I always find it funny how Canadians just want to be mentioned.
(I'm Canadian by the way)
Seriously, look at how many Canadian threads there are in this forum alone, usually started by Canadians wanting Americans to affirm their need to matter.
If you watch American TV with any Canadians, we don't get offended when someone makes an outrageously over the top joke about how backwards or lazy we are, we are usually just glad that Canada came up in conversation.
And as for Quebec I'm surprised it came up in this thread, it's like the anti-Canada, not as in it's against Canada, but as in it's Canada with a Spock beard. English Canada is decidedly non-nationalist, and in Quebec the leading parties in every federal election and nearly every provincial (that's right, provincial, not national) election are Nationalist parties. English Canada as a general rule is known for and proud of it's tolerance towards those of diverse cultures and heritages, and it's welcoming attitude (relatively speaking) towards immigrants; in Quebec it's conventional wisdom that non-Francophones don't belong and that non-Francophones are "newcomers," which is of course cleverly ignorant of the historically Anglophonic regions like Hull or Lennoxville. Quebec is literally the most oppressed place in North America, the language laws in that province serve more to punish those that don't conform to the majority's imagined past and idealized culture than to protect anyone's culture. Ask an Anglo-Montrealer if he feels like his government is protecting his culture. That being said, Quebec is also a refreshingly liberal place, after getting past the linguistic bigotry, with reasonable drinking laws, and a very open (if you can speak French) culture that is very accepting towards things like unwed couples and homosexuality, the latter being something that English Canada needs to get to work on.
Anyway, back on topic, I think that we as Canadians need to stop this "did you know" sort of attention seeking about our country. The US is a big place, and an important country on the world stage, culturally, economically and militarily. They shouldn't have to know who our Prime Minister is, it'd be nice, but it's not important to them, and we as a country need to grow up and accept that. After all, do you know who the President of Spain is? How about which actors from Indonesia are famous? How about who's the world's greatest Shot-putter or Caber-Tosser? Do you see where I'm going with this? We have unreasonable expectations that outsiders should know everything about us. A much better strategy would be to simply inform ourselves the curious and stop pestering non-Canadians about how well they know the Great White North.
