Canadians and Americans still dress alike, talk alike, like the same books, television shows and movies, and trade more goods and services than ever before. But from gay marriage to drug use to church attendance, a chasm has opened up on social issues that go to the heart of fundamental values.
A more distinctive Canadian identity -- one far more in line with European sensibilities -- is emerging and generating new frictions with the US.
"Being attached to America these days is like being in a pen with a wounded bull," Rick Mercer, Canada's leading political satirist, said at a recent show in Toronto. "Between the pot smoking and the gay marriage, quite frankly it's a wonder there is not a giant deck of cards out there with all our faces on it."
Mercer acknowledged in an interview that he was overstating the case for laughs -- two Canadian provinces have legalized gay marriage, and Ottawa has moved to decriminalize use of small amounts of marijuana. But in the view of many experts the two countries are heading in different directions, at least for the time being.
Recent disagreements over trade, drugs and the war in Iraq, where Canada has refused to send troops, have made the relationship more contentious and Canadians increasingly outspoken about the things that separate them from their American
neighbors.
"The two countries are sounding more different -- after 9/11, dramatically more different," noted Gil Troy, an American historian who teaches at McGill University in Montreal. "You hear a lot more static and you see more brittleness."
Of course there have been frictions before, for instance during the Vietnam War, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau welcomed American draft evaders, but the differences in those years were more political than social. Analysts say that Canada and the US have always been similar yet different, and that the differences are often accentuated at the margins.
But today, many analysts and ordinary Canadians said in interviews around the country, the differences appear to have moved center stage, particularly in social and cultural values.
The nations remain like-minded in pockets, but the center of gravity in each has changed. French-speaking Quebec, with nearly a fourth of the population and its open social attitudes, pulls Canada to the left, just as the South and Bible Belt increasingly pull the US in the opposite direction, particularly on issues like abortion, gay marriage and capital punishment.
None of those have resonated much over the last decade in Canada, where the consensus on social policy seems more solidly formed, its fissures narrower and less exploitable.
Chris Ragan, a McGill University economist, observed, "You can be a social conservative in the US without being a wacko. Not in Canada."
Drugs are one point of departure. A bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana is working its way through the lower house of Parliament, bringing threats from the White House that such a law could slow trade at the border.
Recently, while musing about his retirement plans, Prime Minister Jean Chretien said he might just kick back and smoke some pot. "I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand," he said with a smile.
The glibness of the remark made it nearly impossible to imagine an American president uttering it. But in a nation where the dominant West Coast city, Vancouver, has come to be known as Vansterdam, few Canadians blinked.
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