You have to hand it to the Americans, they know how to absorb something into their own culture when it's better. American coffee and American beer have terrible reputations, but the espresso-based and craft-brewed realities are something else entirely. Even so, the cafes in Montreal still somehow manage to be better. The same way that you feel American and British influences elsewhere, you feel the European influence most strongly here. Cobbled streets, little shops, lots of bikes, and cute cafes with amazing coffee. That said, you can't help but feel a subtle nod to American-ness in the imported French tradition of drinking it from a bowl.
Despite its official status, the Irish language is more like a foreign language in Ireland; people learn it in school and retain some words and phrases, but fluency is comparatively rare. By contrast, Germanic and Nordic countries are genuinely bilingual, with most people switching seamlessly between fluent English and their native language. Canada is a rare example of both: in most of the country, French is a theoretical second language, but as soon as you make it into Quebec things become a lot less theoretical very quickly. English is the quirky foreign language here. People will still happily use it to speak to you, but there's a sly smile as if to say "heh, check out this guy, he doesn't even speak French".
Australia is, in most things, a mashup of America and Britain. Canada feels much the same, but the mix here is different. You can see British politeness with American gregariousness, British pomp with American spectacle, and British kindness with American hustle. That's not to say it's uniform, of course; the closer you get to Niagara the more American things look, until the two merge in that great unifier, the tourist attraction. Above the thundering water, the cultural shift is far more peaceful: two opposite ends with a smooth gradient between them.
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.
Some cities are fun and frantic, some downtempo and relaxed, and others just seem, frankly, boring. But it's too easy to just go to a place and take whatever experience you get. How many of those places would have been different on a different day, with different people, or in a different mood? You can't assume your experience is reflective of the place when, likely as not, it reflects your own mindset. If there's only one great American principle, it's surely this: you write your own story. Every person who has come to this country has, in their own small way, made it a reflection of themselves.