When I first moved from Canada to the U.S.A. nearly a decade ago, I expected to spend a lot of time explaining Canadian stereotypes. You know — the healthcare, the maple syrup, why we all supposedly say "aboot."
What I didn't expect was that my American friends would become obsessed with the little things about growing up in Canada. Not the obvious stuff, but the tiny moments that felt completely ordinary to me as a kid and somehow magical to them.
I grew up in Vancouver, so this list won't apply to every Canadian childhood. But these are the memories that made mine special —and the ones my American friends always tell me they wish they'd experienced too.
Hockey > football
Hockey is to Canada what football is to Americans.
And look, I don't know which Amazon Studios executive is in charge of all these new steamy YA soap operas, but they must be Canadian because they're REALLY putting hockey on the map. Heated Rivalry. Off Campus. Hockey players are having an international moment. It's like Canada's version of K-pop blowing up, and my friends cannot get enough of it.
Growing up, hockey players were our jocks. Football always felt kind of preppy to me, but hockey players? They were a little rougher around the edges. More down-and-dirty. Less country club, more "his front tooth got knocked out in a scrimmage."
If he doesn't have a flipper, I don't want him!
The drinking age (duh)
Canadians get to legally drink at 19 (18 in some provinces), which means we got two whole extra years of pretending we were adults.
While my American friends were still hunting down fake IDs, we'd already had our first legal nights out, our first overpriced vodka sodas and our first "never drinking again" hangovers.
I grew up between the mountains and the ocean
I don't think I fully appreciated how lucky I was until I moved away. Growing up in Vancouver meant mountains were just... there. The ocean was just... there. Dense forests were just... there.
A Saturday could involve grabbing lunch by the water, hiking through the woods and finishing the day watching the sunset over English Bay. It wasn't unusual. It was just life.
Now, when I tell American friends that I grew up somewhere you could ski in the morning and still make it to the beach later that day, they usually think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. As a kid, you assume everyone's hometown looks like yours. It takes leaving to realize just how unique it really was.
Being a Belieber in Canada
Here's the thing about teenage girls — they're wild. And the Beliebers were the wildest of them all. They knew everything about Justin. And even I, who wasn't a Belieber, knew by association.
Justin's favourite colour? Purple. The girl in the "Baby" music video? Jasmine V. His mom's name? Pattie.
I'm in the millennial age demographic that was JB's target audience, and my American friends genuinely thought being Canadian somehow put me one degree closer to Justin Bieber.
Logical? Absolutely not.
Growing up in an (almost) Abercrombie & Fitch-free society
Growing up, all I wanted was a boy who had washboard abs and smelled like "Fierce." What I got was a bad first kiss from a guy who wore Axe body spray — but that's neither here nor there.
If you grew up in Canada in the early 2000s, you know Abercrombie & Fitch wasn't just a clothing store — it was a status symbol. It was A&F, Hollister and Juicy Couture.
None of them had a lot of retail stores in Canada at the time (they did start the Canadian expansion in 2006, but they weren't everywhere). So if someone showed up to school in an Abercrombie T-shirt, you knew they'd probably just been across the border. The American border. Which somehow felt bougier than going to Europe.
One day I was telling a friend of mine we didn't have Abercrombie and she had thoughts. She told me she only had one Abercrombie shirt growing up — a hand-me-down from one of the rich girls at school — and she clung to it because she just wanted to fit in. Since everyone else could shop there, not wearing Abercrombie made you stand out.
And for those of you who forgot, a T-shirt was like $45. In 2008. Between that and the stock market crash, we were bleeding our parents dry.
Outdoor education camp
This is one of the things I took completely for granted because, as a kid, I hated the outdoors. I hated recess because it meant going outside.
But when I tell most of my American friends about the school field trips around beautiful B.C. and Outdoor Ed sleepaway camps we'd go on throughout the year, they're always incredibly jealous.
How quaint Canada feels
Canada has a certain sweetness to it. It's not perfect — I'm Canadian, so complaining about Canada is practically my birthright — but there's a wholesomeness here that I never really appreciated until I left.
Whenever my American friends visit, they always say the same thing: "This doesn't feel real."
And every time, I catch myself thinking the same thing: Wait... this is what I grew up with?
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Narcity Media.
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