Oh, Canada -- We Americans Just Envy Your Civility, Quality Of Life

We like you, Canadians. We feel a kinship with you. In many ways we envy you. Don't get too upset with us Americans because of the results of that recent study.

You're our cousin Ralph who lives across the street. You're the nice guy whom we can always count on in times of trouble, like, say, a world war. You're the ones with whom we can have 4,000 miles of border unguarded by soldiers.

Don't get too upset about the following score: 12,994 to 360.

That score measures how much Americans and Canadians appear to be interested in the other.

The score represents the number of news stories that print and broadcast outlets in Canada ran about the U.S., and vice versa.

Guess which nation hardly ever mentions its closest trading partner?

And that isn't the only indignity, said the Canadians.

Not only do we hardly report any news stories about them, they complained, but that measly coverage is "stereotyped."

Read an American newspaper, or watch a TV news story about Canada, they said, and what you get are "pretty ice floes, Canadian Mounties . . . a vast frozen tundra with a few hot-headed Frenchmen."

For six months a group called the Center for Media and Public Affairs counted the stories that ran in nine American media outlets (including The Seattle Times) and compared them with a similar number of Canadian outlets.

"Canada comes off as the largest invisible land mass in the world," a spokesman for the study was quoted as saying. "It's as though Canada is too friendly to be newsworthy. . . . Canadians don't go to war with us. They don't take anybody hostage. The prevailing philosophy here is, `Why should anybody care about them?' "

OK, it's true that the first 10 Americans I questioned couldn't even name one of your political parties.

OK, it's true that only a third knew the name of your prime minister, although even then some thought it was "Mulhaney" or "Mullowney." (You knew it's Brian Mulroney, right? Yeah, right.)

OK, it's true when I asked people to name some famous Canadians, the list pretty much ended with Bryan Adams, the rock singer; Peter Jennings, the ABC anchorman; and Paul Schaffer, the band leader on David Letterman's show.

I admit I haven't met any Canadians who were so ignorant about the U.S. If you took an average Canadian and an average American, it wouldn't surprise me that the Canadian could name more of the Democratic candidates for president.

OK, Canadians, don't get upset with Americans for being ignorant about your country. Heck, most of us don't know the names of the neighbors next door.

Probably plenty of Canadians don't know their neighbors' names, either. But I've always imagined in Canada that bit of civility has been retained.

When Americans talk about Canada, they may not know the names of the politicians, but politics isn't what interests Americans.

We invariably speak of your country - and I don't mean to sound patronizing - as a "nice" place, as in a nice place to raise families. These days that's of paramount importance to Americans.

Don't get upset because we joke about Canadians being nothing more than Americans on hockey skates, or how nothing ever happens in Canada.

We're just wishing our lives would be less affected by crime and the nastiness now permeating our cities. We realize you, too, have drugs and violence. But because you're a vastly smaller population, the scale of the bad things doesn't seem so overwhelming.

Many of those 12,994 stories about America that ran in Canada were about a violent, materialistic, intolerant society.

Have you considered that Americans may not want their illusion of Canada destroyed by similar stories?

Just last week I took a weekend vacation trip to British Columbia.

"It's a nice place, isn't it?" my friends back home said. And it was.

Now, I could have returned with news clippings about problems with the health-care system, with clippings about sordid murders. I returned with stories about fishing.

No Canadian stories? Have you considered that perhaps - precisely because you are our cousins - we don't want to find out too much?