Following Somerset Maugham's advice that "The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit*, here are a couple of tidbits about Canada, the US and the UK.

One of the sillier quotes about Canada is that "Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen." Certainly no longer the case, post-Expo '87 and the more recent Olympics in Vancouver. As for the US, I always laugh when I hear the quote about how the US is the only country in history to have gone from barbarism to decadence without having passed through civilization in between.

But by far the pithiest expression I've heard of the great gulf that separates the two Children of a Common Mother, is:

The boundary between Canada and the United States is a typically human creation; it is physically invisible, geographically illogical, militarily indefensible, and emotionally inescapable.
Hugh Keenleyside, Canadian diplomat, 1929

As a Canadian who grew up in a mountainous backwater of British Columbia, the US was always like a big brother: you were never sure on any given day whether you hated or loved it more, you were fervently competitive while harbouring a secret belief that you would never best it because it was always so much bigger, and you bore the good-natured pummeling it inevitably handed you stoically.

To me as a Canadian, however, the UK was like an irritating great-aunt: overbearing and largely irrelevant, but you still had to be polite whenever she came to visit.

Now that I am in the position of living in, or having lived in, all three countries, I have slightly different views. Canada has grown mythologically in my memory since I left in '04. I have an even greater belief in the horrendous failure of the US to live up to its promise as a country, while simultaneously having the greatest regard and love for the American people individually. And the UK has so far surprised me greatly with its civilized way of life and overall sweet disposition of its people (excluding that one jackass in the BMW who raced past blaring his horn when I was trying to back out of my driveway one morning).