The peaceful relations between Canada and the United States have lasted over two centuries. We trade with each other, take vacations in the United States and even visit Seattle’s amazing outlets for great shopping deals. Our countries share the longest international border in the world and we enjoy many benefits from our close proximity with the United States.
While we enjoy having the United States as neighbors, we also can’t help but notice key differences between Canada and the United States. We Canadians love and take pride in our cultural differences between Canada and the United States. We have different accents, we love how polite we are, we miss Tim Hortons when we cross the border, we enjoy eating Poutines, we love watching hockey more than baseball and we take pride in our maple syrup – and we’re proud of it!
When you take your next trip to the States, keep a look for these key differences between Canada and the United States you didn’t know.
- In Canada, we measure beer by volume compared to the US, where beer is measured by mass. In the end, beer in Canada and beer in the US have the same alcoholic content but they are measured differently.
- A key difference between the United States and Canada is that in Canada we call soft drinks pop, while in American they call it soda.
- Canada has a larger land mass than the United States. The land area of Canada is 3, 855, 103 square miles compared to America’s 3, 794, 083, making Canada 1.6% larger that the States.
- Even though Canada is a larger country, the United States has a population of 307,212,123 people compared to 33,487,208 people in Canada in 2010.
- The United States has 13.8 babies per 1000 people, while Canada has 10.3 babies per 1000 people. Therefore, the United States has a 25.3% higher birth rate than Canada.
- A key difference between the United States and Canada is the migrant rate. Canada has a 23.2% higher immigration rate than Americans, making our population more culturally diverse.
- Canadians have a higher life expectancy at 81.2 years while Americans have a life expectancy of 78.1 years.
- While we appreciate all the wonderful inventions that America has had – we’re also proud of the fact that Canada invented the telephone, the television, the zipper, the music synthesizer and basketball.
- Canadians spell certain words with “our” instead of “or”. For example, Canadians will spell labour as labour, while Americans spell it as labor. Canadians also spell certain words with “re” instead of “er” so Canadians spell centre as centre, while Americans spell it as center.
These key differences between Canada and the United States help us to understand our cultures better and appreciate both the differences and similarities that our countries share.