From what I've seen, Canadians and Americans aren't so different person-to-person.
No, we're not that different. There's a range. Some of us value the same things as some of you. Some at the extreme ends of the spectrum are very different.
But the huge differences are the guns, the national differences in attitude toward healthcare and education, and religion.
We pay more tax and accept that the neighbours our government has helped with our (specially designed to virtually eliminate corruption and waste) healthcare system, paid for by our tax dollars will help us if we ever need it. We go to school with the attitude that we're going to pitch in and do our share, and what we need will come. Greed is less of a motivator for more of us.
To Canadians, guns are for shooting food. Shooting a person like a haunch of meat is an insult. Yeah, we have guns. We have just as many per capita as the Americans. But we view them as Americans would view salad forks, garden hoes and screwdrivers. They're tools. Nothing more.
Americans view their guns the way they view fancy cars and designer clothes. They're commodity fetish objects that are necessary to gain acceptance into some little clique, and not to defend oneself against violence. Or people would buy one or two simple, cheap guns to get the job done. They wouldn't have entire armories full of ARs and teflon piercing bullets.
We're also less religious on average.
So... when it comes to an outbreak, or a large scale war, we're better prepared, and less likely to "shoot 'em all and let god sort 'em out" as it were.
