A strange, location-based trope distantly related to WhereTheHellIsSpringfield. It's where a cross-border production between Canada and the United States refuses to acknowledge that it's set in ''either'' country, and therefore appears to exist in some bizarre generic North American location.

The trope arises from the peculiarities of producing television in Canada. Let's face it -- Canada is not a big place compared to its [[{{Eagleland}} massive, culturally influential southern neighbour]] (well, a ''big'' place yes, just not a ''populous'' place), and it would be very easy and convenient for Canada to just import all of its shows from the U.S. As a result, Canadian government provides a great deal of federal tax incentives and production grants to encourage TV and movie producers to make their productions in Canada, but these often depend on there being a certain amount of "Canadian content". Ordinarily, this can be easily satisfied with a fully Canadian production -- even something as mundane as a news broadcast -- but it's not so easy to put together an ''entirely'' Canadian production, so producers seek help from across the border. And they're allowed to do that -- as long as the show is still "Canadian". This trope is therefore quite narrow, and falls into a bizarre situation where the American and Canadian partners each want to broadcast the show in their respective countries -- Americans aren't going to tune in to watch something that's obviously Canadian without risking their audience, and Canadians won't show something that's [[{{Eagleland}} obviously American]] without risking their funding. Therefore, the show has to avoid showing or mentioning anything that could place it in ''either'' country.

The first show of this type was ''Series/NightHeat'', a cop series produced in Toronto by Sonny Grosso Productions. CTV first aired it in Canada in 1985, and CBS put it on its Late Night lineup in 1987, making it the first Canadian-produced drama ever to air on a U.S. network. It was quite tempting for CBS, as the Canadian dollar was damn cheap in the 1980s, so production costs were lower in Canada, and cities like UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}, UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}}, and UsefulNotes/{{Montreal}} were building all kinds of production facilities. CBS wanted the show to be a gritty American cop drama like everything else, but CTV couldn't allow it to be too "American" without risking losing its tax incentives. ''Night Heat'' therefore became notable for its ''enthusiastic'' practice of this trope, as all sorts of innocuous words and objects suddenly became more taboo than the famous SevenDirtyWords -- no flags, no currency, no license plates, nothing. The police badge became a bizarre hybrid between an eagle and a beaver that was never shown in closeup. Courtroom scenes were laughably torturous to produce because the legal terminology was so different; even mentioning a "district attorney" or "crown prosecutor" was forbidden, and characters just referenced a generic "prosecutor". The producers even went out of their way to keep the words "out" and "about" out of the scripts, given the distinct Canadian way of pronouncing them. As more U.S. networks started picking up Canadian productions, they got more adept at doing this, so it's not nearly as jarring, but you can still pick up on it if you know where to look.

Given the trope's relative narrowness, it's distinct from CaliforniaDoubling -- the audience may be forced to accept the desert scrub of a Burbank backlot as the Amazon rainforest, but it's still explicitly set in the Amazon rainforest. It's also distinct from "Hollywood North" productions, where an American production outsources a lot of work to Canada; these are still considered American imports and made for American TV. This is how, say, ''Series/TheXFiles'' can reference distinctly American institutions like [[FBIAgent the FBI]] despite being shot in Canada.

Compare CityWithNoName and NoCommunitiesWereHarmed. Contrast HollywoodProvincialism, EaglelandOsmosis, and BigApplesauce (Toronto's been known to pretend to be New York).

If you [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant thought this trope meant]] a ''character'' who actually believes that Canada doesn't exist, you're looking for EskimosArentReal.

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!!Examples

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%%Please read the description before adding examples.
%%Canada from Axis Powers Hetalia is not an example of this trope.

[[folder:Films — Animation]]
* Inverted in ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed''. The movie is explicitly set in Toronto, Canada and never lets you forget it with the CN Tower in many shots, frequent mentions of Canadian things and so much other stuff distinctive to Canada that it fills most of a [[ShownTheirWork/TurningRed subpage]]. You'd be hard pressed to find a scene which ''doesn't'' contain something that relates to Canada.
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[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
* 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 mostly in Montreal and adhere strongly to this trope.
* A funny Canada Does Not Exist moment was related about Creator/DavidCronenberg's version of ''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. It was shot in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and is filled with subtle Canadian references.
* 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 the character is intended to be an AudienceSurrogate for American audiences to whom Canadian perspectives on UsefulNotes/WorldWarII would not be familiar.
* ''Film/IntoTheForest'': Unless you notice the initials of the news network briefly visible in an early scene, you'd be forgiven for assuming that the film takes place in America. No one mentions the name of the country, and Nell is studying for the SAT, something a bit more ubiquitous in the US than in Canada. The original novel is set in California. It's made even more confusing when they speak of going East... to Boston, instead of Montreal or some other city on the Canadian east coast.
* ''Film/PromWars'': The film is a Canadian production but the characters act like they're in the average American teen movie and mention potentially attending American colleges like Harvard and M.I.T. The only thing to explicitly imply the movie is set in Canada and not the U.S. is that the schools have prefects and head girls, student government positions that exist in the Commonwealth of Nations but not the U.S.
* ''Film/BelowHerMouth'': Though it's set in Toronto, you'd find it hard to notice if you didn't know.
* ''{{Film/Clara}}'': Except for the mere mention that it's set in Toronto, the film never displays any signs that this is Canada.
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[[folder:Literature]]
* Canadian author Creator/CharlesDeLint made it intentionally vague where the city of Newford that he sets many of his stories in actually is. For example, WordOfGod is that Newford's legal system features elements of both American and Canadian law. Interestingly, according to De Lint, American fans tend to think it's in Canada, whilst Canadian fans tend to think it's in the US.
* The Creator/StrugatskyBrothers famous sci-fi novel ''Literature/RoadsidePicnic'' is (unlike its later adaptations) set in an unnamed town located somewhere in midwestern North America. But it's never made explicit whether the country it lies in is Canada or the US. Some of the governmental lingo involved would point to the US, but other details of the setting (including motor vehicles, like the more British Land Rover Defender) would point to Canada. It's a generally unusual example of this trope, given that the writers were neither American or Canadian, but Soviet.
* James Alan Gardner doesn't make it obvious that the location for his novel ''[[Literature/TheLeagueOfPeoplesVerse Trapped]]'', set in a MagicFromTechnology 25th century, is southern Ontario until later in the novel when the characters reach Niagara Falls, as location names have changed (the story starts in "Simka", the futuristic version of Simcoe, Ontario). Many Canadians, however, will quickly catch on where the setting is when one major locations nearby is mentioned: "Trawna", a common way many people pronounce "Toronto".
** 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.
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[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'' was filmed in Canada, but isn't stated to be there. In an episode involving a ghost train, however, locomotives and rolling stock with VIA Rail Canada and Canadian National lettering and paint schemes feature prominently; in addition, a soldier on board the ghost train wears an ambiguous khaki uniform that isn't quite American ''or'' Canadian. The writing is ''very'' distinctly American, if ''The Tale Of The Long-Ago Locket'' unambiguously portraying the British Redcoats as the villains is anything to go off of.
%%* ''Counterstrike''
%%* ''Series/CodeNameEternity''
* The Creator/{{Netflix}} show ''Series/{{Between}}'' is a joint Canadian-American production. The number plates appear to be Ontario and the newscasts show a public health official with the title "Minister."
* It's perhaps not a well-known fact that ''Series/DegrassiJuniorHigh'' was really a joint Canadian-American production that intended to invoke this trope. Early press releases describe the show as being set in an "unnamed North American city". Likewise, scenes of money were re-shot for the US version. Although this trope was intended, hindsight shows it kind of backfired as various Canadian places are still mentioned and various actors have obvious Canadian accents, and to this day "classic" Degrassi is considered prime MooseAndMapleSyrup and most written works that mention the show just say it took place in Toronto. ''Series/DegrassiTheNextGeneration'' is claimed to have averted this, which is ironic as it was the version that really blew up stateside. In ''TNG'', generic North American terms are still used when discussing things like driver licensing and standardized tests. The early 2010s seasons after ''Next Generation'' show signs of EaglelandOsmosis, though as generic Canadian universities are replaced with very specific American universities (NYU and Yale, to be specific), and characters regularly reference studying for the [=SATs=] - which is not a requirement for Canadian students ''unless'' they want to attend an American university.
* ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'' tried to be set in an ambiguous North American metropolis, but officers in the very first episode had Canadian flags on their uniforms. The setting slowly let more aspects leak through that reflected the already obvious setting of Toronto until they finally admitted they're in Toronto.
* ''Series/ForeverKnight'' is explicitly set in Toronto, the CN Tower is shown in the TitleSequence, and the characters talk about Canada often enough, but other aspects are downplayed. Canadian flags and photographs of Queen Elizabeth can be seen, but are not emphasised. The police force is simply the "Metropolitan Police". Police uniforms and badges are made to look generically American, with the distinct features of the Metropolitan Toronto Police uniforms (such as the red trim on the hats and red stripes on pants) left out. This is probably a more "Canadian" version of the trope: there is enough Canadianness left in the to show that it is unmistakably taking place in Canada, but downplayed enough to not distinguish it too much from some generic place in "America." Perhaps it might be called "Canada is just like Anywhere, USA"?
* ''Series/Goosebumps1995'': Toronto, Canada was one of the series' primary filming locations, but most episodes were set in a vaguely North American town. The "Don't Go To Sleep" episode had a shouty hockey coach that Canadian audiences will immediately recognize as [[Series/HockeyNightInCanada hockey commentator]] Don Cherry. To Americans outside of border regions in which a CBC station is present on cable, however, he's simply a weird red-faced man who keeps yelling.
* ''Series/{{Highlander}}'' took place in a fictional UsefulNotes/PacificNorthwest city dubbed [[UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}} Sea]][[UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} couver]] by fans.
* ''Series/HowToBeIndie'' never explicitly states whereabouts the action is set. It could be anywhere in North America, although natives of the USA or Canada might spot something.
* ''Series/TheLetsGoShow'' was filmed in Canada, but was [[Creator/{{Sprout}} broadcast in America]].
* ''Series/TheListener'': Originally broadcast both on CTV and NBC, causing its Canada-ness to be muted in the first season--though this was at least partially subverted with prominent views of the Toronto skyline (which an American viewer might or might not recognize); also, when the main character gives a homeless man a dollar, it's a coin. Nonetheless, references to Canada were deliberately changed in the closed captions for the American market. Averted with a vengeance from the second season onward (after NBC canceled the series), with direct references to Canadian cities and politics, the RCMP, a massive Canadian flag, and shout-outs to Canadian bands and TV shows.
* ''Series/LostGirl'':
** The show makes absolutely no effort to hide the fact that it is filmed in Toronto (the accents, all those shots of the ''very distinctive'' TTC streetcars, and a few incidental glimpses of the CN Tower being dead giveaways), but this, or even which country or province the city is in, is never made explicit.
** In one episode Bo makes multiple visits to a woman on death row. The first time she goes, it is implied that she crosses the border (there is no death penalty in Canada). Afterwards she is back home but then she visits the prisoner twice more on the same day, which would make for a lot of commuting since it is about a 2 hour drive to the nearest border crossing from Toronto.
** Check the currency and the flag in the trailer park in the second episode…
** When street intersections are mentioned, we get things like "University and Dunkirk."
** The one cop-shop we hear mentioned is not "39th Precinct," but rather "39th Division."
** One episode showed a realtor's sign on the lawn of a house; the phone number had a 416 (Toronto) area code.
** The UsefulNotes/CanadianAccents are a bit of a giveaway. In particular, they pronounce "Lich" to sound like "lick" instead of like "Rich," even going as far as having Kenzi mistake the word for "lick" when she first hears it.
** A sign in a restaurant window in the first episode reads "LLBO," which means the Liquor Licensing Board of Ontario (advertising that the restaurant sells alcohol).
** After a joke about a Fae black market, Kenzi complains that Cherry Coke is hard to find, [[TruthInTelevision which is true in Canada]].
** When Kenzi joins Bo on a mission and reveals she's tipsy, Bo comments that it will ruin her candidacy for the Young Conservatives, meaning not young people with conservative values in general but the official Youth wing of the Conservative Party of Canada.
* ''Series/NightHeat'': Probably the TropeCodifier. The show went to extremes in seeming to take place in the US without making any references that contradicted it being set in Canada.
* ''Series/OrphanBlack'':
** The show is shot in Canada, starring Canadian actors, and is strongly implied to take place in UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}}. However, nearly all blatant references to Canada or Toronto are carefully avoided; one has to be on the lookout for the few instances when they slip up and give away the location (such as on a bank form in season 1).
** [[EiffelTowerEffect The CN Tower]] is carefully cropped out of shots of downtown Toronto. It can be partly seen in the opening shot of the pilot, but with the top of it cut off, only a native Torontonian would recognize it. Later episodes are better at hiding the city's most famous landmark. The very distinctive octagonal double-decker [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/Georgetown_GO_Train_Eastbound.jpg/800px-Georgetown_GO_Train_Eastbound.jpg GO Transit commuter trains]] were digitally repainted from green to blue in the pilot.
** The Toronto Police Service is instead called the "Metropolitan Police Service." This is based on the older name "Metropolitan Toronto Police Service," but still cuts out "Toronto" from the name.
** Alison is said to live in "Scarborough," a municipality of Toronto, rather than just "Toronto." There are a lot of communities in the world named Scarborough, making the location sound generic.
** The [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks US Army]] is involved with the clone project, though in season 3 they're also shown to have a black site in Mexico, indicating that national borders are no object to them.
** Fleeting references kept in include Canadian money, Ontario license plates, and UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}} addresses and area codes.
** By contrast, all the cities they do mention explicitly are in the US. Cosima grew up in Berkeley and went to grad school in Minnesota, while Tony is from Cincinnati.
* ''Series/PsiFactor'', sometimes. The producers could never seem to decide whether Canada existed or not.
* ''Series/{{Sanctuary}}'' is set in "Old City" somewhere on the west coast, but which country it's in is never made clear. It's an invented city (like [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Metropolis]]).
** In one episode, however, Kate gives her brother what looks like Canadian money.
* ''Series/{{SCTV}}'': Melonville is never explicitly stated to be in Canada, and later episodes refer to it being in the Tri-State area. Most of the television/film they parodied was familiar to both American and Canadian audiences. The Great White North segment, created specifically on orders to add more Canadian flavor to the show, intentionally plays as a parody of Canadian stereotypes and could ironically be interpreted as a foreign lampooning of Canada.
* ''Series/YouCantDoThatOnTelevision'', once it became internationally syndicated and Nickelodeon became a production partner with the show's Canadian producers, its previously unapologetically Canadian flavor got downplayed if not completely blanched - the kids were making references to the Fourth of July and American cultural institutions and being told not to say "eh" or use Canadian terminology for things that were called something different in America.
* ''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. Eagle-eyed viewers, however, will still spot "Canadian Content" such as Canadian-style railroad crossing signs, police wearing Canadian-style uniforms with red cap bands and trouser stripes, and Roland wearing a Commonwealth-style mayoral collar. In 2018, Eugene Levy stated that the town is technically in Canada due to the show's obligations to domestic content rules.
* ''Series/WhenCallsTheHeart'': Notably averted in Season One, when the show makes it no secret that it takes place in northwest Canada. Strongly present in subsequent seasons, when, with the exception of a Mountie as a character and Hamilton as a city, laws, political systems, locations, famous historical artists and inventors, newspapers, and cities are all American. There is even mention of the Mountie running for President, instead of Prime Minister, which is an incredibly jarring experience for Canadian viewers.
* Both of Rick Siggelkow's AdaptationExpansion series, ''Series/ShiningTimeStation'' and ''Series/TheNoddyShop'', were filmed in Canada but appear to take place in the United States (in the latter's case, the titular store was based on a real antique store in upstate New York). However, in some cases [[OohMeAccentsSlipping the actors' accents do slip]] — one episode of ''The Noddy Shop'' had a scene where a character pronounced the letter Z as "Zed", instead of the American "Zee".
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[[folder:Web Video]]
* A short video documentary, whose title, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU Vancouver Never Plays Itself,]]'' pretty much invokes this trope, was uploaded to the Internet in 2015.
* ''Podcast/{{Qwerpline}}'' is intentionally vague as to whether it takes place in America or WebVideo/LoadingReadyRun's native Canada. Even the characters in the show don't seem to know; there's a running gag in one episode that nobody knows whether the drinking age is 19 or 21 and they eventually just declare it a "grey area".
* Comedian Julie Nolke is Canadian, but her sketches often obscure this fact and get presented from an American point of view. For example, her viral "Explaining the Pandemic to My Past Self" series focuses largely on local American events, like the California wildfires and the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
* ''WebVideo/BrandonsCultMovieReviews'' makes a running gag out of pointing out these kinds of discrepancies in Canadian-made movies, many of which will try very hard to pass as American-made. Brandon himself is from Saskatchewan.
* ''WebVideo/{{Rerez}}'' is a Canadian {{Lets Play}}er out of Ontario, Canada, but makes a point of doing things that present his series as being distinctly American, such as holding up an American $10 bill during a skit on his ''It's Just Bad'' review of ''[[VideoGame/FlatOut FlatOut 3: Chaos and Destruction (2011)]]'' or showing the American prices of things in screenshots of online stores.
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[[folder:Western Animation]]
* This is a very common trend with Canadian animated series, especially those aimed at children, with the settings of most shows usually being a relatively nondescript North American town and the characters giving no indication of being Canadian in any way. It's arguably much easier to list Canadian cartoons that are openly stated to be set in Canada than it is to list those that aren't.
* Despite not even airing in the United States, ''WesternAnimation/ProducingParker'' was sometimes implied to take place in the United States. For example, one episode was concerned with how Dee's show was rated in the Bible Belt.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Braceface}}'' initially appeared to keep itself ambiguous about where the show took place. Characters would nonchalantly reference California and Florida, but would wear clothes with Canadian flags. Might have had something to do with American actress Alicia Silverstone being Sharon's original voice, since the Canadian setting was played up in the third season.
* In the opening theme for ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel'', the globe shows a ''huge'' map of the United States and ''no'' Canada nor Latin America. This is also true with ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner.''
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