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Comment by warwick | Hacker News Reader

It really depends on the area of Canada you're in. My folks live in Southern Alberta and there's still a bit of xenophobic climate there. That being said, I didn't notice it when I went to school out east, or now that I live on the west coast.

Edit: Actually, I should mention that since I went to school in Quebec, there was usually some sort of xenophobic/racial issue in the news. I went to an english school though, so most of the kids were from Ontario or Montreal where it's way less of an issue.

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I've lived in Northern Ontario (St. Josephs Island), and owned a gas station. We employed the one black person in the region in a gas station we'd invested in and saw a noticeable drop in sales.

Xenophobia is doing fine in rural Ontario. Needless to say we stood by our employee.

Xenophobia is endemic to rural areas in general. But I agree with your implied point (unless you weren't implying it, in which case I'll take it) that Canadians have a blind spot about praising ourselves for how tolerant and inviting we are. Like everything else about Canada (I mean English Canada), it needs to be understood in terms of an implied contrast with the US.

Hmm, that's a lot of implying. And this is kind of inflammatory material. I think I'll stop here.

> Canadians have a blind spot about praising ourselves for how tolerant and inviting we are.

That's true. For big cities the situation is better but not nearly as good as it could be. Technically Canada is 'colour blind', but in reality it definitely isn't, which is a pity.

I'm not even sure if it is better than all of the US, both countries have enough variation that some areas are ahead of others in both countries.

As for it being inflammatory, I think it's perfectly ok to outline the shortcomings of a country as long as its done in a realistic way without an agenda.

My own (current) country, the Netherlands has gone from being fairly tolerant to being outright hostile to foreigners, especially those of Maroccan, Turkish, Romanian and Polish descent (for a variety of reasons). In the last elections the ultra-right scored the biggest gain of all parties, a full 15% of the electorate now backs them. A very scary development.

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