O Canada

Chris and Angela Webb met in a typical Canadian-saves-the-Alabamian routine when his roommate started hitting on Angela at the swimming pool that adjoined their apartment buildings.

"He saved me from his roommate," she said of her now-husband of four years who hails from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

The couple co-own Shaolin Computers in downtown Florence.

Now, Angela, from near Auburn, watches hockey and gets reminders from Chris of the Canadian-version of who's who in the entertainment world.

"I think we appreciate the differences between our cultures and upbringing," said Angela, who comes from a "conservative Southern" upbringing.

Before meeting Chris at the pool, Angela was actually dating another Canadian.

"How many Canadians are there in the Deep South? Apparently quite a number of them," she said.

She's right, eh? The Canadian invasion in Alabama includes not only romance, but more importantly, tourism, industry and finance.

The nation and state are economically intertwined. Trade between Alabama and Canada supports 100,500 jobs in Alabama, according to the Canadian Embassy. Bilateral trade between the two amounted to $3.7 billion in 2005, the majority from the auto industry. In fact, Canada is Alabama's largest export market with 44 percent of the state's exports heading north.

Several Canadian subsidiaries have set up shop in Alabama. Canadian bank, RBC Centura, formerly known as the Royal Bank of Canada, recently arrived in Alabama after it acquired 39 branches from a Regions/AmSouth merger.

Of the firm's 450 employees in Alabama, only one is Canadian.

In Alabama's northwest Shoals region, a Canadian railcar company may establish a factory, code name Project Tiger, that could generate 1,500 to 1,800 jobs.

Canada/Alabama ties also come from tourism. An estimated 50,800 Canadians visited Alabama in 2005, according to Statistics Canada. The majority of visitors, 27,500, came for fun, and the rest came for business, but combined they spent $18 million in Alabama.

That same year, the Canadian Embassy reported 50,400 Alabamians visited Canada and spent $25 million.

Two recent tourism developments are causing a push/pull between the two: passport requirements and the exchange rate.

As the Canadian dollar becomes near equivalent to American currency in value, snowbirds and retirees will enjoy greater spending power across the border, especially the typically lower cost of living in Alabama. New U.S. passport requirements and a passport logjam, however, may thwart American tourists from entering Canada.

Besides visiting, several Canadians spend longer than overnight in the Heart of Dixie and come here for jobs, and even hockey.

Hockey, as much a Canadian tradition as backbacon, Bay blankets and Celine Dion, has begun to skate its way into the heart of Alabamians. Clearly Southerners understand the sport since naming their teams throughout Alabama the Gunners, Slammers and Chargers.

For the 2006-07 season of the Chargers, the hockey team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, 19 of 25 players on the roster are from Canada. One player is from Huntsville.

Tyler Hilbert, of Okotoks, Alberta, said that few Alabamians had heard of Alberta, one of Canada's 10 provinces (Canada also includes two territories and Nunavut).

"Sometimes when I'm feeling in the mood, you can go on to tell a story that the McDonald's up in Canada, they sell McSeals and McWalruses other than normal burgers. And sometimes they believe ya, right?" the prankster center said.

Sometimes ignorance goes both ways.

"My first impressions of Alabama were a bit more, I guess, redneckish or more hillbilly," said Hilbert, a UAH senior this fall who studies finance. "But when I came down there, especially in Huntsville, it was totally not like that."

Some Canadians not only visit Alabama for scholastics but grow roots in Alabama's education system.

Jennifer Fremlin, of northern Ontario, hunkered down in Montgomery and became a tenured English professor of at Alabama State University.

"I never meant to move to Alabama," the reluctant northerner wrote in The Chronicles of Higher Education in 2002.

The self-described "white northerner, a Canadian heathen, living in the heart of the Bible Belt" found the "historically black campus provided the welcome mat, as it has to so many others not originally allowed in the door."

She further wrote, "Canadian identity is often predicated upon negative constructions: You know you're neither American, nor British, but just who you are (you ride Ski-Doos and drink your tea hot and slurp maple syrup and know what a curling bonspiel is) is less determinable."

Ah, curling, one of the great Alabama/Canada divides. Canadians play it and Alabamians don't understand it. Curling, billiards on ice, is perhaps the world's only sport that can be played with a Molson beer in one hand and an Export "A" cigarette in the other and was actually invented by the Scottish in the 15th century, but taken over by Canucks.

Though Canadians and Alabamians speak English, it's not quite the same language. "Y'all, I reckon I might could be fixin' to grill me a mess of catfish" might be translated up North to "Sorry, I'm aboot to grill some salmon. That'll be alright, eh?"

In 1999, linguists even studied Canadians who had lived in Alabama long-term and found the subjects paralleled "second-language phonetic learning in adults." So much for sharing the same language.

Tracey Derwing, educational psychology professor at the University of Alberta who was involved in the study, wrote that over time, Canadians living in Alabama, "started to acquire an Alabama accent, despite the fact that a Southern accent is often denigrated in popular culture."

Canada and Alabama may share one key trait and that's being underdogs. Sure, Canada is a member of G8, NATO and other major international organizations. Canada, however, in many ways, lives in America's shadow.

Their flags offer another similarity. Alabama's northern neighbor celebrates "Canada Day" on July 1 when the nation collectively waves its red and white flag. Alabamians, on the other hand, wave their own red and white flag Dec. 14 in commemoration of "Alabama Day".

But not all is rosy between the two. In 2005, after fierce competition among Ontario, Alabama and Mississippi, Toyota decided to set up its RAV-4 SUV 1,300 worker assembly plant in Woodstock, Ontario.

To add injury, Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., "The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario."

So much for friendly Canadians. The Huntsville Times retorted with an article that defended Alabama's position in the automotive manufacturing world that includes manufacturing plants for Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Honda.

But for the most part, Alabamians and Canadians seem to get along, if not with a complete understanding of each other.

Ian Loeppky, originally from Steinbach, Manitoba, moved to Florence four years ago after living in Minnesota and Cincinnati for six years.

The choral professor at the University of North Alabama in Florence said differences between his rural background and Alabama are subtle. Clearly, Alabamians haven't experienced let alone understand minus-35-degree temperatures of Manitoba winters. But the two share more similarities, Loeppky said.

"There's that same kind of politeness in Canada as there is here," he said. "People's manners are just exquisite down here.

"In a lot of ways, it feels like home."

Staff Writer Trevor Stokes can be reached at 740-5728 or trevor.stokes@timesdaily.com.