Originally Posted by: earthman buckA brief history of Canada and America (assuming I paid attention in Canadian History class):

Way back in the 1700's when the American colonies were trying to break free from Britain, they came up to Canada (which was also a British colony) looking for help. The Canadians turned them down, not so much because they wanted to stay a British colony, but more because they were too lazy/scared/Canadian to get involved. So America became its own country, and sort of turned their back on still-British Canada for a long time. THen the war of 1812 came around, which was America trying to conquer all of British Canada. It basically turned out to be a tie, with a bunch of people dead and no land gained at all for either party. Canada became its own country in 1867 (although the Brits still had a lot of influence over us) and things were more or less put behind us.

So for a long time, we were all close friends/associates, but Canada was still seen as either Little America/Little Britain. When England declared war on Germany at the start of WWII, Canada waited about a week before joining in, just to show how independent from Britain it had become. And then the Americans joined sometime after that (I think). It actually worked, and there were a few battles in WWII which were won almost entirely by the Canadian military.

And since then, we've actually been thought of as a country by the rest of the world.