Of course Canada has county music! You even have your own "coal miners daughter" Anne Murray.

Her father was a coal miner in Nova Scotia-- where the mines run out under the ocean-- and a cave in mean drowning.
and any number of "american" country singers are really canadians (Gorden Lightfoot, etc).. but it is country music, not Country/western -- well I only know of country music .. I don't much like c/w, here and there a song, but its not in my top ten list of favorite types. There might well be Canadian C/W music available on station in centeral canada--(never been there) and never looked for it.

Country music, old style (my preference) or more modern country-- is an extention of "folk music"-- and american folk music is as old as the ages-- "Barbara Allen" is still sung.

People tend to groan when they hear the name Anne Murray, mostly because she's the only singer from the East Coast that everyone's heard of, and people keep giving her awards all the time, as if there will never be another famous East Coast singer!

I don't think we have an equivalent of Country and Western the way the Americans do it, but we do have famous singers who sang about Canadian stuff during that same era, and likely in that same style. Stompin' Tom Connors comes to mind. (Of course, he's from the East Coast, so you can't really call him Country'n'Western). Wilf Carter? I think I've just exhausted my C'n'W knowledge base.

The problem is that many Americans don't know which of "their" famous people are actually Canadian. And then we get much of our entertainment from the US, so they don't tell us. So then we don't know either. And we find out years later that so-and-so was actually Canadian.

Oh Bean. I LOVE Stompin Tom. He is such a gem. I remember listening to his show when I was young. Thanks for the memory boost.

Great big C is a fabulous East coast / Maritime band.

The New Zealand population is divided up into two types of people: Those who hate country music (which is what it is generally called here) and those who don't.*

As a former muso, I got quite used to some drunken sot wanting my rock band to play "Old Shep" or some such other dreadful thing, and since our singer was versatile, we generally did them. The requestor and his/her mates would sing along and generally one or two of them would cry if the song was sad - you know, the "my dogie left me for another cowpoke" kind of stuff. They were pretty sad themselves, usually.

I'd say that about 10% of NZers love country music and another, say, 20% don't dislike country music - and then there's the rest of us!

* All figures are based on a scientifically designed and carried out survey with a sample population of n = 1