Growing up in Canada involves dealing with a lot of strange things that feel completely normal. For example, we saw strange ads between cartoon programs that would only air on Canadian TV networks, and we also kept things in our pockets that didn’t exist abroad.
These seemed perfectly ordinary over here. But then, you’d speak to someone from the U.S. and realize that they had absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. They lived a rather different life from us.
Here are ten things Canadians grew up with that Americans didn’t. Which one do you remember experiencing as a child?
Heritage Minutes
Anyone who watched Canadian TV as a child probably remembers seeing Heritage Minutes. These one-minute films originally appeared between TV shows and cinema films as a way of telling Canadian history stories. They’re still being made today.
In fact, they became so popular that they’ve been parodied a dozen times in Canadian pop culture. But Americans never had the same experience, with the only similar show being Bicentennial Minutes, although that focused on American history instead.
The house hippo PSA
One minute, you could be watching regular programming on TV. Then you’d see a tiny hippo living in someone’s kitchen. Along with it came a voiceover, talking about House Hippos as though they were something real, before it was revealed to be a media-literacy PSA.
Essentially, the goal was to teach young Canadian kids about how they shouldn’t trust everything they see in the media. It was a nationally aired program that many Canadian kids still remember today. However, Americans never saw such a broadcast.
Canadian Tire Money
You’ll find Canadian Tire Money slips in many Canadian families’ drawers. These came from the Triangle Rewards program, which gave customers these slips for going on shopping trips. They work as a form of store currency.
Sure, plenty of American retailers do have their own kinds of loyalty programs, but none of these are similar to the Canadian Tire tradition. Most Americans don’t know anything about this specific kind of fake store money.
Nestlé SMARTIES
Asking for SMARTIES in Canada will get you candy-coated milk chocolate that’s made by Nestlé. It’s been quite a long-running product over here. However, in the United States, their version of Smarties is quite different, and it’s not even made by Nestlé.
Their Smarties are what we call Rockets, a pastel-colored kind of candy in the shape of tablets. As such, Americans never grew up eating Smarties in the same way that we did.
Mr. Dressup
The majority of Canadian kids don’t need an introduction to Mr. Dressup because they’ll remember the Tickle Trunk rather well. It was a CBC series that ran between 1967 and 1996, quickly becoming part of Canadian pop culture, and was led by Ernie Coombs.
Sadly, American children never got to experience all the fun of this show. They’re unlikely to understand how important it was to Canadian children’s television history as well.
The Terry Fox school run
As soon as September came around, it was time to get your sneakers and safety pins out to go for a group walk around the field. Yes, it was the Terry Fox school run. It began after 1981, and it didn’t take long for schools across the country to start participating in it.
The Terry Fox school run is still a tradition in quite a few schools today. But over in America, the annual school run doesn’t really exist.
French immersion classes starting in kindergarten
It’s no secret that many Canadians are bilingual, and that’s mostly because we began having French immersion classes from kindergarten onwards. It’s thanks to the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages’ first French immersion program in Saint-Lambert in 1965.
Of course, some American kids do get language immersion classes at school, but their classes are more likely to be in Spanish, rather than French. Most Americans don’t have memories of learning French from a young age.
Growing up with metric measurements
Right from the beginning, Canadian math and science classes used the metric system, meaning that we learned about centimetres, litres, and kilograms as young children. It’s not as common in America.
The imperial system is still the dominant one down south, especially in the classrooms. Some science classes do use metric. However, overall, math and gym classes in the United States use the imperial system, rather than metric.
Kids Help Phone posters in schools
If you don’t remember the Kids Help Phone poster, are you even Canadian? There were usually posters across Canadian schools that had the phone number printed on them in big letters, telling young people how they could call or text for support anytime.
A lot of us grew up seeing that number long before we actually knew why it was there. There’s no such 24/7 call system solely for kids in crisis in the United States, which is a real shame.
Canada Games torch visits and school assemblies
It’s weird to think that America doesn’t really have an equivalent to the Canada Games. After all, it’s an important event for almost every Canadian student, especially when you get to see the torch come through the town.
Some schools even turn the torch stopover points into assemblies. But while there’s often a lot of excitement surrounding the Canadian athletes during these visits, American students never get to experience it.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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