Five reasons why Sweden is not the Canada of Europe

Work culture

My Swedish husband spent four years in Canada, and work life in Toronto was probably his biggest culture shock. Given Canada’s reputation as, well, like Sweden, he hadn’t expected what he found: a work-focused hustle culture where one avoids taking sick days (or simply doesn’t have the right to any), two weeks of vacation is a luxury, and people are often expected to live to work, not work to live.

For semester-loving Swedes with their robust unions, this American-style approach to working life is about as un-Swedish as you can get. Whereas in Sweden, ‘water cooler’ talk is often about either how much you’re looking forward to summer vacation or how bummed you are that your vacation is over, in Canada (or, at least, in Toronto; see ‘Canada is really big’), you’re generally expected to love your job (or at least pretend you do; see: ‘Pretending to be happy’) ‒ and even to talk about how pleased you are to be back at work.

The United States

Every country, including Sweden, is affected by what the global superpower is doing, but in Canada, American influence is at a whole other level. Canada shares a language, time zones, and a border with the U.S.; they are the only neighbouring country Canadians have ‒ and they are a rather loud one.

This means that everything Canada does, and even is, is in some way defined by the United States. The very image of Canada held by much of the world ‒ a polite, quiet, socially progressive country ‒ has been shaped by American media portrayals of Canada and Canadians. This doesn’t mean that image is false (for one thing, there are a lot of Canadians working in Hollywood), but if Sweden magically became Canada’s only bordering country (yes please!), the image would look quite different ‒ and a lot more, well, American. Not unlike the Scandinavian countries, it’s often only to Americans (and Canadians) that we seem all that different from each other.

Canada is big. Really, really big.

Canada is the second-largest country in the world by area, and while this basic geographical fact may seem both obvious and superficial, it affects everything from political organization to cultural cohesion to phone bills (among the world’s highest).

For those used to a smaller country like Sweden, it can be hard to grasp the sheer geographical scale of Canada. In square kilometers, Canada covers 10 million ‒ roughly the same as all of Europe. My home province of Ontario alone is more than twice the size of Sweden. This means that everything from educational opportunities to reproductive rights to landscape can be vastly different from province to province (region, in Swedish terms).

So when Swedes make well-meaning small talk by asking me what the weather is like “in Canada,” I’m tempted to respond, “I don’t know; what’s the weather like in Europe?”

Attitude towards immigration

While Canada has its share of xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment these days, historically the general attitude has been to see immigrants as a necessary asset, not a liability. Whereas in Sweden, it seems like the default is to assume migrants are supplicants draining the system, Canada has tended to view new immigrants as a population that would win the ‘most likely to strive and succeed’ yearbook title.

The easiest way to open a bank account in Sweden, for example, is to use your BankID…but to get a BankID you need a bank account. The Swedish system is one which is designed to work for the people who are already in it, and tends to start glitching when expected to deal with people coming from outside it.

But in Canada, most of us are immigrants. Growing up in Toronto, whenever casual conversation turned to cultural background, everyone would share where they were ‘from.’ In these conversations, the woman born in Poland or the guy born in Canada to an Iraqi father and a Trinidadian mother wouldn’t be getting the curious follow-up questions—it would be me. As someone who wasn’t a second or even third generation immigrant, I was the odd one out.

As my husband said when he received his Canadian permanent residency card: “now it’s time for me to be properly Canadian and hang a Swedish flag from our porch.”

"He gets it," I thought happily.

Pretending to be happy

One of the things I appreciate most about Swedish culture is how okay it is to say that things are not okay. The Swedish way is not to over-share, emotionally dump, or wallow in the negative parts of life, but neither is it to pretend those parts don’t exist. Instead, there’s a basic acknowledgement, even in casual small-talk, that life is not a picnic—especially in the dark times of the year.

In Canada, by contrast, we have incorporated a fair amount of the typically American ‘smile and pretend it’s all going well even if it’s not’ attitude. Unless you are truly friends with someone, you’re usually expected to keep up the ‘everything’s great’ façade in general conversation. This performance of happiness is often, as with many things Canadian, more muted than in the U.S., but it’s still very much part of the social fabric of everyday interactions.

Here in Sweden I have a friend, a fellow-immigrant from a country whose culture values upbeat cheery sociability, who is bewildered by the Swedish willingness to admit that things suck (especially in November). “Why,” she wonders, “does everyone here talk about being depressed?!”

Coming from an “I’m good!! How are you?!” culture, I find the Swedish approach relaxing and humane. To me, it reads as a shared acceptance of the attitude that, while we may all be fundamentally and irrevocably alone in the darkness, at least we’re in it together.

Mandy Pipher is a Canadian writer now living in Umeå. You can read more of her reflections on Swedish life and culture on her substack.

Do you agree with Mandy? Share your own views in the comments section below.