27, 2004

When you're a stranger in a strange land it's understandable that you would want to recreate a sort of comfort zone - to be able to eat your own foods and speak your own language, celebrate your own holidays and buy your own native costumes. But Canadian and American customs and culture just aren't different enough to necessitate this kind of distinctive community.

If I were living in the States, I might be visiting the Globe and Mail Web site and ordering Canadian books and music online, but otherwise I probably wouldn't need to cocoon myself in Canadian culture because my milieu would already feel familiar enough.

On Preview: Migs, I've just realized that since I live in southern Ontario, which is probably the most generically North American province, I would experience less culture shock than someone from the Maritimes or Quebec. And out of those foods you mention from Ontario, I've tasted only smoked ham and apple butter, and, of course, doughnuts.
posted by orange swan at 6:07 PM on May 27, 2004

I'd be terribly surprised if there are very many foods that can be called "Canadian." Maple syrup is just as popular in Vermont as Quebec, salmon is as much in Washington and Oregon as BC, French Onion soup surely hails from France, etcetera.

About the only ones I'd make allowances for are any Jello-based prairie entrees (shudder), saskatoon pie, and poutine, which is disgusting. For that matter, gravy on fries is disgusting, too.

I'd also like to point out that Canadians are Americans. America is much, much more than the contiguous United States of America.

One difference between Canadians and Americans is that Canadians are a lot more mellow and a lot less conservative. The US got in an uproar over a glimpse of JJ's naked breast; meanwhile, Canada has Trailer Park Boys... which is funded by government dollars.

Oh, and we have a long-established tradition of making a lot of fun of our politicians, cutting them right down to size; while the USA tends to put its politicians on a pedestal.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:08 PM on May 27, 2004

Speaking of Poutine, did you know it is almost uniquely Canadian to have gravy on your fries? In England, that's how they can tell Americans apart from Canadians - Canadians ask for gravy on their fries.

Actually, a lot of people in the USian South put gravy on their fries too, especially if they're eating chicken fried steak, um, with gravy. I can't say for sure it's the same kind of gravy, but I bet it's at least similiar in nature.
posted by Ufez Jones at 6:14 PM on May 27, 2004

We serve Quebec foods in French restaurants.
We server the rest in American restaurants.
posted by smackfu at 6:20 PM on May 27, 2004

I'm probably as Canadian-American as they come (American-born parents, born & raised in Winnipeg, now going to school in Chicago), and I can't say that there's really a Canadian-American community that I'm aware of. The reasons have mostly been covered here: cultural proximity (we really only went our separate ways a couple hundred years ago), physical proximity (which enhances the last effect, but also, why build it down here when you can go home so easily?), and lack of critical mass.

There's one exception to this, though: if you want to see a huge number of Canadian expatriates displaying their national pride in an American city, find out when the Tragically Hip are touring. I've seen them twice in Philly and once here in Chicago, and the amount of red and white at their shows is truly remarkable.
I've also seen similar phenomena at shows by Sloan and Great Big Sea.
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:30 PM on May 27, 2004

Here in Maine there is a very strong French Canadian community.
posted by JanetLand at 7:41 PM on May 27, 2004

New Brunswick, especially coastal regions just over the Maine border, is heavily populated with descendants of loyalists who fled the colonies during the American Revolution.
posted by PrinceValium at 12:10 AM on May 28, 2004

Canadians make themselves easy to spot when they go travelling in Europe, but in America they blend like you wouldn't believe. I've had two very very close friends who were Canadian immigrants in my life, and they're indistinguishable from CA natives, and pretty much without Canadian friends of their own.

/anecdotal
posted by scarabic at 12:18 AM on May 28, 2004

Response by poster: Gosh, this is way more interesting than I'd ever imagined. As a Canada-exposed foreigner (my parents lived there in the 80s) I'd always thought there were enormous differences. I had no idea that, in the U.S. environment they blended in and sort of culturally disappeared. For one thing, Canadians are so identifiable, sharply defined and vocal on MetaFilter.

I've had two very very close friends who were Canadian immigrants in my life, and they're indistinguishable from CA natives, and pretty much without Canadian friends of their own.

Wow, "without Canadian friends of their own".
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:39 AM on May 28, 2004

For one thing, Canadians are so identifiable, sharply defined and vocal on MetaFilter.

Much like the Americans, I think.
posted by kaibutsu at 1:43 AM on May 28, 2004

Response by poster: No, kaibutsu - Canadians here make more of an effort to agree amongst themselves and to stress polity over enmity. Their sense of humour is far less bitter (they come across as having a permanent tongue-in-cheek medical condition, like the very best Brits) and - dare I say it? - their overall attitude towards the U.S. is definitely French-related.

This thread - if I were paranoid - seems like a clever conspiracy to make me think that, deep down, Canadians, when they live in the U.S. are just another variation of Minnesotans - except they keep quiet about their origins.

Americans from the U.S. (to be annoyingly pc) who live in Canada are, from my direct experience, far more active and vocal and do seek out their own and their stuff.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:00 AM on May 28, 2004

A lot of Canadians living in the United States simply continue to call themselves 'Canadian', no matter how long they live there. (Wayne Gretzky during the 2002 Olympics had a good speech about his Canadianness). But if they have children, it seems they are quite happy to have the children be 'American' as it were.

The blending in can be so well-done that it seems Americans are often taken aback to find out someone was born in Canada, etc. I have a friend going to University here in New Brunswick who grew up in New Hampshire. His mother is Canadian, however. Our nickname for him (being the lazy shites we are) is Yankee. In his first Summer back from school, he noted that "down here they call me Canuck.'

I'm also quite put off by the fact that Miguel just gave me a lesson in Canadian cuisine. Then again I've been secretly practicing baking portugese bread because a girl i'm seeing from Macao said she missed it.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:09 AM on May 28, 2004

This thread - if I were paranoid - seems like a clever conspiracy to make me think that, deep down, Canadians, when they live in the U.S. are just another variation of Minnesotans - except they keep quiet about their origins.

Okay, so now you're on to us. We rule by stealth. Underneath our smiling and polite exteriors is a shark-like cunning.

My experiences on MetaFilter have made me realize that the political differences are great, and I think if I were living in the States that would make me feel alienated more than anything. Awhile back there was a Svend Robinson thread and I was taken aback by the Americans who attempted to polarize the thread with "If Svend weren't NDP, you wouldn't be criticizing him". What? We just don't think that way. Hardly any Canadians give a strict allegiance to any one party. I've voted Liberal, NDP and Conservative.
posted by orange swan at 4:04 AM on May 28, 2004

I don't know Miguel--almost all of the foods are variations on dishes found here and/or in Europe--the casseroles, the stews and soups and chowders, the puddings, the desserts, etc. I think Quebec is the only cuisine that's distinctive enough from ours, maybe (altho i bet there are cajun/creole, or French versions of most Quebecois foods). Our crops and climate are very similar to Canada, especially in the breadbaskets, i think. There must be northern Inuit foods that are different, but i don't know how widespread they are.

I'd agree with the others that political and social and cultural differences are greater than the cuisine diffs. I've said it before: Canada is the America we should be : >
posted by amberglow at 5:32 AM on May 28, 2004

Why amberglow, you honourary Canadian you! [Saucy yet non-flirtatious wiggle of the orange tailfeathers in amberglow's direction.]
posted by orange swan at 6:14 AM on May 28, 2004

For this year's Master's dinner, Canadian golfer Mike Weir based his menu on a Canadian theme. Salmon, lobster, caribou (although I think that was replaced with elk due to shortage of caribou). I'm from the same town as the golfer and his chef; we must be geographically closer to Florida tuna than any caribou trails. Kraft Dinner and hot dogs would have been a much more traditional Canadian supper. There was also much talk of Canadian beer.

I agree that the greatest representation of Canadian expatriate culture in the States is probably support of touring Canadian musicians. A film of Jann Arden's concerts in New York was being shown on TV last week, and there seemed to be many Canadians in her audience. It's probably the worst for Tragically Hip concerts or Barenaked Ladies concerts of six years ago - before everyone started hating them.

(Has anyone catalogued Miguel's questions in an attempt to determine the plot points of the novel he's working on? Something about culture clashes of Americans and Europeans (with the odd Canadian for comic relief), all mixing over the Internet?)
posted by TimTypeZed at 6:23 AM on May 28, 2004

Miguel, that's a wonderful province-by-province dissection of Canadian cuisine, and you've made me very hungry. However, I'll likely be satisfying that need with the most universally Canadian food of them all, the one set of edibles which unite Canadians a mari usque ad mare.

In fact, it is perhaps the strongest element of Canadian culture which is actively spreading southward, and will eventually be the best place to spot Canadian expatriates all over the States.

Trust me, I'm not making this up.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 6:30 AM on May 28, 2004

Ah, Canadian beer. Now that's one thing which drives an impassable wedge between us and our water-loving southern neighbours.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 6:32 AM on May 28, 2004

Being raised in southern Canada to an Inuk mother and a German father, I consider myself an Inuk before being a Canadian. I have strong ties to my mother's homeland and am an advocate for promoting Inuit culture. I enjoy eating "country food" like muktuk (whale blubber), dried and raw caribou, raw Arctic char, ptarmigan, boiled seal and bannock (pan-bread). About the only think I don't enjoy is igunak (fermented and aged walrus meat), considered the "blue cheese of the north". If I were to live in the US, I'd still retain and promote my Inuit cultural identity and eat country food except for seal, thanks to the US Marine Mammal Protection Act. ;)
posted by KathyK at 6:38 AM on May 28, 2004

Response by poster: Why amberglow, you honourary Canadian you!

Why orange swan, don't you ever do that again! Although Brits, Canucks and European Anglophiles such as my good self do write honour and humour, when the noun becomes an adjective that lovely "U" is treacherously lost, hence, though "humour" and "honour" are far better as they stand, "humorous" and "honorary" are de riguer without the extra "U". Though, come to think of it, colourful is OK... Hey, don't ask me why! I'm just an innocent bystander... ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:38 AM on May 28, 2004

As in most things North American, it comes down to immigrants. For instance (and I'm surprised that Winnipeg raised Johnny Assay didn't mention this) porgies, cabbage rolls, and borscht are huge here in Manitoba (perhaps I didn't look close enough, but North Winnipeg seems more Eastern European than Greenpoint, Brooklyn). Could this be the melting pot theory: Canadian immigrants like to keep their traditions, whereas American immigrants are encouraged to become American? Correct me if I'm wrong; I've never lived in America.

Another thing: junk food. Ketchup chips, Dill Pickle chips are common here, less so in most parts of America. Smarties, and M&M-esqe candy, are also popular. The flavor of some foods is also very different: I can't stand drinking US Coke, as they use horrible corn syrup based sweetners. And those new Doritos Guacamole chips are much, much spicier in America than Canada. Slurpies are also very popular here, with bubble tea slowing becoming ubiquitous. Tim Hortons is just coffee (terrible coffee), so it doesn't really count. They have capatilized more on one CBC comedy show's persistance to create the equation that Tim Horton's == Canada more than the Canadian qualities of the food.

There are no good Mexican restaurants, though there are perhaps a few in the bigger cities. The best Winnipeg Mexican restaurant is in Fargo.

And we don't put as much gravy on stuff as they seem to in small town Arizona. Dear god, that was crazy.
posted by sleslie at 6:41 AM on May 28, 2004

Response by poster: See? Missed a "U" on de rigueur. :)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:42 AM on May 28, 2004

...Smarties, an M&M-esqe candy...
posted by sleslie at 6:44 AM on May 28, 2004

It seems you are right, Miguel, at least technically. Oxford spells it "honorary", although it also includes the "u" in "honourable" - bizarre. And, there are many, many instances of "honourary" on the Web, some found on such sites as those belonging to the CBC, the Canadian military, and the University of Calgary. Okay, so the last two sites don't have that much credence....

Sorry, Amberglow, you'll have to resign yourself to being an honorary Canadian.
posted by orange swan at 6:58 AM on May 28, 2004

I moved from Canada to the US about 3 years ago. The differences are subtle but they're certainly there and have become even more clear since 9/11. The way that I usually frame it is that everything is just 'more' here. There more good and more bad, more opportunity to succeed and to fail, more jobs but more poverty. More health care for the rich, more despair for the poor etc.

In DC there is a fairly large Canadian community, even a canada club

A great book that gets it right, IMHO, is Douglas Couplands' Souvenir of Canada
posted by batboy at 7:12 AM on May 28, 2004

My feeling is that America trumps Canada in professed values. We focus far more on our rights, freedoms, etc. Our goals are far grander and noble.

In execution, we often fail miserably.

Canada doesn't make speeches, and put themselves out there as the savior of democracy. They just go ahead and actually do it. And in the process, Canada is a much safer, cleaner, freer, society.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 8:04 AM on May 28, 2004

I'm from a Canadian-American family; originally from Anglo Quebec, moved to the states 10 years ago. Basically, the assimilation was near instant. I had trouble adjusting to the lack of pure, real maple syrup, and the lack of the good Canadian candy like Smarties and Aero. If I had been older than twelve at the time, I probably would have had trouble adjusting my socialist politics to the prevailing American political climate... as it is, I retained my political sensibilities but learned to shut up about them.

Aside from poutine and tourtière, I have trouble thinking of genuinely Canadian foods, but that's more a function of my limited Canadian upbringing than a lack of difference, I think.
posted by Jeanne at 11:07 AM on May 28, 2004

Most good Canadian candy could be characterized more broadly as "Commonwealth candy" -- it's practically all made by Cadbury, and is available elswhere if you look in the right places (I presently live in the US, and can get three kinds of Aero only two blocks away.)

...soap candy being the major exception. I've never seen those anywhere other than Alberta. Also, Canadian sour candies are (were?) better than the ones I can find in the US. Sour Patch Kids, for example, suck ass. I haven't been back to Canada in a number of years, but when I was growing up the sour candies ruled over all US variants.
posted by aramaic at 12:50 PM on May 28, 2004

Tim Hortons is just coffee (terrible coffee), so it doesn't really count

sleslie must burn for his heresy!!

Coffee Crisp would be another item.

I think any "Canadian cuisine" would by necessity involve experimenting with game and local ingredients. So duck and geese, buffalo, deer etc... Of course those animals are found elsewhere, but local plants, veggies, berries etc.. would vary.
posted by smcniven at 12:54 PM on May 28, 2004

(no one has mentioned pancakes yet?)

Some of the best pancakes in NYC used to be at the royal canadian pancake house, which is now, sadly closed. (review qualifications: I spent a great deal of time in Canada as a kid, I've had more than my fair share of fine Canadian pancakes and coffee) Although I don't think they had wild rice pancakes, which seem particularly Canadian to me.
posted by milovoo at 1:01 PM on May 28, 2004

Sorry, Amberglow, you'll have to resign yourself to being an honorary Canadian.

That's ok--it's too weird to add "U"s to everything ; >

milovoo has a point--that place was great, altho i always thought of is as more breakfast/brunchy and Dutch than Canadian. Womlettes? (maybe those are uniquely Canadian?)
posted by amberglow at 4:39 PM on May 28, 2004

I went to both Sloan and Tragically Hip shows in DC. Yes, a girl was to blame...
posted by NortonDC at 7:55 PM on May 28, 2004

Followup: CCNY (Canadian Club of New York) is having a July 1st meeting.
posted by sleslie at 9:52 PM on May 28, 2004

Miguel, I recommend that you read this book before you start making too many public comments about what 'Canadians are like'. No offense, of course. Consider it highly recommended. I think you might like it. A lengthy quote from an interview with the author :

The urban mythology has dominated, and says, "Why are you living in the country? The country is for cross-country skiing, at most." But on the other hand, I think that it's worth taking an extra step back from that idea of the American mythology and to stress that the American mythology is not really American at all. It's actually European.


The fundamental problem is that it's much more complex than believing we are the inferior party on this continent and that we only came into existence because we didn't want to be American. This is one of the garbage arguments that people like Donald Creighton are responsible for, which is totally untrue when you look at what Canadians were saying in the 1830s, '40s and '50s. People imagined the country. LaFontaine and Baldwin had very clear ideas about what they were doing. The movement was a positive movement, not a negative movement, and it wasn't a British imperial movement either. We weren't doing this for the Queen. We had an idea of what we could do here, and it was very different from what the British might have imagined.

You need to step back from this idea that we exist as a negative reflection of the United States and always did—the idea that they are the real American experiment and that's why their mythology dominates this continent. The United States isn't American at all. The United States is the perfect child of Europe. It's the European nation state as dreamt of in the eighteenth and nineteenth century: monolithic, the notion of manifest destiny, the drive to conquer anybody who gets in your way, sacred borders, the whole structure of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. All of this is the North American adaptation of ideas that came from Rousseau and Locke.

This is Europe, applied as the Europeans were never able to do it. Why? Because from the eighteenth century on, every time the French army crossed the French border into Germany or wherever, they didn't get very far, or they got there for ten years and then had to come back. Finally, by 1945 they'd killed enough of each other that they gave up on the idea of a monolithic Europe.


Europe gave up on the idea of Europe in 1945 and leapt backward to a mediaeval idea of Europe. This is the idea that there's a continent in which there are various groups living side-by-side with different characteristics. Europe isn't Europe at all anymore.

Canada—if you examine what we've done here, because of the poverty, because of the North, because of 70,000 Loyalists arriving and finding 70,000 Francophones and hundreds of thousands of natives —held no possibility of subsuming one mythology. Because of that, right from the beginning, the positive side of the Canadian experiment was coming to terms with Place, with the role of the unconquered place, with several groups living together in that place.


Actually, we're not being penetrated by American mythology. We're being penetrated by eighteenth and nineteenth century European mythology. The United States is Europe. We say we're more European. Europeans have already given up on that idea of Europe. They've gone to this mediaeval idea, which is the closest thing they have to the Canadian idea. Canadians, because we've had to come to terms with where we are, are really a profoundly American nation. We're much more American than the United States. A temperate nation doesn't need to have a great relationship to place because it conquers the place and reconstructs it to its own model. We can't reconstruct this place in our own image.

I am perpetually telling my Korean friends and students that although they can (and do, always) say things like 'Koreans are X' and 'All Koreans Y' because Korea is such a monoculture, it is impossible to talk about Canada (or America or Australia or...) in a similar way because we're all mongrels there, an idea that blasts them like a lightning bolt, if they understand it.

For what it's worth.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:10 AM on May 29, 2004

Stav, I HAVE to read that book. Thanks for quoting from it.
posted by orange swan at 1:28 PM on May 29, 2004

did you know it is almost uniquely Canadian to have gravy on your fries?

Nah. I've had 'em -- usually called wet fries -- in North Carolina and in Pittsburgh. They're on the menus at all sorts of diners wherever diner-oids are found.

Canadian stuff you mostly can't get easily in Texas:

*Tim Horton's. Do not underestimate the effects of the sudden unavailability of Timmy's on the Canadian psyche.
*English-style baked beans (in tomato sauce).
*Most Cadbury chocolates

Happily, the Kroger near us happens to have a small British section in its ethnic-foods aisle, complete with Irn Bru. If we could only cure the natives of things like killing retarded kids, we'd be set.

You might find Canadian centers (or even centres) in academic environments. There was one at Duke related to some or another institute.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:01 PM on May 29, 2004