Note to American Travelers Pretending to Be Canadians: Stop It!
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 09.27.04 | 7:22 PM ET
Joseph Cohen writes in Sunday’s Seattle Times that he “could have held a full (and very poorly played) hockey game with all the fake Canadians [he] ran into while traveling in Western Europe.” They were, of course, Americans trying to avoid being outed. Cohen believes pretending to hail from Canada is a silly practice. “The plethora of Canadian flags on American backpacks this summer obviously has roots in current events dealing with Iraq and President George W. Bush,” he writes. “Yet Europeans do not translate their dislike of our president into animosity toward American travelers. You have a better chance of being pickpocketed in Switzerland than accosted for being an American anywhere in Western Europe.”