Alex says:

Tim's was owned by Wendy's for a while (before they spun it off to generate cash before being bought out themselves). They made cake donuts (like Dunkin, not yeast like Krispy Kreme). They have them all over the place in Ohio where Wendy's is based. Not very good. It is, however, a big thing in Canada. They have them from BC to Nova Scotia.

Poutine, on the other hand, I've only seen in Quebec and the Maritime Provinces. It's melted cheese curds (*not* at all like cottage cheese) on fries with beef gravy. It always sounded gross but is surprisingly tasty.

In Canada, the have transport trucks (not semis), scribblers (notebooks), Coles Notes (Cliffs), Rockets (Smaties candy), Smarties (disgusting M&M look-alike), the Grey Cup (Canada's 'Super Bowl' with slightly different rules of play), etc. From the two years I spent there (one in BC and one in NB/NS) and from what I've picked up from wife (a Maritimer), I haven't ever seen anything that seemed universally and undeniably Canadian culture. It seems very much like America with regional differences (the South, Midwest, Pacific Northwest, New England, etc.) except the names are different (Maritimes, Prairie Provinces, etc.). The food isn't significantly different than what you can find in most of the towns and cities I've lived in here in the States. There are things like poutine, but they are regional (think fried balogna in the South). They have basketball, baseball, football, hockey (HUGE in Canada), etc. but even something like curling which seems very Canadian is actually from late medieval Scotland.

The only real differences I found between Canada and the States is politics and health care. They have a Parlimentary system inherited from Britain where the Prime Minister seems to be whomever is the leader of the majority party and the legislative, executive, and judicial functions seem to all be parts of the same branch of government instead of separate branches with checks and balances. Their head of state is the monarch of another courtry and thier passports ask for passage to be granted in the name of the queen (or something like that, at least when my wife got her passport ten years ago or so).

Healthcare is free, if you can wait. One of my wife's relatives had a brain aneurysm. Once it was identified, it was several months before she got a surgery to repair it. Very lucky it didn't rupture in the mean time. My wife, right before she came down to the States, herniated a disk in her back. She was 'fast-tracked' for an MRI to confirm the diagnosis and ended up on a six-month waiting list. When she came to the States, she had an MRI, a surgery, and was doing physical therapy within three-four weeks of her first doctor visit. On the other hand, our son was born in Canada. It was a very difficult pregnancy with lots of complications and he was born with a defect that required ICU and a surgery (he's fine now). Lot's of doctor's visits with lots of specialists, etc. and not a penny out of pocket (not directly, anyway).

They are less sue-happy and seem more into the collective good than the States, which is nice, but it really didn't feel much different than living in a nice, quiet college town with a big liberal arts school nearby. And while we export much of our culture via Holywood, much of that is funneled through Canada (think Lion's Gate films and tv shows like Doc which are filmed in Canada). Then there are all the actors and musicians that they 'export'. Some, like Alanis Morissette, they happily push out the door (the Canadian Tiffany before her remake for the American audience) and others like Leonad Cohen (which many Americans like but whom, as a whole, we don't seem to get). In a lot of little ways, it's like we are being slowly, secretly Canadianized (They walk among us). Which doesn't seem like such a bad thing.