"The joke further up the thread about the Americans not thinking of Canada at all is pretty good, but I wonder how many readers realize that it's a joke about Americans."

That was one of the ones I was going to reply to, and decided against it. I changed my mind again.

To any extent that American's don't think about Canadians, I think it is a tribute to Canada's reliability. Things I think about as an American when I think of Canada, in no particular order:

* We share the longest border in the world, it is essentially undefended
* We share 3 major sports leagues - the NHL, NBA, and MLB
* Canadians are massive figures in American popular culture - William Shatner, Dan Akroyd, Shania Twain, Michael J Fox, Tommy Chong, Keanu, Rush, The Guess Who, John Candy, Jim Carrey, Dave Foley, Norm MacDonald, and so on. This is mostly from memory. I had to stop myself on comedians, and I didn't even mention Rick Moranis or Phil Hartman. Someone should seriously study how Canada produces so many brilliant comedians.
* The next CEO of Berkshire Hathaway is Canadian (to keep things topical)
* Canada is the source of 60% of US petroleum and natural gas imports.

Nobody tells actually tells that "joke "in the US, at least nobody worth mentioning. Canada is popular, respected, and appreciated in the US and polls prove this. No attention-seeking logorrheic boor will change that anytime soon, but decent Americans understand how much we have to do to make up for the harm he has caused.

ps - unrelated, why GBP specifically instead a basket of GBP, JPY, or EUR?