What do you know about Canada?

It's Canada Day again. Last year I was actually in Canada for this national day. Today, I am hard at work at my desk in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Well, except for this brief break to blog of course.)

In the interest of brevity, I will simply list a couple of neat facts about Canada.

Did you know that the name "Canada" comes from an aboriginal word meaning "village"? Wikipedia did.

Incidentally, I learned in that article that the American 'Articles of Confederation (1777) included a clause pre-authorizing the admission of "Canada" as a new state if it wished to join the U.S.'

Of course, we did not join the US. In fact, in the War of 1812*, we (as part of Britain) fought the States. One of the consequences was that the White House was burned down.

However, any ill-feelings from that incident have not survived. Canadians generally have a strong sense of national identity, often making a particular point of our differences from the Americans. But we also have a great big long (8891 km) border that has not needed military guarding (by either side) for yonks**.

On the other hand, we are perhaps more affected than any other country by the cultural exports of the US - particularly movies and television. Some of the effect is negative (Canadians sometimes knowing American geography and history better than Canadian geography and history). Some is positive (a lot of American television and movie production has been done at Canadian sites, largely because it's often cheaper).

Anyway, I hope this has been informative for my readers (Canadian and non-Canadian). If you have any other interesting Canadian facts, please share it in the comments.

* Note, this is the Anglo-American War of 1812, not Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Apparently, the Russian composer Tchaikovsky had the latter in mind, not the former, when he composed the 1812 Overture. It's a good bit of music nevertheless.

** many years (highly technical Canadian term)

Image credit:

Canada flag from Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.