SexyPatTO posted:

But just try walking past people on the street without getting a "hello" nod. Try standing in line at the supermarket without having a nice brief conversation with the person behind you and/or the cashier. In DC there is this weird sense of "we're all in this together, right?" and your day is routinely punctuated with pleasant human interactions.

A few years ago I was heading home for a couple of weeks and had a doctor's appointment before leaving and I mentioned that I was going out of town and my doctor asked where and I said "Washington DC," to which his reply was "Lots of crime." That is Ontario in a nutshell. If I were at a doctor in the US, and told him I was going to Toronto he would say, "What's in Toronto?" He wouldn't say it in a particularly interested or uninterested way - it would just be small talk - but he would genuinely be leaving open the possibility that there was something in Toronto I would want to mention and that he could not guess. It would be a human interaction. The human interaction is a rare part of daily life in Toronto. If you mention the US, Torontonians, Ontarians, probably most Canadians in general, think they have it all figured out already and are happy to tell you so.