This work focuses on the sources and nature of the cultural and value differences between Canada and the United States. Aspects of North American cultures are interpreted as reflections of the key organizing principles that derive from their varying histories and ecologies. The central argument is that Canada has been a more class-aware, elitist, law-abiding, statist, collectivity-oriented, and particularistic (group-oriented) society than the United States, and that these fundamental distinctions stem in large part from the defining event that gave birth to both countries, the American Revolution, and from the diverse ecologies flowing from the division of British North America.