History Main / CanadaDoesNotExist

* ''Series/DegrassiJuniorHigh'' reshot scenes involving money for the US version. Later, ''Series/{{Degrassi}}'' became a notable subversion although generic rather than Ontario-specific terms are still used when discussing things like driver licensing and standardized tests. More recent seasons of ''Series/{{Degrassi}}'' are showing signs of EaglelandOsmosis, though, as the generic Canadian universities of the early seasons have been replaced with very specific American universities (NYU and Yale, to be specific).

** Likewise ''[[Literature/TheLeagueOfPeoplesVerse Commitment Hour]]'' is set in "Tober Cove" (Tobermory, Ontario), and even name-checks the RealLife ferry that runs from Tobermory to Manitoulin Island.

** All of which hides the fact that the series was shot in Reyðarfjörður, Iceland. Iceland's Ring Road can be seen entering and leaving "Fortitude" in several shots, despite there not being a road network outside Longyearbyen in Svalbard.

* ''Series/{{Fortitude}}'' might be a rare non-North American version of this trope, and a weak one at that. Yes, you see the Norwegian flag flying, several major characters are Norwegian and have Norwegian names, there are references to "the mainland", the two fictional communities on the island strongly resemble their real-life counterparts, and lutefisk is mentioned and even eaten at one point. But ... the Norwegian characters almost always speak English, even among themselves, no particular unit of currency is ever mentioned, the research station on the island seems to be run by the British government, and no one ever says "Norway" or any other placename in that country. In short, if you didn't actually know the archipelago of Svalbard or the island of Spitsbergen actually exist, you'd be forgiven for assuming the show's setting is completely fictional and not entirely part of Norway.

Canada Does Not Exist is a strange, location-based trope distantly related to WhereTheHellIsSpringfield. Though this trope might arguably apply to a tiny handful of shows shot in other countries, it's the relative closeness of American and Canadian culture, contrasted with their distinct differences, that really defines it. CDNE shows are virtually always shot in a Canadian location, while the fictional setting is deliberately left vague, a generic North American location that is neither fully America nor completely Canada.

Superficially similar to CaliforniaDoubling and other location tropes, CDNE is distinguished by the way the shoot location actually affects the story. With CaliforniaDoubling, the audience needs to accept the desert-scrub of a Burbank backlot as the Amazon rainforest, but the location of the shoot has no effect on the story itself. With CDNE, the location affects the script considerably, forcing the writers into crazy contortions to avoid mentioning or even giving hints about the show's fictional setting.

In the 1980s, a very low Canadian dollar, the construction of a bunch of new production facilities in UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}, UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}} and UsefulNotes/{{Montreal}}, and a host of tax incentives triggered a wave of drama TV production by local (though often transplanted American) producers. These quasi-Canadian producers started churning out a bunch of reasonably slick cop and action-adventure shows for a fraction of what they cost to produce in Hollywood, and eventually allowed them to crack the notoriously foreign-phobic U.S. network market.

The first show of this type was ''Series/NightHeat'', a cop series produced in Toronto by Sonny Grosso Productions. It premiered in Canada on CTV in 1985, and later joined the CBS Late Night lineup in 1987. It was the first Canadian-produced drama ever to air on a U.S. network.

That's when things started to get weird. CBS wanted a gritty U.S. cop show set in a gritty U.S. inner city, but CTV (which was still paying most of the bills) needed more domestic drama. When the characters started flashing American eagle police badges and calling up the "district attorney," CTV went ballistic. Already under fire for producing so few domestic TV shows, the last thing the network wanted was for ''Night Heat'' to be perceived as yet another American import in its prime time line-up. Moreover, the Canadian federal tax incentives and production grants the producers were getting likely bound them to certain minimal "Canadian content" rules.[[note]] Indeed, Canadian TV stations must air 55% Canadian content daily; however, this doesn't result in as much Canadian drama or comedy programming as you would think, as local and network news already fills up much of the quota.[[/note]]

Forced to square the circle, the producers decided to set the show ''nowhere,'' albeit a very American-flavoured nowhere. The American eagle police badge became a mutant eagle/beaver hybrid that was never seen in close-up, and all sorts of innocuous words and objects suddenly became more taboo than Creator/GeorgeCarlin's infamous "[[SevenDirtyWords seven words you can't say on TV]]." You couldn't show flags, currency, or license plates, or make overt references to town names or any level of government. Instead of a "district attorney" or "crown prosecutor", the cops would phone the generic "prosecutor." Courtroom scenes were laughably torturous to produce, for obvious reasons. The producers even went out of their way to keep the words "out" and "about" out of the scripts, as those words are infamous shibboleths that, when pronounced by people with Canadian accents, supposedly sound like "oat" and "aboat"

As CBS and other U.S. networks started picking up more Canadian productions, an unspoken "scale of hidden Canadianness" started to emerge. ''Night Heat'' was a pure, level-10 Hidden Canada, bent almost comically out of shape in its attempts to be 100% Yankee Doodle American without ever actually saying so out loud.

'''Note:''' CDNE does not affect plain-vanilla "Hollywood North" productions like ''Series/TheXFiles'', ''[[Franchise/StargateVerse Stargate SG-1]]'' [[Franchise/StargateVerse and its spinoffs]], ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'' and ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}''. These shows are usually big-budget, all-American or international co-venture productions simply outsourced to Canada. They're either set unequivocally in the USA or in a futuristic setting where the whole question is moot.

Compare with CaliforniaDoubling, WeAllLiveInAmerica, CityWithNoName, WhereTheHellIsSpringfield, HollywoodProvincialism, BigApplesauce, NoCommunitiesWereHarmed, and NegativeContinuity.

Contrast with EaglelandOsmosis.

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused with]] a character actually believing Canada does not exist. That would fall under EskimosArentReal.

* ''Series/TheListener'' At least partially subverted with prominent views of the Toronto skyline. When the main character gives a homeless man a dollar, it's a coin. References to Canada were deliberately changed in the closed captions for the American market. Averted with a vengeance from the second season onward, with direct references to Canadian cities and politics, the RCMP, a massive Canadian flag, and shout-outs to Canadian bands and TV shows.

* ''Film/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'' was filmed in Vancouver, but was set in [[CityWithNoName an unnamed city]] with its location never mentioned.

Compare with CaliforniaDoubling, WeAllLiveInAmerica, CityWithNoName, WhereTheHellIsSpringfield, SoCalization, BigApplesauce, NoCommunitiesWereHarmed, and NegativeContinuity.

Forced to square the circle, the producers decided to set the show ''nowhere,'' albeit a very American-flavoured nowhere. The American eagle police badge became a mutant eagle/beaver hybrid that was never seen in close-up, and all sorts of innocuous words and objects suddenly became more taboo than Creator/GeorgeCarlin's infamous "[[SevenDirtyWords seven words you can't say on TV]]." You couldn't show flags, currency, or license plates, or make overt references to town names or any level of government. Instead of a "district attorney" or "crown prosecutor", the cops would phone the generic "prosecutor." Courtroom scenes were laughably torturous to produce, for obvious reasons. The producers even went out of their way to keep the words "out" and "about" out of the scripts, as those words are infamous shibboleths that, when pronounced by people with Canadian accents, sound like "oat" and "aboat".

* Applies to most "tax shelter films" of the 1970s and '80s, if not outright [[CaliforniaDoubling Canada Doubling]]. These films intended audiences were primarily American, so at best the films would be set in a CityWithNoName filled with allusions to American popular culture to create a suitably generic "North American" urban setting. This extended to the practice of dubbing local actors with strong regional accents, particularly those from Francophone regions. See ''Film/{{Scanners}}'' and its sequel ''Film/ScannersIITheNewOrder''; both of them were shot in Montreal and adhere to this trope.
* A funny Canada Does Not Exist moment was related about Creator/DavidCronenberg's remake ''Film/{{The Fly|1986}}'' (1986), shot in Toronto. During production, they hit a crisis moment when the script called for Jeff Goldblum's character to prominently pay someone $50 in cash. Cronenberg, himself a Canadian, couldn't decide whether to use Canadian or American currency. In the end, he opted for U.S. greenbacks, pretty ironic considering that [[Film/TheFly1958 the 1950s Vincent Price original]], shot in Hollywood, was actually set in Montreal, and given that several of his other movies were unequivocally set in Canada, even if they had mostly American actors (like ''Film/{{Videodrome}}''), ''and'' given that the CN Tower, a major Toronto landmark, is clearly visible in one shot.
* ''Film/HoboWithAShotgun'' features many of the hallmarks of this trope, what with the oddly-generic police badges, fake currency that resembles neither American nor Canadian bills, and so on and so forth.

* ''Film/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'' was filmed in Vancouver, but was set in an unnamed city with its location never mentioned.

* ''Series/{{Goosebumps}}'': Toronto, Canada was one of the series' primary filming locations, but most episodes were set in a vaguely North American town.

* Both of Rick Siggelkow's AdaptationExpansion series, ''Series/ShiningTimeStation'' and ''Series/TheNoddyShop'', are filmed in Canada but appear to take place in the United States (in the latter case, the titular store was based on a real antique store in upstate New York). However, in some cases they do mess up-one episode of ''The Noddy Shop'' had a scene where a character said "Zed" instead of "Z".

* Played with in the Canadian-produced ''WesternAnimation/CloneHigh''. It is explicitly set in the fictional town of "Exclamation, USA", but one character spends her spring break on "the sunny beaches of Canada, where the sun is always shining." An American viewer unaware of the show's Canadian origins [[InsideJoke would be quite puzzled]] about the point of the joke.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' was probably meant to take place in Pennsylvania, given that creator Marc Brown based Elwood City off of his hometown (Erie, which sits directly across Lake Erie from Canada). One of the earliest episodes has the family go to D.C. to see the White House and meet UsefulNotes/BillClinton (sure, he's an aardvark, but still...), which seems to imply they are at least American. Later episodes occasionally reference Canadian cities and culture (likely since co-producer Cinar/Cookie Jar was based in Canada).
** More recent episodes seem to go back to the American setting, as new character Ladonna references being from New Orleans, and is never outright treated as being from a different country.
** ''WesternAnimation/PostcardsFromBuster'' also seemed to support the American setting. One of the characters mentioned growing up in Washington. Another episode, while visiting Canada, had Buster be surprised by the concept of "poutine." Makes sense for an American (let's not get into New Jersey having disco fries)...not so much from a Canadian.

* ''{{Film/DiaryOfAWimpyKid}}'' was filmed in Vancouver, but was set in an unnamed city with its location never mentioned.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' was probably meant to take place in Pennsylvania, given that creator Marc Brown based Elwood City off of his hometown (Erie, about ninety miles from the Canadian border). One of the earliest episodes has the family go to D.C. to see the White House and meet UsefulNotes/BillClinton (sure, he's an aardvark, but still...), which seems to imply they are at least American. Later episodes occasionally reference Canadian cities and culture (likely since co-producer Cinar/Cookie Jar was based in Canada).

* Both of Rick Siggelkow's AdaptationExpansion series, ''Series/ShiningTimeStation'' and ''Series/TheNoddyShop'', are filmed in Canada but appear to take place in the United States (in the latter case, the titular store was based on a real antique store in New York City). However, in some cases they do mess up-one episode of ''The Noddy Shop'' had a scene where a character said "Zed" instead of "Z".

* A version of this trope appears in the Irish film ''The Brylcreem Boys'', VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory about Allied and German military personnel who were stranded in neutral Ireland during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and held in adjacent internment camps. One of the main characters is an officer of the RCAF and [[InformedAttribute explicitly stated to be Canadian]], but, other than a few obligatory lines inserted to establish his nationality, he consistently acts like an American and all other characters treat him as such (he talks about American isolationist politicians with a telling "we," the other main character, a German patriot but no Nazi, insistently laces his lines with "you Americans" in conversations with him, etc.). This might be because of CriticalResearchFailure by filmmakers who failed to appreciate that Canada is not same as the US. Or, this might be because the character is intended to be an AudienceSurrogate for American audiences to whom Canadian perspectives on UsefulNotes/WorldWarII would not be familiar.

* ''Series/SchittsCreek'': The show keeps the location of Schitt's Creek ambiguous, never explicitly referencing its location either in Canada or the United States. The official reason is so the characters stand on their own and do not represent the real-world denizens of any specific region.

Forced to square the circle, the producers decided to set the show ''nowhere,'' albeit a very American-flavoured nowhere. The American eagle police badge became a mutant eagle/beaver hybrid that was never seen in close-up, and all sorts of innocuous words and objects suddenly became more taboo than Creator/GeorgeCarlin's infamous "[[SevenDirtyWords seven words you can't say on TV]]." You couldn't show flags, currency, or license plates, or make overt references to town names or any level of government. Instead of a "district attorney" or "crown prosecutor", the cops would phone the generic "prosecutor." Courtroom scenes were laughably torturous to produce, for obvious reasons.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' was probably meant to take place in Pennsylvania, given that creator Marc Brown based Elwood City off of his hometown (Erie, about ninety miles from the Canadian border). One of the earliest episodes has the family go to D.C. to see the White House and meet UsefulNotes/BillClinton (sure, he's an aardvark, but still...), which seems to imply they are at least American. Later episodes occasionally reference Canadian cities and culture.

* Applies to most "tax shelter films" of the 1970s and '80s, if not outright [[CaliforniaDoubling Canada Doubling]]. These films intended audiences were primarily American, so at best the films would be set in a CityWithNoName filled with allusions to American popular culture to create a suitably generic "North American" urban setting. This extended to the practice of dubbing local actors with strong regional accents, particularly those from Francophone regions. See ''Film/{{Scanners}}'' and its sequel ''Film/ScannersIITheNewOrder'', both of such were shot in Montreal and adhere to this trope.

* ''Podcast/{{Qwerpline}}'' is intentionally vague as to whether it takes place in America or WebVideo/LoadingReadyRun's native Canada.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' was probably meant to take place in Pennsylvania, given that creator Marc Brown based Elwood City off of his hometown. One of the earliest episodes has the family go to D.C. to see the White House and meet UsefulNotes/BillClinton (sure, he's an aardvark, but still...), which seems to imply they are at least American. Later episodes occasionally reference Canadian cities and culture.

* A version of this trope appears in the Irish film ''The Brylcreem Boys'', VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory about Allied and German military personnel who were stranded in neutral Ireland during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and held in adjacent internment camps. One of the main characters is an officer of the RCAF and [[InformedAttribute explicitly stated to be Canadian]], but, other than a few obligatory lines inserted to establish his nationality, he consistently acts like an American and all other characters treat him as such. (He talks about American isolationist politicians with telling "we," the other main character, a German patriot but no Nazi, insistently laces his lines with "you Americans" in conversations with him, etc.) This might be because of CriticalResearchFailure by filmmakers who failed to appreciate that Canada is not same as the US. Or, this might be because the character is intended to be an AudienceSurrogate for American audiences to whom Canadian perspectives on UsefulNotes/WorldWarII would not be familiar.