Are Canadians Actually Nicer? An American Hot Take

Welcome to Episode 4 of Love It or Leaf It, where your favorite queer American transplants (hi, it’s us—Clover and Lori!) dive into the weird, warm, occasionally confusing world of Canadian service culture 🇨🇦 We’re officially moved into our new Toronto home—and y’all, it’s starting to feel like home for real. So today we’re unpacking (literally and emotionally) some of our early impressions of life in Canada. Get ready for face-to-face everything, surprise paperwork adventures, and… storage units that feel more like mortgage closings than shame-closet rentals. We also go full nostalgia mode when Lori braves a GameStop line IRL to preorder the Nintendo Switch 2 like it's 1999. BestBuy.ca? Crashed. Walmart? Ghosted. Canadian politeness? Unfazed. Along the way, we get real about the deeper stuff: what it means to be welcomed as political refugees, why Canadian friendliness isn’t just surface-level politeness, and how this country still manages to surprise us every single day (usually in good ways, occasionally with baffling login systems). If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to move from the U.S. to Canada—or if you just want to laugh at our struggle to understand why syrup bottles have microscopic handles—this one’s for you. ❤️🍁 Stick around to hear about: The polite politics of bank tellers 🏦 Canada’s dot-com vs. dot-ca identity crisis 💻 And why empathy just feels easier north of the border 💬 Drop us a comment: Why is the handle on maple syrup bottles so dang tiny?