The Great Canadian Skyline Thread!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Are you saying that these type of opinions about NY are a prevalent perception among Canadians? If so, I'm surprised I've encountered so few of them having spent my entire life in Canada.

One has to be very careful not to confuse the traits of individual or niche groups with those of an entire culture. When observing human culture, the very first reaction upon encountering something curious or novel is, "What an odd/interesting individual". Then after much time, analysis and comparison, one can translate their observation into 'What an odd/interesting group". Getting to the point of examining entire nations on a cultural level of course requires exceptionally more vigour, and I would argue may even be beyond the scope of anecdote, and likely requires examining cultural media.

Now that's not to say that a person shouldn't analyse all of her or his human cultural interactions; there are myriad reasons why one should. I'm only commenting on the context in which one frames such interactions and the conclusions that are to be drawn.

While it's obviously not everyone or even a majority, the type of sentiment expressed by Mistercorporate is definitely present among Canadians. It's not just your isolated nut case on the street yelling ''the end is nigh''. Obviously it doesn't necessarily manifest itself in the ''Toronto is basically equivalent to NYC" way that we witnessed here, but certainly the impulse to demonstrate and seek recognition and approval (even in the face of ridicule) that Canadian Thing X is just as good as or even better than Thing X In Another Country (especially the US) is really strong among a certain chunk of the population. Enough for it to be a "thing" that people will sometimes notice about Canadians.

I suppose it's in some way related to Canada's low global profile and the sentiment that Canada doesn't get enough credit for all the things it does well (and people may have a point on this one BTW), but geez the way it plays out it can be so annoying and embarrassing sometimes.