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It seems you're insinuating that Alberta is somehow more (U.S.) 'American' than the rest of Canada. I have lived in Alberta for over ten years, and though cult
by earth_walker 7y ago
It seems you're insinuating that Alberta is somehow more (U.S.) 'American' than the rest of Canada.
I have lived in Alberta for over ten years, and though culturally distinct from the rest of Canada (as is every other province I've spent time in) Alberta's brand of rugged individualist / conservatism is still very Canadian.
And though we may look very different to the urbanites of GVRD (Vancouver and surrounding) and the GTA (Toronto and surrounding), you'll find many more similarities between us and those living in rural Canada with resource-based economies, like the people living in B.C.'s forestry-dependent areas, the northern prairies or NorthWest Ontario. The difference for us is that we have very vocal, oil-industry-controlled politicians and a population that is immediately suspicious of any time an easterner tries to tell us what to do.
Sometimes the easiest way to see our distinctiveness is by contrast - immediately evident when crossing over to even the closest border states.
I love Montana and its people, but boy do you know you're not in Canada anymore - roadways lined with advertisements; cops everywhere you look; huge rich/poor divides; razor wire, visible drug problems and ghettos in even the smallest cities; and a love of all things military.
All that to say, there's far more to being Albertan than oil, guns and god, and those three things don't make us a 'murican.
- tathougies 7y agoNo I'm insinuating that the values the commenter encountered in vancouver vis a vis guns, police, armed conflict, etc are not representative of canada as a whole and change from province to province and even between say vancouver and the surrounding rural areas. Vancouver is especially different from the rest of canada than most canadian cities. Its like using Portland to characterize the entirety of America.
- sandworm101 7y agoAgreed. I lived in the us for five years, it was a shock. The big thing for me was the guns, the constant militarism. Albertans might own lots of guns but they don't take them to pizza hut. And cops everywhere. I was in seattle recently and counted 8 different TYPES of police car on a quick 4-block walk between buildings. Not car paint jobs, different types of police. ICE, fed, state, local, atf... America seems to have more police than not. Canada, all of canada, doesn't feel like that.