When I was growing up, I knew more about Canada than the average Oklahoman. My mother made sure we knew the basics: they have provinces, not states, for example, and their system of government is different, and their Thanksgiving is in October. We even learned the words to the Canadian national anthem. On our annual summer trips, we saw some of the everyday culture--how the money looked, what people wore, how the road signs were the same or different, and how Canadians pronounced some words "funny."So when I moved here, I didn't expect to feel culture shock. I was wrong, of course. Some differences in culture are obvious. Some aren't. And it's hard to give examples of either kind.
Earlier this week, we drove down to Grand Marais, Minnesota (population 1800), to go to the bank. Since we'd made the drive, we stopped at independent bookstore and just walked around the waterfront for awhile. It's hard to pinpoint how exactly, but the waterfront in Grand Marais looks different from the waterfront in Thunder Bay.
It's only two hours away. The lake is the same lake. Local artists celebrate the same things in paintings and photos: loons, black bears, moose. Icebound bays in the winter, the powerful lake held motionless. In both places, people jetski and kayak; they ride snowmobile trails and cross-country ski.
Of course, the cities are different demographically--Thunder Bay has nearly 100 times as many people, for one thing. The cities also have different histories. Thunder Bay's population swelled after World War II with immigrants from the Ukraine, Poland, many Scandinavian countries, Italy, and Greece. Thunder Bay's economy has depended on logging, mining and shipping. Meanwhile, Grand Marais has mostly been a tourist destination and a jumping-off spot for even more remote parts of Northern Minnesota.
The bookseller at Drury Lane Books said people from Grand Marais often to go Thunder Bay for movies. We agreed that Thunder Bay isn't like a city in the U.S. of a similar size--say, Duluth. We couldn't say how, exactly, but we knew what we meant.
And isn't that the beauty of living somewhere else? The whole world isn't like the U.S. It's different. It's supposed to be. Unlike Texas, Canada really is "a whole 'nother country."
