Very weird to lump all of Canadian English in together.
I'd argue dialect continuity between parts of the upper midwest US and (primarily rural) parts of central Canada.
I'd argue dialect continuity between parts of the upper midwest US and (primarily rural) parts of central Canada.
So I think the analysis is just lazy.
One dialect marker that immediately sets someone from northern or rural Ontario apart: "I seen" (instead of "I saw" or "I've seen") I never heard this growing up in rural Alberta, but when I moved here to Ontario it immediately stuck out to me.
There also seems to be a particular accent (that I noticed more when I was younger) for people who grew up speaking English in the Ottawa valley.
When I was 16 I did an exchange week where I spent a week in Walkerton (SW of Owen Sound) and that was the first time I ever spent time here. The 'youse' and 'seen' thing was something I noticed right away. Nothing like that growing up in the 80s in rural Alberta near Edmonton, though it might be there now.
... tangent... There's also a subtle but noticeable pronounciation difference between southern Alberta and central Alberta, which I've heard language specialists mention. Central Alberta was more heavily settled by German, Ukrainian and British populations (in order of increasing ratio); southern Alberta had a more heavily American influence, people who came over from North Dakota & Idaho, etc (like my great grandmother on my mother's side). Obviously that has blurred in the decades since, but it had a long term impact on both politics and language. Where I grew up west of Edmonton, a sizable quantity of the kids in my school were only second generation Ukrainian, with their parents often still speaking it at home.
Anyways, the English linguistic situation in Canada is a lot more diverse than it appears at first
Otherwise the differences I've experienced most are in word choices. Words like toque and chesterfield draw blank looks in the PNW.