It’s strange to find yourself with one foot in one country and the other in a neighboring one. I was born in Canada, went to school there, taught school there, got married there and thought I’d be there forever.

In 1968 my husband’s company asked him to move to a recently acquired plant in West Virginia.  I went along rather unwillingly.  If you’re going to have to leave home, it probably shouldn’t be from an urban, metropolitan area to a small town set in the hills of West Virginia. Nothing wrong with the state, it just wasn’t like home.

Fourteen years later, after an intervening move to Oswego, N.Y., we decided it looked as if we were going to be staying in the United States and began the naturalization process, which came to fruition when we became U.S. citizens in November 1982.  We have now lived in this country longer than in Canada. We are completely Americanized. Our daughter was born in Oswego, so she was a U.S. citizen at birth. After we pledged our allegiance, she was very pleased that “now we are all the same.” I hadn’t realized that our status had been on her mind.

In Oswego, there were several other Canadian families, and each year we had a “CanAm Picnic” after the Fourth of July parade. We often included Americans and British people for a real international flavor. It was usually a fun event. Flags of both countries were abundant, food from across the continent was brought and kids played games.  Our British neighbors had a perfect space for baseball, so many a game was played pitting parents versus children or Americans versus Canadians. Amazingly, no windows were ever broken.

For the first few years here, I found myself acting as interpreter between the British and American friends. Some expressions and pronunciations are very different – shed-ool vs. sked-ul, for example.  One of the harder things to learn was leaving out the “u” in labor, neighbor, favor, etc.  There was also “the accent.” particularly “a-boot” for “about” and similar words. Every now and then I revert back, but have tried very hard to blend in wherever we’ve lived.

It’s probably hardest on us when our two countries are pitted against each other, particularly in Olympic hockey. Usually, we end up cheering for both, perhaps with a slight edge toward Canada.

When traveling, I usually make sure I have either a Canadian flag or the two flags crossed pin on my collar. There are lots of places in the world where the U.S.A. is not as well liked as Canada.  It’s comforting to have a fallback position and say something like, “Oh, I was born in Canada.”

I’m usually amazed at how little is known in this country about the other country. Many assume that French is the language of choice; it’s not. Others think that we’re all alike; we’re not. Canadians are very different in some aspects of life.

We have been lucky to have the opportunity to live in different places and will be celebrating both Canada Day on July 1 and Independence Day on July 4.

E-mail Robson at info@outreachnc.com.