Canada lives in the imagination of the United States as a benign, continent-size footnote, the brunt of conservative jokes about invasion and annexation, and the object of liberal daydreams about socialized medicine and sensible bank regulation. If there is an overarching consensus among Americans about their cousins to the north, it is that they are like Americans but nicer, probably smarter, and more loving of hockey.
Less well known is that Canada is a towering, earth-shaking, CO2-belching petroleum giant. Let us keep our stereotype that Canadians are mild-mannered, but in terms of oil there is nothing moderate about them. They have it.
– Andrew Blackwell, in his pollution-tourism book, Visit Sunny Chernobyl.
