America 25: Canada

Crossing the border into Canada is like entering a parallel universe. The broad strokes are still the same: the accents only diverge a little, the same huge portion sizes, the same tipping culture. But something feels essentially different here. The cities don't have arterial highways running through the middle, the people seem more polite, more relaxed, less ambitious. There are still flags, but not as many, and not nearly as big. This is unmistakeably a different country. Different states in America seem different on the surface, but share a unifying deep Americanness. Here, it's the opposite: America and Canada share superficial similarities, but stand on profoundly different foundations.