Canada prides itself on being one of the friendliest countries around, yet newcomers are often shocked at how hard it is to form close long-lasting friendships in Canada.
Winter
Canada’s long winters also affect social life more than most people realize. For several months, the cold and early sunsets force people inside. There are fewer casual encounters and opportunities to make last-minute plans. People tend to go to work, go home, and stay inside. It can be hard to form meaningful friendships as a newcomer.
Politeness
Canadians are friendly towards strangers, but being polite doesn’t always equate to being your friend. A lot of immigrants will receive smiles and chatter, but be disappointed when they learn that someone can be nice yet still emotionally distant. Genuinely making friends in Canada can take a lot longer than you think.
Circles
Some Canadians stay near their hometown to work, which allows established friend groups from school, university, or growing up together to continue as adults. For these reasons, you may find that Canadians are friendly, but not looking to include more friends in their lives.
Scheduling
Spontaneous, last-minute get-togethers are almost nonexistent in Canadian culture. If you suggest meeting someone for a quick, casual coffee after work, they will whip out their calendar and give you a date two or three weeks away.
This obsession with rigid, advanced planning sucks all the easy-flowing momentum out of a potential friendship before it’s even begun. Those first few meetings end up feeling like business meetings.
Phrases
You will often hear informal promises thrown around, such as “We should totally get together!” or “You must come have dinner with me soon!” To an outsider, these promises of future fun sound genuine and thrilling. To Canadians, they are just really nice ways to say goodbye.
Constant relocation
Most Canadians lead transient lives. Whether it’s for work, university, housing costs, or better opportunities, people move around a lot, especially in large cities such as Toronto and Vancouver.
When you finally meet someone you click with, they take off to another province, change careers, or move out of the city because rent got too high. Since many friendships seem to have this transient tone to them, people don’t feel as comfortable putting themselves out there.
Sprawl
With the exception of a few crowded city-centres, Canadian cities are designed around the automobile, not pedestrians. People tend to live in car-dependent suburbs where they drive from their private garage to the strip mall parking lot, completely avoiding public space altogether. You lose those regular, mundane encounters that fuel human connection when you don’t have walkable communities, town squares, or local parks.
Compartments
Canadians love to keep different aspects of their lives completely separate from each other. You may have a great colleague that you joke around with daily at lunch, but that invitation to hang out or come to your home on the weekend is never offered. Friends from work, the gym, and your neighborhood tend not to overlap and are kind of supposed to stay in their own lanes.
Cost
Simple social luxuries can come with a hefty price tag in Canada. Dinner and drinks, concerts, or weekend plans can all cost way more than people anticipate when living in a large city. Socializing less often or becoming super picky about plans means that making friends takes longer.
Distance
A lot of Canadians are avoidant when it comes to confrontation or difficult discussions. Rather than telling someone they’re not interested in being friends or going on a date, they may ghost you, cancel plans often, or give noncommittal answers. It can leave you wondering where you stand.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.