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It was while on a recent stay in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, that John Thompson, former director of Canadian Studies at North Carolina’s Duke University, experienced a close encounter with the global phenomenon of the drunken Canadian tourist.

He was on a bus that had just picked up a sextet of Canadians outside a hotel, and although it was the middle of the afternoon, the group was “as drunk as lords and ladies,” he said.

They had scarcely taken their seats before the “spokesperson” of the group started singing Cielito Lindo (popularly known as the “Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay,” song) and “making up faux Spanish words on this bus filled with Mexicans.”

But how did the professor know these boors were Canadian? “The reason you know they’re Canadians is because Canadians mark themselves; they constantly wear items of clothing that identify them as Canadian,” he said.

Just in case the locals mistook them for Americans, Brits or Australians, the small group was “covered in maple leafs.”

Mr. Thompson was born in Winnipeg, taught at McGill University in the 1980s, spent 30 years in North Carolina and now lives in New Westminster, B.C.

He has spent much of his professional career steeped in Canadian studies, and after four decades “I see no sign that Canadians are thought of as quiet or nice.”

Among Canada’s most treasured national myths is the belief that it is a “polite” nation. Canadians are a quiet, humble and “nice” people. And for this, it is said, they are revered abroad — particularly when compared with the arrogant, “do you speak English?!” reputation of their “Ugly American” neighbours.

But Canada is also a nation of rowdy hockey fans, obnoxious backpackers, arrogant snowbirds and tightfisted tourists, all mixed in with a few doses of hefty jingoism and heavy drinking. Roll it all together, and it is easy to see why large corners of the globe have yet to be sold on the myth of the Nice Canuck.

In the distant reaches of central Europe, there are apparently enough fond feelings for Canada that the region can support a periodical on the topic: The Central European Journal of Canadian Studies.

In an email to the National Post, Canadian-born journal contributor Michael Devine wrote that among his circle of European theatre artists and “educated elites,” Canadians are seen as “slightly rustic,” “not very knowledgeable about world affairs” and even “unsophisticated.”

And yet, it is in the border areas of the United States where some of the world’s most fervent anti-Canadianism is nurtured.

Bellingham, Wash., a border town of 82,000, is regularly invaded by Metro Vancouverites sporting “Best Place on Earth” licence plates, buying up industrial quantities of cheese and filling jerry cans, garbage cans and even plastic bags with cheap American gasoline.

The Canadians are “rude,” they treat “townspeople like dirt,” they can’t drive, they can’t park and they obnoxiously fly Canadian flags from their SUVs on July 4th, according to popular anti-Canadian Facebook page entitled “Bellingham Costco needs a special time just for Americans.”

Tensions are not quite so fever-pitched in New England, although Canadians—and particularly French Canadians—have developed a nasty reputation for stingy tips. In Burlington, Vermont, fed-up restaurants have begun emblazoning their menus with the message “tipping is not just something you do in a canoe” or even tacking on Canadian-specific surcharges.

“If you can clearly tell [a table] is from Montreal, the restaurant will add on an automatic 18% just to sort of hedge their bets,” one Vermont server told the National Post.

And throughout the U.S., virtually nobody has any love for a Canadian hockey fan.

In an admittedly unscientific 2009 list drawn up by Spike TV, both the Vancouver Canucks and the Montreal Canadiens earned a ranking among the “top 10 teams with the most annoying fans.”

Two years later, GQ magazine similarly dubbed Canadiens supporters as among the “Worst Sports Fans in America.” Inside the Bell Centre, the magazine wrote, “the only things people boo more frequently than the U.S. national anthem are their own players.”

Phil Handrick, former director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Michigan State University, generally does not accept the notion that Canadians are uncharacteristically obnoxious, but he makes an exception for hockey.

“If there’s a negative trait, it’s one my students who grew up playing hockey teams in Ontario admire; they don’t back down to anyone on a level sheet of ice,” he said.

In 2011, when swarms of Canadians went to Buffalo, N.Y., for the World Junior Hockey Championships, in the aftermath Buffalo News columnist Donn Esmonde saw fit to denounce the “loud, drunk, obnoxious” — and tip-stingy — spectacle they had presented. “Another week, and we might have had a border war,” he said.

In the rare instances where a European country has found itself hosting great mobs of expatriate Canadians, reports have been remarkably similar.

During World War Two, the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Britain swelled to more than 500,000 men, many of whom were soon swarming quaint English pubs with uniquely Canadian concepts of how to drink alcohol.

“The damned 3rd division has now been inflicted on us,” reads a 1941 letter from a woman in Surrey, describing the arrival of the Canadian infantry division that would eventually go on to capture Juno Beach.

On Christmas Eve, 1941, the Canadians, she reported, “were rolling along in the middle of the road till all hours yelling at the top of their voices, the dead drunk being dragged along by the not so drunk.”

Mexico is currently enduring its own Canadian invasion. Every year, the country logs an incredible 1.8 million visits by Canadian citizens, the equivalent of an annual Mexican vacation for every 20th Canadian. At the height of winter, popular hotspots like Puerto Vallarta, “might as well just be a Canadian town,” said Mr. Thompson.

Inevitably, online reviews of Mexican and Caribbean resorts have begun complaining of the rash of “drunken Canadians,” “disrespectful Canadians” and “utterly wasted Canadians.”

As one otherwise positive review for a Puerto Vallarta resort put it, “the ‘adult relaxation’ pool did not allow children but it allows loud and obnoxious drunken Canadians.”

At a Dominican Republic resort, a similar anti-Canadian review prompted one self-described drunken Canadian to defend himself, claiming in an online post that resort staff had “loved” their alcohol-fuelled antics, particularly their penchant for hitching joyrides aboard baggage carts.

“To everyone we may have pissed off you need to lighten up, we all work hard so we can let loose on vacation,” he wrote.

On the eve of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Prime Minister Stephen Harper felt it necessary to tell his 34 million constituents that they should not feel “shy or embarrassed” to wave the maple leaf, even if they had a natural distaste for the boisterous nationalism displayed by “others.”

“We should never cast aside our pride in a country so wonderful in a land we are so fortunate to call home, merely because the notion has sometimes been abused,” he told the B.C. legislature.

The Prime Minister needn’t have worried. As per a 2003 survey by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, more Canadians were convinced of the superiority of their nation than almost any other citizenry on earth.

Canada took sixth place on a list of major countries ranked by patriotic sentiment, losing only to South Africa, Austria, Australia and the first-place contenders, Venezuela and the United States.

Indeed, unlike many others on the list, Canadians are among the only nation on earth to regularly adorn their backpacks and luggage with the national flag—a practice that has not gone unridiculed among traveller’s circles.

“Do you really need to wear that little flag around, all the time, for everyone to see?”wrote travel blogger Paul Duan in 2010, saying the practice “annoys the hell out of me.”

“You don’t see Americans, Brits, Aussies or Europeans waving their country flags and I’m certainly not going around telling strangers that I’m from California.”

David Ivkovic is co-president of the Los Angeles-based expat group Canadians Abroad, serving as the ambassador for what he calls the Canadian “sensibility difference.”

But it does not mean he can resist a maple leaf bumper sticker. “’I’m Canadian, f— you,’ that’s my mentality, and I’m not afraid to say it,” he said.

There is truth to the politeness myth, of course. For this story, the National Post contacted a sample of more than 50 youth hostels in the backpacking hotspots of Western Europe and Oceania.

Of those who replied, from Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and New Zealand, Canadians were unanimously given rave reviews: “Polite and amicable,” “mostly well-behaved and good company,” and “lots of manners and respectful.”

As one youth hostel on the outskirts of Oslo, Norway, reported, “Canadians are polite, gentle and the [total] opposite to Americans.”

When international students come to Canada, they are told to brace themselves for life among a hyper-deferent citizenry.

“Generally speaking, Canadians tend to feel uncomfortable in situations where another person is acting aggressive or rude,” declares the “Understanding Canadians” section of Simon Fraser University’s International Student Guide.

Canadians apologize so routinely, in fact, that legislators have felt the need to regulate the very act of saying sorry. The Apology Act, passed by the Ontario legislature in 2009, clarifies that when residents of the Heartland Province say “sorry,” it is merely a nicety that does not “constitute an express or implied admission of fault or liability.”

Despite these stereotypes, Canada finds itself in the unique position of seeing itself repeatedly thrust into the spotlight by two nationals who are anything but quiet and polite: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and pop star Justin Bieber.

But ask any Mexican resort worker, Vermont waitress or Slovenian theatre director, they may well tell you that an overweight binge drinker and a rich ne’er-do-well young man are just about the perfect candidates to hoist the maple leaf abroad.

I'm ashamed to be a Canadian living in one of the most legally corrupt countries on the planet.
Its a country is riddled with corrupt police, a corrupt justice system and even worse, apathetic politicians who turn a blind eye to the most serious problems that Canada faces.

It appears that across Canada if problems are ignored or hidden, they don't exist.

The most serious problem Canada faces is that children and Fathers have no legal rights. Our Courts make a mockery of justice.

The Ontario Justice System is rotten from the police up.
Take Ottawa Police Detective Peter Van Der Zander who fabricates evidence and obstructs justice. Van Det Zander epitomizes the abuse of power and the willingness of police in Canada to fabricate evidence, obstruct justice for his own political agenda that is promoted by Canadian Police Forces, that is to promote Violence against men, to deprive children of fathers and to treat men as second class human beings.

When Canadian Police lay charges, they are often for a political and not a legal purpose. It's often to intimidate, threaten, harass, to terrorize those who the Police don't like and it places Canadian Police in the criminal camp.

Then you have Ontario's Secret Police, the Children's Aid Societies of Ontario who fabricate evidence to incarcerate children even children who are foreign citizens and unfortunately, foreign governments have delusions as to the integrity of the Canadian Justice System.

If you are thinking of immigrating to Canada and happen to be male, don't come here unless you understand that men, do not have legal rights in Canada and it is a cess pool of injustice and where police engage in habitual flagrant criminal behaviour because they are the police.

Ontario's Crown Atttornies are riddled with man hating extreme feminists that bring the entire administration of justice into ill-repute laying vexatious charges against men and dropping charges against the most violent of female offenders when they have assaulted a male.

The lowest forms of Crown Attornies in Ottawa are Tara Dobec, Vivian Lee and perhaps most notorious Vikki Blair.

Canada's justice system allows these corrupt insults to justice to have absolute power, their employer is the Ontario Government, the Attorney General of Ontario who appoints and directs political operations rather than legal operations.

Canada is corrupt because our politicians direct it's government employees to behave like criminals and to dispense justice according to gender.

It's enough to make you want to rip up your Canadian passport however once Canadian injustice starts, it entraps its victims effectively incarcerating them in one of the most corrupt countries on the planet Canada.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com

Thanks to Canadian Politicians, there is little difference between the way the world views Canada from the United States.

The Conservatives don't think any way other than following the zealots of the Republican tea party where logic is thrown out for far right ideology that has it's basis in a corrupt mentality that has a never ending theme of attacking crime by the ever increasing numbers of Canadians incarcerated.

The Conservatives achieve this by following the directions of Hitler's bibic le that operates by removing rights one by one so the public don't notice it and sooner or later, all rights are gone.

Now, our criminal courts operate like that of Hitler, Disclosure is a thing of the past, a theory of law that no longer exists in practicality.

Police now routinely fail to provide disclosure and get away with it by having politically appointed judges some of whom simply put a rubber stamp on any corrupt request of the police in their outright terrorism of Canadians who don't
see what they tell the public to see.

Canadian Police don't want to see male victims of domestic violence and, our courts don't want to see female perpetrators of violence.

The end result is Canada promotes violence by women towards men and gives them a licence to kill men.

Canada is a country where Law Professors openly promote the murder of men by using a subterfuge of claiming to be victims, without any requirement for credible or reliable evidence. You see, Canada has Male Sharia Law where she said is god said and anything a man says well, is not worth a Canadian red cent.

‘I’m Canadian, f— you’: How boorish, ‘utterly wasted’ tourists are rewriting the treasured myth of the Nice Canuck