The Great White Hope, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #148

October 3, 2011 Arthur Tebbel 2 Comments

Dear Art,

I recently moved from America to Canada.  It’s been a rough transition for a lot of reasons.  Learning to gauge distances using the metric system, adding the letter u back into a bunch of words, figuring out what to order at Tim Horton’s.  It’s been quite a stressful time.  One thing that’s been dramatically easier is getting a date.  After living in New York and Los Angeles it has been night and day in the number of responses I’ve gotten through OK Cupid since I moved to the Great White North.  I originally attributed this as less institutionalized racism in Canada compared to the United States.  Do you have any thoughts on other reasons for this disparity?  More importantly, do you have any tips on dating Canadian girls?

-Name Withheld

Anonymous,

I think there’s one thing we should tackle right off the top.  Never, while in the company of a group of American friends, refer to an absent Canadian partner as “My girlfriend from Canada” as that will instantly trigger anywhere from 15 to 90 minutes of constant mockery depending on the company you keep.  An incident like that would probably lead to a lot of deep resentment that would, over a long enough timeline, probably poison the relationship from the inside.  That would be tragic.

Racism is probably a bigger factor than most people would suspect.  OK Cupid collects data on their members’ interactions and publishes articles based on the statistics they get.  They did one on race.  It seems that black men have the second lowest response rate.  I’m cynical enough to give you that most of this is, in fact, institutionalized racism.  I’m not willing to believe that this doesn’t exist in Canada.  Sure American liberals have this vision of Canada as a liberal paradise to our immediate north but I’ve seen too many hockey games to believe there aren’t any racists up there.  I think you might just be getting attention because being American is exotic to Canadian women.  Never underestimate the appeal of the nominally different.

I am so happy you asked for tips on dating Canadian girls.  While I’m not 100% sure I’ve ever even spoken to a Canadian girl I’m 110% sure I can offer you helpful advice here.  I would avoid any talk of the French and Indian War.  I know you probably want to show off your middle school history skills for the ladies but you never know if there’s some old bad blood these.  There might still be some hard feelings over Louis XV calling Canada “a few acres of snow.”  Best to steer clear.  Drink slowly.  Canadian beer is often stronger than it’s American counterpart.  You don’t want to get in over your head with alcohol just because you grew up in a country that forces it’s beer industry to conform to the wishes of anti-alcohol religious nuts.  Slow down.

Most importantly, lay off the American superiority material.  Not because it’s tacky (you could probably make it work) but because it largely isn’t true anymore.  Their currency was stronger than ours for most of this year.  Their unemployment rate is lower than ours.  Their government doesn’t seem to solely consist of petulant children, although parliamentary systems attract all kinds.  To say nothing of their health care system.  In fact, I would focus on locking down a Canadian girl as fast as possible just for the green card.  Then see if she has a friend for me.  I’ll meet you up there.