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#60995 03/13/02 08:46 PM
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#60996 03/13/02 10:40 PM
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Bien thanks there Max. It's always a fun read when the writer really likes the place.


#60997 03/13/02 11:39 PM
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I have three grand-daughters born in Canada, and one great-grandson. From visits there I have learned a lot, but obviously have a lot more to learn.
Few Americans know how many famous USns were born in Canada. Too bad there isn't a list of them published somewhere.Here is a link to "Things Americans should know about Canada" I didn't read it all, but did notice a few presumably good natured complaints about Americans.

http://www.durtydan.com/ddcc/50things.html


#60998 03/14/02 04:24 PM
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Thanks for the link, Dr. Bill, that's a page I hadn't seen yet. The guy seems a bit bitter, to say the least. Or maybe he's dealt with too many rude USns - I've been lucky enough to have mostly dealt with nice ones (you guys)!

I noticed a couple of mistakes, though.

#38 - the fact about murders in NYC in one week being more than all of Canada in a year - doubtful. He quotes in the next fact that Canada only has about 600 homicides per year. Do you think NYC actually has more than 600 murders a week?

#26 - the provinces. Of all things he got the floral emblem of Manitoba wrong (and I only caught this because I'm from Manitoba). It's the prairie crocus.

#49 - apparently no one owns the North Pole. I just read this somewhere (source unknown) last week. However, he's right about writing to Santa Claus. Santa writes back, too. I've never tried it, but there's an army of Canada Post elves dealing with Santa's correspondence.


#60999 03/14/02 04:45 PM
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                                        [CROSS-THREAD ALERT!!]

it's hard to tell canadians apart from really boring white people, unless they're dressed up to go outside.

http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/


#61000 03/14/02 04:48 PM
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No way NY has 600 murders a week! NY has as raw number, a lot of murders.. but it also has 8 million residents (NYC proper) and a daytime population of over 15 million! (and even if it was 600, that would be, be about 0.004%! (based on day time population) actually rather low!(even based on 8 million is 0.0075%!) you have a 99.99+% chance of not getting murdered.

Cincinatti, (just to pick on an other city,) has lower raw numbers, but it has a much higher percent of the population being murdered. and nobody thinks cincinatti is all that dangerous!

And all east coast cities, generally, have lower percentages than western cities. there are many more gun contols laws in the east than there are in the west.

EDIT
based on tsuwm link, i should have said, southern states are more dangerous!

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#61002 03/14/02 05:03 PM
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white people

Uh, have you been to Canada recently? With the exception of Newfoundland, there are lots and lots of un-white people. If you want to use the "traditional" colour labels - brown, white, red, yellow, black - we got 'em all, and in large quantities!

In my mind, a "typical" Canadian is not one of Irish or Scottish or English descent, but someone whose parents are from two (or more) totally different cultural backgrounds - like me - half-Ukrainian, half-Italian - a completely typical Canadian kid. I'm married to a 7/8 Norwegian, 1/8 Danish guy, and our children will be a bit of all of the above, and quite Canadian at that. My brother is going out with a girl whose parents are from the Phillippines but she it totally Canadian herself. Typical Canadian relationship. My brother-in-law is married to a girl of Chinese background - again, she was born in Canada - and so if they ever have any kids, they'll be a Norwegian-Danish-Chinese mix. Canadians through and through!

We should debunk that myth and take a poll. Any other Canadians on Board wanna share their background? (Yes, I know we will suffer from small sample size, but we can try!)


#61003 03/14/02 05:06 PM
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No way NY has 600 murders a week!

Helen, I didn't mean that I believed it! I just thought this guy should check his facts.

I'm still also pondering the elections-every-four-years thing that he stated. I think it's mandatory at five years, traditionally held every four years, but there have been lots of cases when they've been held sooner, because the party in power figures "Now's the time to win again for another term" or else something goes wrong. I tried finding the info but got lost in pages about Parliament and MPs and the House of Commons.

Besides, guys, I'm SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING!!!!!!!!!!!!


#61004 03/14/02 07:11 PM
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We should debunk that myth and take a poll. Any other Canadians on Board wanna share their background?

Not as interesting as most: both my parents are German, going waaaay back.


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