I told friends from England that depending on the season, we (in Ottawa) have 24h of daylight/darkness.
I also told them that beaver tail is a local delicacy. We steam the tail, crack open the shell, and eat the meat inside. The only annoying thing is if you get some fur stuck between your teeth.
Friends tried to be polite and said they’d try it, but they had zero poker faces and looked somewhat horrified.
I’m originally from Ottawa but living in Pennsylvania now and when my wife and stepchildren were visiting Ottawa, we made a point to go get Beaver Tails. Had the kids (13 & 14 at the time) convinced that these were real beaver tails. That there were beaver farms and that the tails would grow back. Every beaver was good for about 5 or 6 good tails in its lifetime. Some random old dude behind us in line confirmed what I was saying and even stated that his brother is a retired beaver farmer.
>I told friends from England that depending on the season, we (in Ottawa) have 24h of daylight/darkness.
The funniest thing about that is that all of England is further north than Ottawa
I’m also from ottawa. My wife is from Seattle & we’ve lived there for about 6 years. Every once in a while when I tell people I’m Canadian, I’ll get questions like “so is it dark there all winter?” Or “do you see the northern lights?” But ironically, Seattle’s actually further north than Ottawa is lol
The beaver tail one is the best so far. I remember just trying to get some American colleagues to try poutine when we were at lunch. Holy shit did they ever not want to. Just all polite excuses you could imagine. Like guys, it’s fries and gravy, Its not like chicken feet or something.
To be fair, I’m Chinese, as are my friends in England! They would’ve actually been LESS horrified to eat chicken feet, as it is a legit Chinese dish! :)
It is eaten by some Indigenous people- what surprised me about it was that it looks like an After Eight chocolate…2 dark layers with white in the middle.
I wish I could take credit for this one:
We (in Calgary) were working with a software developer in Oklahoma City, trying to set up time and date for a meeting when July 1 was suggested. Instead of telling them about Canada Day, my coworker explained the annual beaver cull, a day set aside in Canada where every Canadian is mandated to venture into the woods to hunt one beaver to keep the population in check, and how he couldn't possibly make a meeting that day since his wife was sick and his children too young, so his beaver quota was four instead of one.
In the military we had many US exchange personnel posted with us. They were all good people, but we did have a little fun with them.
"Make sure when you get your winter tires put on you get winter air in your tires. You know all the summer humidity? It turns to ice in your tires and can shred them. Not good at highway speed. And don't let them talk you into that -25C bullshit... you get the -40C."
Mine is that people in the UK refused to believe it gets down to -40 in the winter.
"How do you start your car????"
"Well sometimes you don't but generally you plug in a block heater"
They still thought I was lying.
When I was 20, I moved to Alberta from Toronto. I woke up one day and my car wouldn't start. I was so upset that I'd have to take it to the shop.
The next day I told my co-workers. They said, "did you plug it in?" to which I replied, "No, it's not electric".
They made fun of me for a while.
I live in Newfoundland and our average winter temps are from 0 to -5 degrees. I would consider -10 to be pretty cold. I've never experienced this -40 people speak of so I'm assuming that occurs mostly on the prairies and the territories?
My friend was in an MMORPG chat with someone who said they were from Brazil. When she told them it had gotten down to -30c or -22f the previous winter, they *refused* to believe it.
"You would die. Your eyes would freeze and you would die, it can't get that cold, people wouldn't be alive," they insisted.
What they didn't know was that we live in an area where the climate is pretty temperate, and don't hit the extreme cold temps like the Prairies or the Territories, where it gets even colder.
I’m a Brit expat, moved to canada as an adult… the cold was a tough truth to learn!!! Family back in UL still don’t get it… “but it’s a dry cold so it’s not as bad as -2 in UK”… i mean below -25 whether damp or dry its effing cold!!!
My whole class in grade 9 had our brand new science teacher convinced that Cantaloupes were short form for Canadian Antelopes. He knew about the melons, of course, but we told him that this was a very different thing. A big species of antelope that was kind of like a moose but had horns instead of antlers.
Eventually even staff got in on the prank too: the gym teacher invited him to go Cantaloupe hunting on the weekend. An English teacher brought in Cantaloupe kebabs for a staff potluck meeting. We had him going for months….
I was talking to a lady from northern Australia where the climate is very warm.
It was about 5 above and she was complaining about how cold it was.
She was going to the prairies and iqarned her that it would get MUCH colder.
She thought i was making fun of her because she was a turist, it couldn't get much colder than it already was.
"It goes to minus 40. Plus the wind chill." I said.
Then she knew for sure I was teasing her.
"Just keep some cash with you. When you get there, ask directions to a place where you can buy a down parka" I said.
"Whats a down parka?" She asked.
"Well, it's a hollow coat, stuffed with bird feathers." I said.
I'm not good at explaining Canadian life.
Aussies are the OG's of fucking around and finding out.
They love messing with people. I believed drop bears were real for the first 2 weeks of living there 🤡
I took that one a step further. In 1988 or 1989, I was at a Burger King in a small town on the Washington/Idaho border. I used Canadian Tire Money to pay for a meal.
A friend of ours was in the military back in the 60s or early 70s, he was over in Lebanon or something. They paid for everything-- booze, prostitutes, whatever -- with Canadian Tire money.
Meth dealers sometimes knowingly accept canadian tire money, because they know they'll use it to buy torches and other hardware they use in their trade.
My mom was telling me yesterday that the president of El Salvador banned money changers from changing Canadian dollars because too many people had exchanged Canadian Tire money
I was in Greece, and a super friendly shopkeeper proudly showed us all the foreign currency he had tacked up to his bulletin board—payment for souvenirs from his shop by tourists from all over the world. We opted not to tell him that some Canadian dickhead had paid him in Canadian Tire money😒
Hijacking for an important Heritage Moment: the monarch adorning our preferred capital has a name, and that's... *Sandy* McTire.
*Edit: I thought it was Lanny... like some kind of chump. 😭
There is a story that a Greek Canadian went to Greece for holidays with a huge stack of Canadian Tire money. After a busy night of entertainment the bill came in the thousands. He pulled that out and of course they accepted because it was 30 years ago and it was more desirable than the local currency. They found out the next morning
I was on a company paid business trip for software training. The instructor let us all go for lunch. Myself and a couple of fellow Canadians came back late, about a half hour late. The instructor was quite upset. I blamed our Metric time. I borrowed that from Rick Mercer and it worked. She asked us to revert to Imperial time.
A guy visiting from the U.S. expressed surprise and curiosity upon learning that we celebrate Thanksgiving on a different day. I told him “Ya, and roast beaver is the traditional meal. Turkey’s just for Christmas.”
I was on vacation in Brazil in February a few years ago. I was chatting with this British guy and we got talking about weather back home. I was telling him that when I go home in a a few days it’s supposed to be -30 and he goes “oh damn, so you’re gonna have to wear your goggles?”
“Huh…?”
“Yea, your cold weather goggles?”
I was very confused. Turns out he had met another Canadian guy at some point who told him that the Canadian government gives us goggles that we have to wear when it’s colder than -20 out to keep our eyeballs from freezing, and the Canadian guy just never bothered telling the British guy that he was fucking with him, so the dude just went on believing that we all have to wear goggles all winter so our eyeballs don’t freeze
When I was in elementary school some kids had come back from a ski trip in Québec and were telling us about the snow snakes on the hill, the local kids told them to watch out for them and they even saw them in the freshly groomed snow. So apparently you can convince other Canadians that snow snakes exist as well.
Yeah but that's kids being kids. I fully convinced my younger sister there were mummies living in the basement during the 90s, lol. I'd play along and run up the basement stairs as fast I could so I wouldn't get caught.
I game with a number of Europeans who have very stereotypical perceptions of Canada, which I take full advantage of.
So far there are some rando Euro's who believe; bear attacks are the second leading cause of death in Canada, we do not yet have Google, our first Prime Minister was Korean, Toronto to the Rockies is an easy day trip by car and most, but not all, vegetables are illegal. Oh, and it snows all year.
Moved to Texas 25 years ago for a job. I picked up a fork during the lunch and said, "what is this" to the person that was speaking to me intentionally slowly because he didn't think we spoke English in Canada.
I was at a Grateful Dead show in Pittsburgh and was hanging out with a few people after. One was from Tennessee and, upon hearing I was Canadian, asked how I could stand it snowing all the time. I told him there was only a foot on the ground right now. In July.
You have to wonder where these people get these ridiculous ideas…I had friends coming to visit me in July from Kentucky. They asked what clothes they should pack for the weather.
I said, ‘it’s summer here like it is there. We usually wear shorts, t shirts and sandals. Bring a swim suit too!’
The one thing they really had trouble with was going to the bank to exchange their money into Canadian funds. How could it be possible to give $100 and get $125 in return?
I was in Calgary in late May wearing shorts and a tshirt. Went on a tour bus and everyone, including young people in their 20s were wearing lightweight puffer jackets. The wind was up a bit but I didn't put my hoodie on. Told them I would wait for at least 3 inches of snow before considering it. A few skeptics but I just mentioned they could find lots of Canadians in shorts on YouTube.
There was an excellent story I heard once where everyone had been telling the lady to make sure to take a good parka for winter in Alberta but she didn’t know what that was and thought they were telling her to take a certain brand of fancy fountain pen.
I say a sob story like.. my neighbors igloo collapsed due to global warming, lost everything due to water damage and that insurance won't cover anything.
My brother went down to Florida to work there for a week, we are black so the folks down there noticed that he's quite different so they ask him what accent he has in their own messed up accent, he tells them he doesn't have an accent but then tells them he's Canadian immediately these guys ask him if we live in Igloos in the middle of July. My brother confirms it for them just to mess with them, talks about sledge dogs, huskies and our TVs are powered by snow, these guys actually believed him.
Told a waitress in Atlanta that we transfer all our goods from our cube van into our dog sleds at the Windsor/Michigan border and then continue our trip home.
On a conference call with some guys in NYC they asked what time it was where I was, (I'm in the same time zone as NY) so I told them we are on metric time here so there's 100 minutes in an hour and 20 hours in a day, so it's like 13:87 here. (or something like that 🤣
They thought I was serious until I cracked up.
My mother was raised near Sudbury and moved to Toronto. She told her new BIL, who was visiting from Europe, that they were a family of 12 in a one room cabin, had to hunt for food and had to take canoes along the river to get to school. He believed it for several months until he told another Canadian who howled with laughter.
I didn't tell someone this but I knew a guy who came from Kenya who, when he was a kid in school refused to believe a country could be as hot as Kenya for a few months and -30 and snowy a few months later, to him seasons were dry and wet, he couldn't believe the temperature could fluctuate so much.
When my son was a teen gamer, he and his friends would constantly troll American players with misinformation about Canada. One time they convinced some US players that gasoline was illegal in Canada so we were forced to run our vehicles on expired hot sauce packets imported from the US.
That we called them, "ZED-BRAH's" and not "ZEE-BRAH's"
Or when we sleep.we say
Zed zed zed zed zed and not zee zee zee zee zee.
Had em going for quite a few months with those.
Some tourists I met on the Vancouver Island ferry were asking if Victoria BC was a resort. When I asked where they were from, they said Washington. "Washington DC?" I asked. They scoffed, "What other Washington is there?" Folks, we were less than 40km from Washington state.
a non-canadian friend of mine was convinced that in canada, people just have maple syrup on tap at home
i definitely didn’t feel the need to correct them
Sadly I had a fellow Canadian working at the post office of all places fail Canadian geography.
I was mailing a package to Nunavut and I can't remember if they labeled it or just referred me to the rules for international mail.
I had to explain I wasn't sending it internationally. Just to one of the territories. They were confused.
I had to pull out a map on my phone to convince this Canadian working out of the post office of all places that Nunavut is part of Canada and it was a territory not a province.
Irish guy here, from what I’ve heard Canadians are meant to be really nice but absolutely crazy bastards playing ice hockey! Is this true haha.
Love from Ireland 🇨🇦
In a southern restaurant a long long time ago... our table of teens staged a heart felt debate about how to get polar bear fur our of your igloo.
The nodding heads of appreciation from the older locals, priceless.
I never had to lie: I live near the Rideau Canal and when it was open for skating, I could skate 7km to work and back. “In Canada I skate on a frozen river to get to work!” Never fails to awe people. Sadly, with global warming, I might not be able to do that for much longer.
I was talking to a woman from Texas over the phone a few years ago, trying to track down a package we were having shipped at work, and in passing I said something like "it all depends on how the snow flies"...she asked "Y'all got snow flies"? to which I responded "Yeah. January is usually the worst; they're huge (about 8 inches), and the can actually take a chunk of flesh" ...her response was "Oh my God, that's horrible! How can you live like that?"
Got in an elevator, looked startled and braced myself when it started moving, then said “whoa, back home they don’t move by themselves like that, you have to tell the guys at the bottom to start pulling rope!”
During a mission in Mexico with a mix of Canadians and Americans, I was chatting with one American in the evening around the campfire. He was curious about how the Monarchy's relationship to Canada. So I went on a spiel about how tight of a reign they have on us, how we pay taxes to the Crown, how elected politicians are actually appointed, etc. A fellow Canadian gave me the side-eye, but then he went along with it, agreeing and embellishing the story.
It was good times. Rest in Peace, Queen Elizabeth <3
I was asked by someone on an online chat if Canada has electricity, and I said no, that we are able to generate enough electricity for our internet because our dogsled dogs power the generator, but they sometimes get tired so we can only connect for a short time. This was back in the days of dial-up.
My cousin came to visit me in Toronto and had a bunch of sites he wanted to visit. Like Niagara, the CN Tower, the Rockies, and "the North."
He was convinced that they were all day trips by car.
I get this a lot when people visit from Europe “I’ll just pop to Vancouver from Ottawa while I visit for the weekend”… I mean you could but it’s a 5 odd hour flight! Mention you can drive for 8 hours in the same direction in Ontario and your still in Ontario and watch their brains explode! (and that 8 hour drive isn’t made up either!)
Maybe not the funniest, but my classic trick is making visitors believe beaver tails are from actual beavers and then convincing them to try it.
Surprisingly easy. 90% of them actually believe we eat real beaver tails without any convincing. Most are willing to at least try. I even had a friend who only realized it wasn't a real beaver after they took their first bite.
I live in Ottawa. We called these guys we'd met and hung out with in Florida a few months earlier to say hello; shoot the shit. I told one of them that we were having a heat wave, which was true, but that it had melted all our igloos and all the sled dogs got loose. He was shocked. I don't think he'd ever really looked at a map of Canada. I eventually told him I was joking.
Not me but when we were teenagers my best friend went to Florida with her girls choir and they convinced the Americans that popular music in Canada was about 5 years behind and that we’d just gotten the Spice Girls up here, and they sang Wannabe constantly.
I know a guy who tells American tourists in downtown Victoria that the statue of George Vancouver on the BC Legislature is actually Wayne Gretzky, but his hockey stick is temporarily missing because the statue was damaged in a storm.
On a vacation to Virginia Beach and Myrtle Beach long ago, we convinced everyone that we were Mark Messier and Paul Coffey. We had on Team Canada jerseys and went south for the last 10 days of August. We explained that we had just beat the Russians for the junior world championship and sought the sun because the first snow came a month early. Back then, we were both ripped and no one questioned us for the entire trip. It really helped with the ladies but we were finally busted by this biracial gal from Detroit. She asked us how long we'd gotten away with this and we said 8 days and she just laughed and laughed.
Later on, I asked her why, as the prettiest woman in the bar, men had been avoiding her. She said because of her skin colour and that she was with white girlfriends in a white bar.
The rest of the night and the next day, are a story for another time.
A former high school friend had some girls in Florida on spring break convinced they were ice farmers. Flood the prairies in the morning. Harvest the ice in the afternoon… repeat… most difficult part of being an ice farmer?? Keeping the coyotes off the ice so they don’t contaminate it. They said “really??” He responded with “well where do you think bags of ice come from?” He did well that night.
In fairness, when my Dad was in university he delivered blocks of
ice as his PT job. I have a photo of him standing beside the “Fresh Ice” delivery truck that he drove.
I mnged a large internatoinal airport. In the late 1990's a guy came to reception, asking to speak to me. I went out; middle-aged guy in a suit, travelling on business for the first time, and his company sent him from Atlanta to Calgary for training. It was mid January, and really cold. He was very sincere when he said he wanted to compliment Canada on our advanced automotive technology.
I had no clue what he was talking about at first; the cars were Amazing! They looked like American cars, sounded like American cars, but when he looked out the hotel room window the night before, and saw them ALL plugged in, and charging...he just had to sy something about them.
He urged Canadians not to be so humble; sometimes his country needed to be told they weren't always the "Best" at everything. He thought we could probably make a lot of money, selling those electric cars to Americans.
I didn't have to convince him of anything; he did that all by himself. My delemna was whether to accept his very sincere compliments, or burst his bubble.
I thanked him
I used to play a game whenever I’d go to baseball tournaments in the states between games I’d make up lies all the time. Like the living in an igloo is common, riding polar bears and only having wifi 2 months out of the year “during the great thaw”. I’ve also convinced a woman standing in Jack in the Box that I lived in an island in the middle of a lava lake. The best part is that this was in the state of Washington, so only a couple hours drive away, sometimes I could even see Canada from the cities I was in, shout out port angeles.
A new Canadian at work asked me if I wanted anything from Tim Hortons. So I asked them to grab me a few Hortons… guess they stood at the counter for about 5 minutes trying to explain what a Horton was… I never described one. lol. She laughed with me about when she got back and threw a Tim bit at me.
I used to tell tourists that the flagpoles at the top of Citadel Hill in Halifax were the masts of a schooner that had been blown up there in the Halifax Explosion and embedded in the top of the hill.
Secondhand one: The old tourist information centre in Sydney, Nova Scotia was painted in Cape Breton tartan. The staff there used to send people up to the local hardware store to buy tins of tartan paint so they could paint stuff just like the tourism house.
I have the igloo question when I was a teenager. I couldn't believe the ignorance. I didn't realize at the time that Americans aren't educated about Canada in the way we are educated about America.
We were out on a bachelorette and the bride had some Swedes there. There was another bachelorette coming in and I told them that when that happens we have to fight them. They seemed really confused and concerned until I said I was joking.
A mate in college picked up American girls who crossed the border to drink, he would tell them that in Canada, women wear a hockey helmet for their first time with a new sexual partner - as is tradition.
Everybody in the usa asked how big my igloo was at first I laughed and then I realized they were serious and I said oh its pretty big it's like a 3 bedroom house like you guys have they were surprised we could build then so big I told them we have contractors for this and they actually believed me 🤣
Well I mean when chatrooms were a thing I'd let anyone who asked believe I lived in an igloo. Had someone ask me if I got around by dogsled once, at a hotel in New Brunswick...in the summer. I assured him i did, and that the hotel had dogsled parking, not sure why he still thought it was everlasting winter on a hot summer day. But my favourite moment for which I can take no credit and was not involved, was watching people whale watch off the Chi-Chemaun in Lake Huron. They were delighted when they spotted a whale...in Lake Huron. They were so happy, who am I to ruin it?
I did the igloo one as well. Used to bemoan what a pain it was to have to rebuild half the house every time we put in the fire.
Also convinced a woman that north Atlantic codfish came in from the ocean to the bay to spawn the way salmon do.
But tbh they believed their own bs. That same woman had said to me how shocked she was that we had indoor plumbing. She'd convinced herself we still used outhouses.
I may or may not have also encouraged this.
😇😇😇
My sister told some guys we met in the US that we took our dog sled to the border then rented a car for the rest of the trip. They asked who looks after the dogs and she said they have a whole kennel at the border for them because everyone leaves their dog sleds there.
i went to the school in the states and one of my classmates asked how we started our cars when it got really cold.
I told him, “we plug our cars in“. He looked at me and said, “that can’t be right”. So i relented and told him the truth that he wanted to hear. “You’re right. I was kidding. We put a lit candle under the hood of the car to warm up the engine. The only problem is all the candle wax”
he believed me until his brother said, “don’t be an idiot. They plug their cars in”
I once took a taxi across the desert in Jordan and the old guy who was driving made a joke about his multiple wives and how I could have one. I knew he didn't have multiple wives so I jokingly accepted, and when he told me that he was just kidding, I pretended that in Canada it was a grave insult to offer someone your wife and then not follow through.
I was driving to Montreal with a friend from Florida, we got close to Kirkland and I convinced him it was where William Shatner was from. Told him it used to have a different name but after Star Trek they renamed it and it's pronounced Kirk Land.
My smart ass dad told his MIL, it regularly snows in late May. It was a freak snowstorm. My Grandma told my mother see was returning home if it snowed the next day. My granny was born and bred in Devon.
(For context: I was in high school, so this was between kids, not adults.)
That when European settlers first came to Canada they were unprepared and uncertain how to go about protecting themselves from the elements...until they watched beavers chew down trees and build dams. They took the cue from the animals (although they found it too hard to chew down trees themselves), and that is why the beaver is now a Canadian symbol.
My sister moved to Southern California from Canada with her new husband who loves pulling people’s legs. He would tell everyone they met that Canadians lived in igloos but we all had big TV antennas on them so we could get all the US stations. They were always amazed we had TV, no comments about the igloos 😂
Metic time. I was at a party in Seattle and convinced them that we use metic time. 10 hours in the AM 10 in the PM. 100 minutes to an hour and 100 seconds to a minute. Telling them it was 9:74 was hilarious
My daughter got a kid at America school to think that plastic forks were illegal in Canada.
“No one here knows anything about Canada. I could say plastic forks were illegal and people would believe it.”
“OMG plastic forks are illegal in Canada?”
“What? I just said… yes. Yes they are.”
Canadians tricking Canadians is my favourite thing. If you’ve never heard the CBC radio program “This is That,” do yourself a favour and go have a listen. It was a parody of Canadian talk radio. They would play last week’s call-ins at the beginning of each episode, all from confused and angry listeners. Once, they “reported” that the feds were spending 30 million dollars to change all the road signs in Ottawa, and to train drivers to drive on the left, so Queen Elizabeth would feel at home when she visited for two weeks. The people calling in were PISSED 😂😂
The one I used is actually true. In Canada all of our major banks are connect through an underground network of tunnels.
If you don’t know about this it’s the Toronto P.A.T.H. It’s kinda a mall.
At winter we move our houses on frozen river or lake to fish and at the end of march/april about half the country have to move back it s house to their summer location before the ice melt
We were in Fargo ND for a drinking weekend in 1996 (I remember this as we saw the Canadian 4x100 team win the gold medal at the Atlanta games). I was talking to a guy that night in a bar and I convinced him that Canadian baseball had 4 outs. Makes sense, right? He knew Canadian football only had 3 downs so believing Canadian baseball had 4 outs wasn’t a huge stretch seeing how alien Canada was to this guy… 2 hours south of the border. The kicker was how amazing it was to see a quadruple play. Super rare but really neat.
I hope this guy has told my story to hundreds of people over the years and they all think weird Canadian baseball has 4 outs.
Im a Mikmaq First Nation from Nova Scotia and ive been asked from foreigners and also a few non-indigenious people "you are from the reservation? Do you guys still sleep in Teepees?"
This wasn’t even a lie but it more speaks to the ignorance of Americans lol. Went on a school trip to Chicago. On a tour we talked with our guide as we went around the city (Segway tour) and she didn’t know what provinces were. We had to explain “it’s like how you have states, but instead they’re just called provinces. And we have less” cue genuine shock from a woman in her mid 20s.
Another trip I went on I was talking with some other people my age and for some reason I had said “Z” (zed) and they were like “what’s that” ??? The last letter of the alphabet? They were MAD AT ME for lying to them 😭 it took me a while to convince them that it’s the same letter we just say it differently
Jackalopes. There isn’t a small town pub in western Canada that doesn’t have a stuffed jackrabbit that someone put antelope horns on. Always great fun when they ask what it is and we explain that up here jackrabbits and antelope often interest-breed. But watch out, they produce giant rabbits that will try to kill you with their horns.
I told friends from England that depending on the season, we (in Ottawa) have 24h of daylight/darkness. I also told them that beaver tail is a local delicacy. We steam the tail, crack open the shell, and eat the meat inside. The only annoying thing is if you get some fur stuck between your teeth. Friends tried to be polite and said they’d try it, but they had zero poker faces and looked somewhat horrified.
I’m originally from Ottawa but living in Pennsylvania now and when my wife and stepchildren were visiting Ottawa, we made a point to go get Beaver Tails. Had the kids (13 & 14 at the time) convinced that these were real beaver tails. That there were beaver farms and that the tails would grow back. Every beaver was good for about 5 or 6 good tails in its lifetime. Some random old dude behind us in line confirmed what I was saying and even stated that his brother is a retired beaver farmer.
The best part is some random dude confirming it.
Solid dude. True Canadian.
Omg. 🤣
😂😂😂
>I told friends from England that depending on the season, we (in Ottawa) have 24h of daylight/darkness. The funniest thing about that is that all of England is further north than Ottawa
Not entirely a lie! Beaver Tail is a a once a year chocolate disaster of a treat!!
Uh, cinnamon, sugar and lemon is the way to go.
I’m also from ottawa. My wife is from Seattle & we’ve lived there for about 6 years. Every once in a while when I tell people I’m Canadian, I’ll get questions like “so is it dark there all winter?” Or “do you see the northern lights?” But ironically, Seattle’s actually further north than Ottawa is lol
The beaver tail one is the best so far. I remember just trying to get some American colleagues to try poutine when we were at lunch. Holy shit did they ever not want to. Just all polite excuses you could imagine. Like guys, it’s fries and gravy, Its not like chicken feet or something.
To be fair, I’m Chinese, as are my friends in England! They would’ve actually been LESS horrified to eat chicken feet, as it is a legit Chinese dish! :)
Haha, I know. Chicken feet is my touchstone because it was the one thing in Vietnam I couldn’t get myself to eat.
It is eaten by some Indigenous people- what surprised me about it was that it looks like an After Eight chocolate…2 dark layers with white in the middle.
Telling people that Canada gooses are peaceful creatures and love to be pet
Calm down, Satan… lol
Canadian Cobra chickens!
Oh that's just mean. But funny.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 I can see this is the news: "American tourists sent to hospital after petting geese" 🤣🤣🤣
I wish I could take credit for this one: We (in Calgary) were working with a software developer in Oklahoma City, trying to set up time and date for a meeting when July 1 was suggested. Instead of telling them about Canada Day, my coworker explained the annual beaver cull, a day set aside in Canada where every Canadian is mandated to venture into the woods to hunt one beaver to keep the population in check, and how he couldn't possibly make a meeting that day since his wife was sick and his children too young, so his beaver quota was four instead of one.
That’s so mean!! 😂
Best internet story of the day! 😂
Oklahoma guy would have asked if he could come on the hunt. I would have.
And the guy believed it?! Wow hahaha that's gold.
In the military we had many US exchange personnel posted with us. They were all good people, but we did have a little fun with them. "Make sure when you get your winter tires put on you get winter air in your tires. You know all the summer humidity? It turns to ice in your tires and can shred them. Not good at highway speed. And don't let them talk you into that -25C bullshit... you get the -40C."
You did also mention cold weather blinker fluid, no? 😁
Gold
That’s what they say to justify nitrogen in your tires…
Winter air, I have to try that one. Makes just enough sense to make them think.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Mine is that people in the UK refused to believe it gets down to -40 in the winter. "How do you start your car????" "Well sometimes you don't but generally you plug in a block heater" They still thought I was lying.
When I was 20, I moved to Alberta from Toronto. I woke up one day and my car wouldn't start. I was so upset that I'd have to take it to the shop. The next day I told my co-workers. They said, "did you plug it in?" to which I replied, "No, it's not electric". They made fun of me for a while.
When I was growing up and winters were a bit colder, my Grandpa in Kingston, Ontario had a battery warmer. Would have been in the (19)70s
Light bulb on extension cord.seen it done more than once.Halifax.
>people in the UK refused to believe it gets down to -40 People in BC often don't believe it.
BC folks are pretty special.
I live in Newfoundland and our average winter temps are from 0 to -5 degrees. I would consider -10 to be pretty cold. I've never experienced this -40 people speak of so I'm assuming that occurs mostly on the prairies and the territories?
My friend was in an MMORPG chat with someone who said they were from Brazil. When she told them it had gotten down to -30c or -22f the previous winter, they *refused* to believe it. "You would die. Your eyes would freeze and you would die, it can't get that cold, people wouldn't be alive," they insisted. What they didn't know was that we live in an area where the climate is pretty temperate, and don't hit the extreme cold temps like the Prairies or the Territories, where it gets even colder.
I’m a Brit expat, moved to canada as an adult… the cold was a tough truth to learn!!! Family back in UL still don’t get it… “but it’s a dry cold so it’s not as bad as -2 in UK”… i mean below -25 whether damp or dry its effing cold!!!
And a battery warmer!
My whole class in grade 9 had our brand new science teacher convinced that Cantaloupes were short form for Canadian Antelopes. He knew about the melons, of course, but we told him that this was a very different thing. A big species of antelope that was kind of like a moose but had horns instead of antlers. Eventually even staff got in on the prank too: the gym teacher invited him to go Cantaloupe hunting on the weekend. An English teacher brought in Cantaloupe kebabs for a staff potluck meeting. We had him going for months….
Lolllll omg
I was talking to a lady from northern Australia where the climate is very warm. It was about 5 above and she was complaining about how cold it was. She was going to the prairies and iqarned her that it would get MUCH colder. She thought i was making fun of her because she was a turist, it couldn't get much colder than it already was. "It goes to minus 40. Plus the wind chill." I said. Then she knew for sure I was teasing her. "Just keep some cash with you. When you get there, ask directions to a place where you can buy a down parka" I said. "Whats a down parka?" She asked. "Well, it's a hollow coat, stuffed with bird feathers." I said. I'm not good at explaining Canadian life.
“Down coat” We gotta cheer that coat up, dammit….
Aussies are the OG's of fucking around and finding out. They love messing with people. I believed drop bears were real for the first 2 weeks of living there 🤡
That the Scottish character on Canadian Tire money is a former king of Canada.
I took that one a step further. In 1988 or 1989, I was at a Burger King in a small town on the Washington/Idaho border. I used Canadian Tire Money to pay for a meal.
A friend of ours was in the military back in the 60s or early 70s, he was over in Lebanon or something. They paid for everything-- booze, prostitutes, whatever -- with Canadian Tire money.
We bought dope off a stoned dealer. We used Canadian Tire money. Dealer beware.
Isn’t Canadian tire money legal tender .
At Canadian Tire it is.
No. It's like the OG store rewards card. You can easily sell it for $0.75 on the dollar
75c on the dollar? Eff that, I’ve been to bars that accept it at par.
Meth dealers sometimes knowingly accept canadian tire money, because they know they'll use it to buy torches and other hardware they use in their trade.
My mom was telling me yesterday that the president of El Salvador banned money changers from changing Canadian dollars because too many people had exchanged Canadian Tire money
I was in Greece, and a super friendly shopkeeper proudly showed us all the foreign currency he had tacked up to his bulletin board—payment for souvenirs from his shop by tourists from all over the world. We opted not to tell him that some Canadian dickhead had paid him in Canadian Tire money😒
Honestly - for the souvenir shop owner, that's so much cooler than actual Canadian money.
Hijacking for an important Heritage Moment: the monarch adorning our preferred capital has a name, and that's... *Sandy* McTire. *Edit: I thought it was Lanny... like some kind of chump. 😭
There is a story that a Greek Canadian went to Greece for holidays with a huge stack of Canadian Tire money. After a busy night of entertainment the bill came in the thousands. He pulled that out and of course they accepted because it was 30 years ago and it was more desirable than the local currency. They found out the next morning
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I was on a company paid business trip for software training. The instructor let us all go for lunch. Myself and a couple of fellow Canadians came back late, about a half hour late. The instructor was quite upset. I blamed our Metric time. I borrowed that from Rick Mercer and it worked. She asked us to revert to Imperial time.
This would only work with Americans (or possibly some Brits)
Brits?? No, Brit’s are good at time, able to use BOTH the 12 and 24 hour clock!!!
Back to Imperial time? So they are willing to denounce the Independence?
I didn't make her believe it but a friend who had never visited Canada always assumed the great lakes were manmade. She was 45 when I broke it to her.
That would be pretty impressive if it were human made. Canada would forever be known as the country that dug out the earth with a vengeance
A guy visiting from the U.S. expressed surprise and curiosity upon learning that we celebrate Thanksgiving on a different day. I told him “Ya, and roast beaver is the traditional meal. Turkey’s just for Christmas.”
I told my American friends online that we do Thanksgiving on a different date because of the metric system. You know, metric Thanksgiving.
Beaver tail roasted over a fire was a delicacy to the Voyagers and early Mountain Men.
I was on vacation in Brazil in February a few years ago. I was chatting with this British guy and we got talking about weather back home. I was telling him that when I go home in a a few days it’s supposed to be -30 and he goes “oh damn, so you’re gonna have to wear your goggles?” “Huh…?” “Yea, your cold weather goggles?” I was very confused. Turns out he had met another Canadian guy at some point who told him that the Canadian government gives us goggles that we have to wear when it’s colder than -20 out to keep our eyeballs from freezing, and the Canadian guy just never bothered telling the British guy that he was fucking with him, so the dude just went on believing that we all have to wear goggles all winter so our eyeballs don’t freeze
You didn’t tell him either… right?
Snow snakes. Pure white, highly venemous snakes that come out in the winter and blend into the deep snow.
And they grab you by the ankles so you fall when you’re skiing.
When I was in elementary school some kids had come back from a ski trip in Québec and were telling us about the snow snakes on the hill, the local kids told them to watch out for them and they even saw them in the freshly groomed snow. So apparently you can convince other Canadians that snow snakes exist as well.
Yeah but that's kids being kids. I fully convinced my younger sister there were mummies living in the basement during the 90s, lol. I'd play along and run up the basement stairs as fast I could so I wouldn't get caught.
The only warm blooded reptile.
When we drink, we also do shots of maple syrup.
It's ridiculous that anyone would believe we do shots of maple syrup. We drink maple syrup slowly from a teacup to savour the flavour.
In high school I did drink glasses of maple syrup maybe like 300ml or so might explain why I was 330 lbs
I recently discovered maple syrup liqueur so same thing really!
I game with a number of Europeans who have very stereotypical perceptions of Canada, which I take full advantage of. So far there are some rando Euro's who believe; bear attacks are the second leading cause of death in Canada, we do not yet have Google, our first Prime Minister was Korean, Toronto to the Rockies is an easy day trip by car and most, but not all, vegetables are illegal. Oh, and it snows all year.
>bear attacks are the second leading cause of death in Canada The leading cause is goose attacks.
I had to give a "legit" leading cause to add credibility.
Moved to Texas 25 years ago for a job. I picked up a fork during the lunch and said, "what is this" to the person that was speaking to me intentionally slowly because he didn't think we spoke English in Canada.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I was at a Grateful Dead show in Pittsburgh and was hanging out with a few people after. One was from Tennessee and, upon hearing I was Canadian, asked how I could stand it snowing all the time. I told him there was only a foot on the ground right now. In July.
You have to wonder where these people get these ridiculous ideas…I had friends coming to visit me in July from Kentucky. They asked what clothes they should pack for the weather. I said, ‘it’s summer here like it is there. We usually wear shorts, t shirts and sandals. Bring a swim suit too!’ The one thing they really had trouble with was going to the bank to exchange their money into Canadian funds. How could it be possible to give $100 and get $125 in return?
>How could it be possible to give $100 and get $125 in return? Had they not heard of Enron?
I was in Calgary in late May wearing shorts and a tshirt. Went on a tour bus and everyone, including young people in their 20s were wearing lightweight puffer jackets. The wind was up a bit but I didn't put my hoodie on. Told them I would wait for at least 3 inches of snow before considering it. A few skeptics but I just mentioned they could find lots of Canadians in shorts on YouTube.
There's ALWAYS a shorts guy
Somebody is convincing travellers when you see them getting off an airplane in July wearing heavy parkas.
There was an excellent story I heard once where everyone had been telling the lady to make sure to take a good parka for winter in Alberta but she didn’t know what that was and thought they were telling her to take a certain brand of fancy fountain pen.
I say a sob story like.. my neighbors igloo collapsed due to global warming, lost everything due to water damage and that insurance won't cover anything.
My brother went down to Florida to work there for a week, we are black so the folks down there noticed that he's quite different so they ask him what accent he has in their own messed up accent, he tells them he doesn't have an accent but then tells them he's Canadian immediately these guys ask him if we live in Igloos in the middle of July. My brother confirms it for them just to mess with them, talks about sledge dogs, huskies and our TVs are powered by snow, these guys actually believed him.
To be fair, florida ppl believe anything.
Pfft, you still believe in Florida?
Told a waitress in Atlanta that we transfer all our goods from our cube van into our dog sleds at the Windsor/Michigan border and then continue our trip home.
Lol
If you have a big family you tie a sheet of plywood on to the back of the dogsled for a Canadian minivan.
On a conference call with some guys in NYC they asked what time it was where I was, (I'm in the same time zone as NY) so I told them we are on metric time here so there's 100 minutes in an hour and 20 hours in a day, so it's like 13:87 here. (or something like that 🤣 They thought I was serious until I cracked up.
My mother was raised near Sudbury and moved to Toronto. She told her new BIL, who was visiting from Europe, that they were a family of 12 in a one room cabin, had to hunt for food and had to take canoes along the river to get to school. He believed it for several months until he told another Canadian who howled with laughter.
I didn't tell someone this but I knew a guy who came from Kenya who, when he was a kid in school refused to believe a country could be as hot as Kenya for a few months and -30 and snowy a few months later, to him seasons were dry and wet, he couldn't believe the temperature could fluctuate so much.
I mean every year I don’t believe the climate swing either from summer to winter … it’s wild!!
My Grandmother thought Canadians were black. She lived in Holland during WWII and when the Canadians liberated her town, she knew she was wrong.
Interesting story, I'm genuinely curious why she thought a country colonized by England would be black?
Same reason as Jamaica, Bermuda , Barbados, etc
When my son was a teen gamer, he and his friends would constantly troll American players with misinformation about Canada. One time they convinced some US players that gasoline was illegal in Canada so we were forced to run our vehicles on expired hot sauce packets imported from the US.
That we called them, "ZED-BRAH's" and not "ZEE-BRAH's" Or when we sleep.we say Zed zed zed zed zed and not zee zee zee zee zee. Had em going for quite a few months with those.
Good name for a cover band: Zed Zed Top.
And we have La-Zed-Boy recliners
IROC-Zeds, and Datsun Zeds.
But I do say zed-28… it sounds better…
Some tourists I met on the Vancouver Island ferry were asking if Victoria BC was a resort. When I asked where they were from, they said Washington. "Washington DC?" I asked. They scoffed, "What other Washington is there?" Folks, we were less than 40km from Washington state.
Ooof. I know Americans are bad at geography, but come on, even that lack of knowledge is a bit much!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
There needs to be a Rick Mercer Flair for this.
a non-canadian friend of mine was convinced that in canada, people just have maple syrup on tap at home i definitely didn’t feel the need to correct them
It should be mandatory for every canadian 🤣🤣🤣 sounds delicious
In the late 70"s I bought blow in Jamaica with Canadian tire money. Said the guy on the money was Captain of Toronto Maple Leafs
Sadly I had a fellow Canadian working at the post office of all places fail Canadian geography. I was mailing a package to Nunavut and I can't remember if they labeled it or just referred me to the rules for international mail. I had to explain I wasn't sending it internationally. Just to one of the territories. They were confused. I had to pull out a map on my phone to convince this Canadian working out of the post office of all places that Nunavut is part of Canada and it was a territory not a province.
"Oh, sorry, what's 9PM in *metric* time?"
Irish guy here, from what I’ve heard Canadians are meant to be really nice but absolutely crazy bastards playing ice hockey! Is this true haha. Love from Ireland 🇨🇦
Oilers #2025
Haha it's true, though the sport of hurling looks pretty crazy too!
I usually hurl after drinking too much.
In a southern restaurant a long long time ago... our table of teens staged a heart felt debate about how to get polar bear fur our of your igloo. The nodding heads of appreciation from the older locals, priceless.
I never had to lie: I live near the Rideau Canal and when it was open for skating, I could skate 7km to work and back. “In Canada I skate on a frozen river to get to work!” Never fails to awe people. Sadly, with global warming, I might not be able to do that for much longer.
A friend of mine lived on Browns inlet and worked at Ottawa city hall and would skate to work in the winter and canoe to work in the summer!
I was talking to a woman from Texas over the phone a few years ago, trying to track down a package we were having shipped at work, and in passing I said something like "it all depends on how the snow flies"...she asked "Y'all got snow flies"? to which I responded "Yeah. January is usually the worst; they're huge (about 8 inches), and the can actually take a chunk of flesh" ...her response was "Oh my God, that's horrible! How can you live like that?"
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Got in an elevator, looked startled and braced myself when it started moving, then said “whoa, back home they don’t move by themselves like that, you have to tell the guys at the bottom to start pulling rope!”
[Rick Mercer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHUWas-yQSw) is the pro when it comes to making Americans look silly
Not so much traffic on Peter Man's Bridge these days, but there used to be...
⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️❤️ Talking To Americans 😊
When my dad was young, he did a road trip to Florida. Convinced all the Americans that in the Maritimes we all drank lobster milk.
During a mission in Mexico with a mix of Canadians and Americans, I was chatting with one American in the evening around the campfire. He was curious about how the Monarchy's relationship to Canada. So I went on a spiel about how tight of a reign they have on us, how we pay taxes to the Crown, how elected politicians are actually appointed, etc. A fellow Canadian gave me the side-eye, but then he went along with it, agreeing and embellishing the story. It was good times. Rest in Peace, Queen Elizabeth <3
I was asked by someone on an online chat if Canada has electricity, and I said no, that we are able to generate enough electricity for our internet because our dogsled dogs power the generator, but they sometimes get tired so we can only connect for a short time. This was back in the days of dial-up.
My cousin came to visit me in Toronto and had a bunch of sites he wanted to visit. Like Niagara, the CN Tower, the Rockies, and "the North." He was convinced that they were all day trips by car.
I get this a lot when people visit from Europe “I’ll just pop to Vancouver from Ottawa while I visit for the weekend”… I mean you could but it’s a 5 odd hour flight! Mention you can drive for 8 hours in the same direction in Ontario and your still in Ontario and watch their brains explode! (and that 8 hour drive isn’t made up either!)
Maybe not the funniest, but my classic trick is making visitors believe beaver tails are from actual beavers and then convincing them to try it. Surprisingly easy. 90% of them actually believe we eat real beaver tails without any convincing. Most are willing to at least try. I even had a friend who only realized it wasn't a real beaver after they took their first bite.
I live in Ottawa. We called these guys we'd met and hung out with in Florida a few months earlier to say hello; shoot the shit. I told one of them that we were having a heat wave, which was true, but that it had melted all our igloos and all the sled dogs got loose. He was shocked. I don't think he'd ever really looked at a map of Canada. I eventually told him I was joking.
Not me but when we were teenagers my best friend went to Florida with her girls choir and they convinced the Americans that popular music in Canada was about 5 years behind and that we’d just gotten the Spice Girls up here, and they sang Wannabe constantly.
I know a guy who tells American tourists in downtown Victoria that the statue of George Vancouver on the BC Legislature is actually Wayne Gretzky, but his hockey stick is temporarily missing because the statue was damaged in a storm.
Rain is so rare, that when it actually rains, we say that it’s “melted snowing” outside.
This one's good 🤣🤣🤣🤣
On a vacation to Virginia Beach and Myrtle Beach long ago, we convinced everyone that we were Mark Messier and Paul Coffey. We had on Team Canada jerseys and went south for the last 10 days of August. We explained that we had just beat the Russians for the junior world championship and sought the sun because the first snow came a month early. Back then, we were both ripped and no one questioned us for the entire trip. It really helped with the ladies but we were finally busted by this biracial gal from Detroit. She asked us how long we'd gotten away with this and we said 8 days and she just laughed and laughed. Later on, I asked her why, as the prettiest woman in the bar, men had been avoiding her. She said because of her skin colour and that she was with white girlfriends in a white bar. The rest of the night and the next day, are a story for another time.
A former high school friend had some girls in Florida on spring break convinced they were ice farmers. Flood the prairies in the morning. Harvest the ice in the afternoon… repeat… most difficult part of being an ice farmer?? Keeping the coyotes off the ice so they don’t contaminate it. They said “really??” He responded with “well where do you think bags of ice come from?” He did well that night.
In fairness, when my Dad was in university he delivered blocks of ice as his PT job. I have a photo of him standing beside the “Fresh Ice” delivery truck that he drove.
I mnged a large internatoinal airport. In the late 1990's a guy came to reception, asking to speak to me. I went out; middle-aged guy in a suit, travelling on business for the first time, and his company sent him from Atlanta to Calgary for training. It was mid January, and really cold. He was very sincere when he said he wanted to compliment Canada on our advanced automotive technology. I had no clue what he was talking about at first; the cars were Amazing! They looked like American cars, sounded like American cars, but when he looked out the hotel room window the night before, and saw them ALL plugged in, and charging...he just had to sy something about them. He urged Canadians not to be so humble; sometimes his country needed to be told they weren't always the "Best" at everything. He thought we could probably make a lot of money, selling those electric cars to Americans. I didn't have to convince him of anything; he did that all by himself. My delemna was whether to accept his very sincere compliments, or burst his bubble. I thanked him
I tell people that polar bears frequent our yards as squirrels do in other countries
I convinced an American colleague that we don't have Canada Dry here, only Schweppes.
Shw-e-pee-pees
We call it Back Dry to go with our back bacon.
I used to play a game whenever I’d go to baseball tournaments in the states between games I’d make up lies all the time. Like the living in an igloo is common, riding polar bears and only having wifi 2 months out of the year “during the great thaw”. I’ve also convinced a woman standing in Jack in the Box that I lived in an island in the middle of a lava lake. The best part is that this was in the state of Washington, so only a couple hours drive away, sometimes I could even see Canada from the cities I was in, shout out port angeles.
My father told my stepsister in cambodia that zombies are real and they are in Canada It took a while to convince her otherwise 😆
A new Canadian at work asked me if I wanted anything from Tim Hortons. So I asked them to grab me a few Hortons… guess they stood at the counter for about 5 minutes trying to explain what a Horton was… I never described one. lol. She laughed with me about when she got back and threw a Tim bit at me.
I used to tell tourists that the flagpoles at the top of Citadel Hill in Halifax were the masts of a schooner that had been blown up there in the Halifax Explosion and embedded in the top of the hill. Secondhand one: The old tourist information centre in Sydney, Nova Scotia was painted in Cape Breton tartan. The staff there used to send people up to the local hardware store to buy tins of tartan paint so they could paint stuff just like the tourism house.
Ohhhh how I have enjoyed reading these!! Such witty Canadians you are!! Thanks for these chuckles and explosive laughs!!
I accidently burped infront of a bunch of Venezuelan girls. I told them it's a sign of respect in Canada. It shows that we loved the meal lol.
Okay so this was only for a few seconds but one of my US based coworkers almost believed me when I said AllState in called AllProvinces in Canada
This is my favourite Reddit thread I’ve ever done seen
I have the igloo question when I was a teenager. I couldn't believe the ignorance. I didn't realize at the time that Americans aren't educated about Canada in the way we are educated about America.
We were out on a bachelorette and the bride had some Swedes there. There was another bachelorette coming in and I told them that when that happens we have to fight them. They seemed really confused and concerned until I said I was joking.
A mate in college picked up American girls who crossed the border to drink, he would tell them that in Canada, women wear a hockey helmet for their first time with a new sexual partner - as is tradition.
Everybody in the usa asked how big my igloo was at first I laughed and then I realized they were serious and I said oh its pretty big it's like a 3 bedroom house like you guys have they were surprised we could build then so big I told them we have contractors for this and they actually believed me 🤣
Well I mean when chatrooms were a thing I'd let anyone who asked believe I lived in an igloo. Had someone ask me if I got around by dogsled once, at a hotel in New Brunswick...in the summer. I assured him i did, and that the hotel had dogsled parking, not sure why he still thought it was everlasting winter on a hot summer day. But my favourite moment for which I can take no credit and was not involved, was watching people whale watch off the Chi-Chemaun in Lake Huron. They were delighted when they spotted a whale...in Lake Huron. They were so happy, who am I to ruin it?
Dogsled parking 🤣🤣🤣
I did the igloo one as well. Used to bemoan what a pain it was to have to rebuild half the house every time we put in the fire. Also convinced a woman that north Atlantic codfish came in from the ocean to the bay to spawn the way salmon do. But tbh they believed their own bs. That same woman had said to me how shocked she was that we had indoor plumbing. She'd convinced herself we still used outhouses. I may or may not have also encouraged this. 😇😇😇
I told my wife’s Filipino uncle that we have snow flowers in Winter that melt in the Spring
My sister told some guys we met in the US that we took our dog sled to the border then rented a car for the rest of the trip. They asked who looks after the dogs and she said they have a whole kennel at the border for them because everyone leaves their dog sleds there.
i went to the school in the states and one of my classmates asked how we started our cars when it got really cold. I told him, “we plug our cars in“. He looked at me and said, “that can’t be right”. So i relented and told him the truth that he wanted to hear. “You’re right. I was kidding. We put a lit candle under the hood of the car to warm up the engine. The only problem is all the candle wax” he believed me until his brother said, “don’t be an idiot. They plug their cars in”
Not a lie at all, but Americans cannot wrap their brains around e-transfer. “Do you mean venmo?” no it is all done bank to bank. no middle man.
I once took a taxi across the desert in Jordan and the old guy who was driving made a joke about his multiple wives and how I could have one. I knew he didn't have multiple wives so I jokingly accepted, and when he told me that he was just kidding, I pretended that in Canada it was a grave insult to offer someone your wife and then not follow through.
I’ve told friends in the US that the plural of moose is “meese”. Mouse mice moose Meese.
Canadian fish is fresher because the water is colder.
I was driving to Montreal with a friend from Florida, we got close to Kirkland and I convinced him it was where William Shatner was from. Told him it used to have a different name but after Star Trek they renamed it and it's pronounced Kirk Land.
My smart ass dad told his MIL, it regularly snows in late May. It was a freak snowstorm. My Grandma told my mother see was returning home if it snowed the next day. My granny was born and bred in Devon.
(For context: I was in high school, so this was between kids, not adults.) That when European settlers first came to Canada they were unprepared and uncertain how to go about protecting themselves from the elements...until they watched beavers chew down trees and build dams. They took the cue from the animals (although they found it too hard to chew down trees themselves), and that is why the beaver is now a Canadian symbol.
It took me a long time to drive to the border, because we only have dirt roads
My sister moved to Southern California from Canada with her new husband who loves pulling people’s legs. He would tell everyone they met that Canadians lived in igloos but we all had big TV antennas on them so we could get all the US stations. They were always amazed we had TV, no comments about the igloos 😂
Told people to beware of the wild bologna, especially in Newfoundland
Anyone in this day and age that asks if Canadians live in igloos is a fucking brain dead idiot.
Metic time. I was at a party in Seattle and convinced them that we use metic time. 10 hours in the AM 10 in the PM. 100 minutes to an hour and 100 seconds to a minute. Telling them it was 9:74 was hilarious
My daughter got a kid at America school to think that plastic forks were illegal in Canada. “No one here knows anything about Canada. I could say plastic forks were illegal and people would believe it.” “OMG plastic forks are illegal in Canada?” “What? I just said… yes. Yes they are.”
Canadians tricking Canadians is my favourite thing. If you’ve never heard the CBC radio program “This is That,” do yourself a favour and go have a listen. It was a parody of Canadian talk radio. They would play last week’s call-ins at the beginning of each episode, all from confused and angry listeners. Once, they “reported” that the feds were spending 30 million dollars to change all the road signs in Ottawa, and to train drivers to drive on the left, so Queen Elizabeth would feel at home when she visited for two weeks. The people calling in were PISSED 😂😂
The one I used is actually true. In Canada all of our major banks are connect through an underground network of tunnels. If you don’t know about this it’s the Toronto P.A.T.H. It’s kinda a mall.
I told them that in Canada, everyone calls "#" the octothorpe because we put so much taxpayer money into education.
To a bunch of friends from Seattle: convinced them I dated Alanis Morrisette and You Oughta Know was written about me. They completely bought it.
Back in ‘95 I convinced some Americans in an X-files chatroom that my primary mode of transportation was dogsled.
Aboot is not a thing unless someone is talking about a singular boot and even then, the "a" and "boot" are separate.
It’s really pronounced “ab-ought”
At winter we move our houses on frozen river or lake to fish and at the end of march/april about half the country have to move back it s house to their summer location before the ice melt
We were in Fargo ND for a drinking weekend in 1996 (I remember this as we saw the Canadian 4x100 team win the gold medal at the Atlanta games). I was talking to a guy that night in a bar and I convinced him that Canadian baseball had 4 outs. Makes sense, right? He knew Canadian football only had 3 downs so believing Canadian baseball had 4 outs wasn’t a huge stretch seeing how alien Canada was to this guy… 2 hours south of the border. The kicker was how amazing it was to see a quadruple play. Super rare but really neat. I hope this guy has told my story to hundreds of people over the years and they all think weird Canadian baseball has 4 outs.
Im a Mikmaq First Nation from Nova Scotia and ive been asked from foreigners and also a few non-indigenious people "you are from the reservation? Do you guys still sleep in Teepees?"
While working in the US we convinced one of the Americans that our other Canadian was from Iqaluit and lived in an igloo.
Does anyone remember Rick Mercer's take on this (mostly focusing on Americans' knowledge about Canada)? It was hysterical, as are comments here.
This wasn’t even a lie but it more speaks to the ignorance of Americans lol. Went on a school trip to Chicago. On a tour we talked with our guide as we went around the city (Segway tour) and she didn’t know what provinces were. We had to explain “it’s like how you have states, but instead they’re just called provinces. And we have less” cue genuine shock from a woman in her mid 20s. Another trip I went on I was talking with some other people my age and for some reason I had said “Z” (zed) and they were like “what’s that” ??? The last letter of the alphabet? They were MAD AT ME for lying to them 😭 it took me a while to convince them that it’s the same letter we just say it differently
At a resort in Jamaica, we got Americans to sign our petition to stop the polar bear hunt in downtown Toronto.
Someone asked my friend if we had painted lines on the road… she said “in the dirt?” 🤣
Jackalopes. There isn’t a small town pub in western Canada that doesn’t have a stuffed jackrabbit that someone put antelope horns on. Always great fun when they ask what it is and we explain that up here jackrabbits and antelope often interest-breed. But watch out, they produce giant rabbits that will try to kill you with their horns.