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Originally Posted by Bcasey25raptor
Funny you should say that, I was in seattle a few months ago and the people down there asked me what state I was from.
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Americans are insular. They heard that you sounded different, so the only obvious conclusion was that you were from somewhere else in the U.S. Granted, that doesn't apply for U.K. accents. They "get" that they're not American. Canadian English is as close to American English as you can get, but it's distinctive enough that it sounds like you're from somewhere else in the U.S. to many people, even educated ones.
Your friend in Portland is not very well travelled if he/she thinks Canadians sound the same as Americans. Though Canadians who move to the U.S. do tend to see their speech evolve gradually to the point where they start eliding their consonants more and modifying their vowels.
As always in these discussions, go to Baitcar.com to hear jolting examples of underclass Western Canadian accents. Not that you sound like the idiots on that site, but you do sound more like them than the guys in Acajack's California link.
That you think you sound American is one of the unique aspects of Canadian life. We grow up with American TV and don't have a strong enough sense of our own identity to really be sure of ourselves in so many ways, speech among them. The northwest U.S. is known to have one of the most "neutral" American accents. Take a trip to anywhere in the northeast, anywhere in the midwest or anywhere in the south of the U.S. and you will not be so ignorant of your own distinctively Western Canadian accent anymore.
Hell, even go back a few pages to Middeljohn's video. He's southern Ontario through and through. Very different from how you speak.