By Canadians

"we French & English never lost
our civil war
endure it still
a bloody civil bore."
--Earle Birney , "Can. Lit."

"I was doing a gig in L.A. and this woman comes up to me and says, 'Are you really from Canada? Oh my God, I could never live there, it's so ... cold!' I'm like, 'Excuse me, is that your house I just saw slide down the cliff? I'll wear an extra sweater!'" --Maggie Cassella

"We are an ironic people; irony and some sourness is mixed in our nature. It is a matter of climate. We are a northern people." --Robertson Davies , on Canadians, in Conversations

"Canada, having few indigenous prejudices, has been compelled to import them from elsewhere, duty-free, and it is the rare Canadian who is not shaken, at some time in the year, by "old, unhappy, far-off things / And battles long ago", like Wordsworth's solitary reaper. We are a nation of immigrants, and not happy in our minds." --Robertson Davies , The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

"A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question, 'What is a Canadian?'" --Irving Layton

"After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans ... There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les Anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them." --John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin

"Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire." --John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin

"The old cliché about having all your eggs in one basket takes on new meaning with Canada and the United States, because there is something even more wrong about having all your eggs in someone else's basket. It is worse still if that country is much larger than you and worst of all if they don't have all their eggs in your basket. This is not a relationship. It is a dependency. Canada's survival will depend largely on its ability to change that dependency back into a relationship. And one of the key factors in doing that will be the redistribution of our trade. But we can't do that if we have no politicians willing to take the lead." --John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin

"Canada is the only country in the world where you can buy a book on federal-provincial relations at an airport." --Michael Valpy

"As Canadian as possible under the circumstances." --Heather Scott, winner of a 1972 contest run by Peter Gzowski

"Canadians have an abiding interest in surprising those Americans who have historically made little effort to learn about their neighbour to the North." ~ Peter Jennings ~ of ABC News fame

By non-Canadians

"But if we [Americans] are the rugged individualists, why do we spend so much of our time trying to get everyone to march in lockstep? And if Canadians are so reserved and moderate, why are they so progressive about letting people do what they want to?" --Samantha Bennett

"I don't even know what street Canada is on." --Al Capone

"If aliens invaded Quebec, the U.S. press would give it two inches in the entertainment section." --Sparrow, in Alison Bechdel 's Dykes to Watch Out For

"In a world darkened by ethnic conflicts that tear nations apart, Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect." ~ Bill Clinton ~ President of the United States 1993-2001

"It'll be nice when it's done." --Oscar Wilde