To the average American, there are three great unknowns left: space, the ocean bottom and Canada.
There are TV series on space and the ocean, an indication of our interest, but nothing yet on Canada.
Things may be about to change. Just as China awakened American interest during the 1970s with Ping-Pong diplomacy, Canada may be turning to a sports offensive to let Americans know there is something between Minnesota and the north pole besides snow.
The sport of choice is football. Suddenly American cities find themselves sort of a part of Canada because the Canadian Football League has expanded to their towns. Does this mean we all have to learn the Canadian national anthem and sing it at football games? Does this mean we have to learn which end of the Canadian flag is up? (It's hard to make a mistake, but it has been done.)
When the CFL Colts open their exhibition season in Shreveport (!) next Friday, will the coin toss feature an American coin or a Canadian one?
The possible anxieties are endless.
Therefore, as a public service, The Sun is offering this Newcomers' Guide to Canada to help you know what your new homeland is all about.
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LOCATION: Canada is the closest foreign country to Baltimore. The nearest part, not counting football franchises, is some 350 miles away, Middle Island in Lake Erie, near Sandusky, Ohio.
Canada extends from the main U.S. border almost to the North Pole, except for Alaska and except when the United States wants to send nuclear subs under the Arctic Sea and then doesn't recognize the violated area as belonging to Canada.
About 80 percent of Canadians are believed to live within 100 miles of the American border, the longest undefended border in the world and also the straightest. Another portion lives huddled around the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, the world's biggest shopping mall.
Being further north, the Canadian climate is colder than this side of the Peace Bridge, but in the most populated areas the difference is just a matter of degree. If global warming comes about, lower Canada soon will become the way the United States is now.
A recent United Nations report found Canada the best country to live in, beating out Switzerland and Japan. The United States didn't come close.
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HISTORY: Canada was founded by the same people who founded the United States, only earlier. Actually, the Vikings landed in Newfoundland 500 years before Columbus sighted a much smaller island, but history isn't really ready to admit this yet.
Canada had two groups of founding settlers, the English and the French. The two finally fought it out in the French and Indian War 230 years ago, with the English thinking they had won when the French surrendered.
But the Canadians, even then a kinder, gentler country, didn't force the French to abandon their Francophile ways and the fruits of this senseless act of kindness still haunt them.
Before, during and after the American Revolution, many British loyalists moved north to escape the rebellion. Until the Civil War, escaped slaves moved north, too.
Where America and Britain have been described as two countries separated by a common language, Canada is one country separated by two languages. The degree of difficulty this causes goes up and down like the tides in the Bay of Fundy. Right now, it is high tide.
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THE PEOPLE: Canada is just like the United States, only different. By history and culture, it fits somewhere between Britain and America. America has drug stores, Britain has Boots the Chemist, Canada has Boots Drug Stores.
Because Canada has two official languages, everything official is said or printed twice, once in English and again in French. Commercial products must print their labels in both languages. Reading them gives you something to think about until the headache relief starts to kick in.
Like the United States, Canada is a mixture of all kinds of people. Until recently, Canada had a very liberal immigration policy, even without a Statue of Liberty. In fact, the war between the French and the English is really out-of-date because there are more immigrants there than Francophones (French-speakers). In further fact, this is one of the reasons the Francophones are restless: They are afraid unless they do something soon to imbed their leverage in law, they will lose it.
Just as the Francophones worry a lot about being subsumed by the Anglophones (English-speakers), the Anglophones worry about being subsumed by the United States. For quite a while the fear was about a land grab. The United States invaded during the War of 1812 (the subsequent march on Baltimore and the burning of the White House, we conveniently forget, was a retaliatory raid) and the fear that the gorilla south of the border might suddenly decide to do it again did not go away easily or quickly. In the long winter, pre-television nights, there wasn't much else to think about.
Then the fear became economic, that U.S.-based multinationals would turn serial economic killer or would be attracted by cute little Canadian companies and have their way with them.
Now the fear is that the invasion already is under way and that it is mass cultural: American movies, television, music and magazines overwhelming home-grown efforts, traditions and ideals. This is a fear the rest of the world has too, but Canada worries to a higher degree because of its joined-at-the-hip proximity.
Furthermore, Canadians want a better definition of "career success" than being offered a job south of the border.
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CURRENT ISSUES: A sluggish economy, but this is too boring to write about.
Remarkable political stability mixed with persistent political instability. Over the last 20 years especially, Canada has moved from major crisis to major crisis with barely a respite between them.
Canada last year had its first woman prime minister. She lasted four months and fell in part because of her faux pas but more because she was filling out the term of a man whose popularity ratings resembled Canadian winter temperatures.
From a majority in the House of Commons, the Conservatives plummeted to just two seats. The main opposition party, the Liberals, took over the government, but the political landscape was vastly different than it had been the day before the election. In addition to the Conservatives becoming all but invisible, the other main opposition party (Canada has more political parties then the United States, but fewer than Israel or Italy) also was reduced to near extinction.
In their place were two new parties, the Parti Quebecois, which stood for breaking up the country by liberating Quebec and which, not surprisingly, attracted votes only in Quebec, and the Reform Party, which finished a close third and opposed Quebec independence, among other things. It won no seats in Quebec.
This left Canada with only one functioning national party. It also left Canada with an official opposition party that didn't so much oppose the ruling party as oppose the country itself. And it gave Canada a Parliament with 201 of its 295 seats occupied by freshmen (a prospect that would delight American term-limiters).
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QUEBEC: Quebec feels Canada is not made up of a confederation of 10 provinces but of a union of English and French peoples, the way things were 200 years ago. Quebecers feel they have been slighted grievously by the rest of Canada (ROC) and once again are making noises about pulling out.
The Quebec issue manages both to keep people up nights with worry and put them to sleep with boredom. ROC is pretty tired of the issue, but it won't go away. And it may get worse, as Quebec separatists look likely to win provincial elections later this year and have promised to call in the divorce lawyers if they do.
One thing seems certain: Though Canada is the birthplace of the phrase "read the riot act," the contretemps is not likely to erupt into civil war. Except for the odd terrorist, Canadians are more culturally advanced than that.
Quebecers make a lot of noise about being an oppressed minority, but:
* For almost all of the last 25 years, the prime minister of Canada has been from Quebec. It is hard to get more clout than that.
* While they want minority rights for themselves, they don't want to give the minorities within Quebec any rights. In fact, they treat them worse than they accuse ROC of treating them. They also say they have the right to secede from Canada, but their minorities don't have the right to not succeed with them. This especially irritates the Indians and Inuit (Eskimos), who were there first and occupy almost exclusively huge portions of what is now Quebec.
BOTTOM LINE: Canadians don't want to be Americans. They like being who they are and fulfilling their own destiny, solving their problems and solving them their way, enjoying their own pleasures and their own pomp and complaining about their own politicians.
As for those earlier worries, both flags will be flown at Colts home games and both anthems sung (at least at games in which a north-of-the-border Canadian team participates). Words for "O Canada" will be provided. The coin tossed will be American.
Myron Beckenstein is assistant foreign editor of The Baltimore Sun.