Who posts/reads from a country other than the United States?

I read here from time to time but don't post too often.
I live in north west Alberta Canada, long cold winters short summers

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beekeeping
winemaking
living off grid

I'm posting from Canada, a farm in the NW corner of the Greater Toronto area. On my mother's side, I have Canadian roots that go back to the 1830's but my father immigrated with his parents after WW1.

I guess the economy is the big concern, according to all the news reports. The main aspects of the economy seem to be stock prices and gas prices. We can't figure out how our gas is so cheap now (.85 $cdn per litre which would be roughly $US 4 per gallon)


Politically we are skewd to the left of Americans. Our right wing Prime Minister has policies that are pretty much the same as Obama.

We have a different political system, which I won't explain here, except to say that a government can be defeated before its full term, if enough opposition members vote against it. However, in a lot of ways, there is not much difference except leadership in the 3 major political parties. None of them would dare to make major changes to such things as the medical plan, marriage laws, gun control, death penalty, and a lot of other laws. This is why we have a minority government that lasted more than 2 years and will probably last at least another 2 years. No one in opposition can find anything so seriously wrong with what the current government is doing that they will risk the wrath of the population by defeating the current government.

We have embraced a mosaic view of immigrants rather than the melting pot that was the US approach. This meant that Canada told immigrants that they were free to keep the national characteristics of their home of origin, as opposed to blending in to their adopted nation. I don't think that either approach has totally worked. One result is that it is difficult to define what a Canadian is today, because we are a nation of immigrants, particularly in the major cities.

Canadians like to compare themselves favourably with Americans. We like to think that our chief national characteristic is niceness.