Mot
Active Member
I moved here in December, please tell me what I am supposed to me missing about the US, frankly I don't miss anything but my friends and family. This country is far superior.
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Chicago - 26 shootings in 48 hours April 19-20
- Thread starter Brandon716
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I moved here in December, please tell me what I am supposed to me missing about the US, frankly I don't miss anything but my friends and family. This country is far superior.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
The United States has things that Canada doesn't, and I don't just mean warmer weather and more shopping selection.
It is simply the greatest cultural incubator in the world. The smartest people, the most fascinating ideas and the most moving cultural outputs that I have ever witnessed all were/came from Americans. I don't have to list any examples, there are simply too many to count.
Of course, America has American-sized problems. It is a much more frustrating place than Canada to live in and at times the collective sanity of the country seems to teeter on the brink. To me, it just lends a sense of fragility and beauty to their whole 232 year-old experiment.
I guess I prefer to live at the extremities than comfortably ensconced in the middle.
You've only been in Canada for 4 months. After one year you will be able to see this country through something other than rose-coloured glasses and when you do, don't be surprised to find yourself reacting against what you see - often in subliminally American ways.
Mot
Active Member
First you said 6 months, then 1 year. Frankly, I don't see any benefit the US offers that Canada doesn't. I do see benefits Canada offers that the US doesn't. healthcare, multi party political system, social safety nets, short-publically funded elections, gun control, politics with minimal religious interference, equality, group betterment rather than selfish motivation.
No country is perfect, but Canada gave my family a home, the US treated us like garbage.
No country is perfect, but Canada gave my family a home, the US treated us like garbage.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
Mot
Active Member
I am still waiting for you to tell me what the US offers that Canada does not. Please share.
We came as family class landed immigrants. The US would not allow me to sponsor my foreign partner for immigration. Gay families are banned from any benefit, right or privilege offered by the federal government.
We came as family class landed immigrants. The US would not allow me to sponsor my foreign partner for immigration. Gay families are banned from any benefit, right or privilege offered by the federal government.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
I think I already made it obvious in my first response to you: the US is currently the greatest incubator of talent and culture in the world and has been for quite some time. It also has the institutions to continue this phenomenon in perpetuity.
I defy you to find a country that has produced more luminaries in the last 100 years.
Mot
Active Member
So you cannot think of a single thing the US offers that Canada does not. Thanks for sharing.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
Okay, chief, how about these things:
Rock and Roll; Bob Dylan; Philip Roth; Miles Davis; Walt Whitman; Martin Luther King Jr.; Susan Sontag; Mark Twain; hip hop culture; the road novel; jazz and blues; Mark Rothko; Frank Lloyd Wright, Dizzy Gillespie; Gertrude Stein; Janis Joplin; Cormac McCarthy; Don DeLillo; Ford Maddox Ford; Motown; publications like Harper's, the New York Times, Atlantic and the New Yorker; Chris Ware; John Muir; the Elephant Six Collective; schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Chicago; smaller colleges like Dartmouth, Amherst, Smith, Wesleyan; Georgia O'Keefe; McSweeney's; New York City; MIT; Saul Bellow; the Beach Boys.
And this is just what I scrounged up in a few minutes of typing.
Brandon716
Senior Member
Mot, just ignore him like I did. He's just one opinion and it really doesn't matter a great deal. There are plenty Americans who feel more comfortable in Canada for many reasons.
Just like there are many Americans who dream of being Canadian, there are plenty of Canadians who dream of being American.
To each his own. Everyone should make the most of their desire and move where they feel comfortable.
I feel like 2007 was the year I got to explore most of the rest of the US that I had not previously seen in order to try and find a reason to stay here. From living in Chicago in the spring last year and Portland in the fall and winter, spending two weeks in the greater San Francisco bay area in the summertime during pride season to my trips elsewhere, I really didn't get the feeling that I should give up on moving to Canada.
Chicago is an amazing city. But it also has an amazing level of crap. Toronto is like having the amazement without so much of the crap. All Hipster is saying is that he wants the crap to go along with his amazement, and I hope he gets his dream. Maybe he can get his LA loft or Manhattan apartment someday.
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
That's only because of the US' sheer size and ability to insinuate itself into the global cultural consciousness like no other group of people have ever done in human history.
Mot
Active Member
You said I would be missing things America offers that Canada does not, so far you haven't convinced me and or anyone of your point. Am I missing any of those things here?...No. Am I denied similar things here...No. You can buy music anywhere, just last week I was able to buy a Jimi Hendrix CD at HMV. Imagine that, they sell American music in Toronto...shocking I tell you!
Keep trying though. This is funny.
Brandon- Good luck, the move here will be worth it.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
You know, there is a difference between the cultural forces that engender said artists to produce the brilliant works they have and you going into HMV on Yonge street and buying their products. If you can't recognize this, then at least don't slander it. God knows you'd be upset if I said that I couldn't care less about your partner not getting sponsored because I'm not gay.
Frankly, I don't know why I'm getting suckered into a shouting match with someone who baits me with idiotic and reactionary blanket statements like "Canada is far superior" and "I don't see any benefit the US offers that Canada doesn't." I don't think Canada is inferior; in fact, I even admit that the US is a more frustrating place to live in. I just feel that to make such a rash and negative statement against a country of 300 million is incredibly asinine.
At least Brandon gave me an honest, reasoned answer that I can sympathize with: he properly explored other US cities and still feels that Toronto offers the same desirability with less of the inconveniences.
Size has something to do with it, but the real question is how did the Americans - who two centuries ago attempted an experiment in enlightenment democracy in a colonial outpost - become so assertive? It's part of their psyche and while it has created its share of problems, it has also fermented some of the most forward thinking people, institutions and ideas. I really admire that.
Mot
Active Member
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
I was using this as an example to criticize your senseless slandering, as in: "how would you like it if something did what you did to them?" I think that many forumers here can attest that I am not homophobic.
As I recall, you beseeched me to "please tell [you] what I am supposed to be missing in the US." If that ain't baiting, I don't know what is.
How do you know this for sure? I lived in New York City during the fall of 2006and will be moving to Arizona in August for grad school. Do you want to jump to any more conclusions? As for examples, I gave you about fifty.
What the fathers of Confederation did in Charlottetown is hardly assertive. For better or for worse, being assertive would involve turfing your colonial masters and establishing a parliamentary republic from scratch.
My refutations don't really matter to you, though, and I don't feel like sitting here and wait for you to throw a bunch of pedantries in my face. Once this post is done I'm adding you to my ignore list.
I don't think I'll miss your stunning contributions to the ongoing transit debate, your hard work of posting development applications, or your thought-provoking insights about the architecture of the city.
Mot
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