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Do you ever get that feeling where you know you’ve done something wrong, but you can’t for the life of you tell what it is or how you’re supposed to know? I’ve felt that way a lot as I move through different places and different communities within them. For instance, I’ve noticed that when I run up against a social norm in Canada, people generally won’t tell me directly like they might back home. Instead, I’ve learned to notice what I call the “Canadian huff”—an almost imperceptible sigh that shows that a boundary has been crossed but is not worth addressing. That’s how I learned not to ride my bike across a crosswalk in Nova Scotia and how I learned not to wear my shoes indoors in Québec.  

Depending on how you feel about it, you could parse the Canadian huff as passivity, politeness, or passive aggression. But whatever you choose to call it, I’ve noticed that that tendency for subtlety is not confined to etiquette, but keys into broader patterns of how information is sometimes conveyed in Canada—or at least in Quebec—compared to other places I’ve spent time.  

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