Between Friends

A weblog for members of the Canadian Cartographic Association and other individuals interested in all things cartographic

Published Friday, April 28, 2006 by CCAer | E-mail this post

A former prime minister of Canada once said that living next ot the United States “is like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” It is also sometimes hard to get noticed by the elephant and more often than not Canadians (rightly or wrongly) feel that Americans take them for granted.

In an effort to let Americans know how much we mean to them and how much they mean to us, the Canadian embassy in the Washington, D. C. has published two 30 x 22.75 inch maps showing the inter-relationship of the two countries. It is available in two separate pdfs - one showing Canada (4.18 MB), the other showing the United States (6.39 MB). Both maps are filled with little snippets of information (“Canada was the Peach State’s largest trading parnter in 2004” or "Over half of the oil and gas produced in Alberta is exported to the U. S.”), attractive and worth a read.

1 Responses to “Between Friends”

Anonymous on 4:00 AM

I'm reminded of The Onion headline "Perky 'Canada' has own Government, Laws". I'm afraid though that most Americans will never pay much attention to Canada. On the other hand, I like the idea that there is a "Greater Canada" zone that reaches into the US, with a long shared history and culture -- perhaps most strongly in the upper New England / Northeast of the US, North Dakota, Montana, and the Pacific Northwest.

Mostly I want this to be true because I feel it myself, although I am still fairly mystified by Canadian politics, I grew up in Buffalo, where "The City" was Toronto, which sent out all the good radio and TV broadcasts -- and now I live in Seattle, which isn't quite as aware of Vancouver as Buffalo is of Toronto, but both Seattle and Portland seem to think of Vancouver as a role model of a city.

So.. I think there is a zone of "Greater Canada" in the US... but once you go south of it (meaning most of the the US), Canada might as well be Iceland, it seems. These maps are interesting though, thanks!