O Canada Quotes

My generation of Canadians grew up believing that if we were very good or very smart or both we would some day graduate from Canada.

We are being swallowed up by the popular culture of the United States but then the Americans are being swallowed up by it too. It's just as much a threat to American culture as it is to ours.

Never hear anything bad about Canada that's one thing - in fact I guess it's the only thing.

Canada is a society rather than a nation.

Living next to the United States is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast one is affected by every twitch and grunt.

Canada reminds me of vichyssoise - it's cold half-French and difficult to stir.

Americans assume Canada to be bestowed as a right and accept this bounty as they do air without thought or appreciation.

Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.

'Old Tomorrow.'

'Rich by nature poor by policy' might be written over Canada's door.

Canadian politics in British Columbia is an adventure on the Prairies a cause in Ontario a business in Quebec a religion in the Maritimes a disease.

Newfoundland is a great English ship moored near the Banks during the fishing season for the convenience of the English fishermen.

Is heaven more beautiful than the country of the muskox in summer when sometimes the mist blows over the lakes and sometimes the water is blue and the loons cry very often?

The Greeks who knew everything understood that without the orgy there is no middle ground between bedlam and Toronto ... we need the healing grace of the orgy in this country.

Canada is a live country - live but not like the States kicking.

Saskatchewan is much like Texas - except it's more friendly to the United States.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

We sing about the North but live as far south as possible.

Canada has no cultural unity no linguistic unity no religious unity no economic unity no geographic unity. All it has is unity.

So long as the majority of Canadians have two countries one here and one in Europe national unity will remain a myth and a constant source of internecine quarrels.

We French-Canadians belong to one country Canada: Canada is for us the whole world: but the English-Canadians have two countries one here and one across the sea.

My father spoke French with a Bank of Montreal accent.

If a player continues transgressing the rules his side shall lose him.

Love Canada or give it back.

The Americans are our best friends - whether we like it or not.

Canadians have been accustomed to define themselves by saying what they are not.

I know that through the grace of God I am the founder of Manitoba.

Actually when it comes to knocking the Canadian cultural scene nobody outdoes Canadians myself included. We are veritable masters of self-deprecation.

Canadians are generally indistinguishable from Americans and the surest way of telling the two apart is to make the observation to a Canadian.

A Torontonian is a man who leaves culture to his wife.

Toronto has no social classes - only the Masseys and the masses.

TheSc ots are the backbone of Canada. They are all right in their three vital parts - head heart and haggis.

Listen your Lordship I'm a respecter of institutions. Even in Paris I remained a Canadian. I puffed hashish but I didn't inhale.

I think a stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat born on the soil whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations with a stout wife and a half-dozen chickens is good quality.

The Canadian spirit is cautious observant and critical where the American is assertive.

If ever Confederation fails it will not be because Quebec - the political voice of French Canada - has separated from it. It will be because the way to keep Quebec in it has not been found.

When the white man came we had the land and they had the bibles. Now they have the land and we have the bibles.

We shall be Canadians first foremost and always and our policies will be decided in Canada and not dictated by any other country.

The situation is one something like living with your wife. Sometimes it is difficult and even irritating to live with her but it is always impossible to live without her.

The Ottawa river flows out of Protestant Ontario into Catholic Quebec.

The habitant is the true Canadian for he has no other country.

The immigrant who comes to Canada really sees the country much more as a whole. He doesn't know the nuances which are so important and so dearly beloved by the Torontonian or the Montrealer.

Give us men to match our mountains Give us men to match our plains: Men with empires in their purpose And new eras in their brains.

Ottawa is a city where nobody lives though some of us may die there.

Canada was settled in the main by people with a lower middle-class outlook and a respect rather than an affectionate familiarity for the things of the mind.

The trouble with this whole country is that it's divided up into little puddles with big fish in each one of them.

Historically a Canadian is an American who rejects the Revolution.

belongs anywhere even the Rocky Mountains are still moving.

Confederation is only yet in the gristle and it will require five years more before it hardens into bone.

You are a big country now but you still tend to feel small and fragile. If the United States gets a cold you get pneumonia.