[SignalHillHiker]

I've given it some thought, and "Mother Country" is too strong a term. To me, it implies a level of subservience, aspiration, and conscious imitation that simply doesn't exist between Canada as a whole and the United States.

That said, an individual country music artist from rural Saskatchewan, a hip hop artist from Guelph, or a military brat from St. John's probably is looking to the United States as a "Mother Country". But that level of devotion or even awareness doesn't seem to exist as a whole.

For example, if you read newspaper articles and the like from the early 1950s when St. John's was adjusting to Confederation (which, as I've noted many times, voted overwhelmingly against), you'll see lots of sad laments to the loss of various British things, lots of complaints about the, as Mary Walsh put it, "dour and shoddy" goods of this "soulless federation". "She's a bit chilly", back then, meant you couldn't get past Canada's cold, polite facade. That level of displeasure and rejection I think shows Newfoundland saw the United Kingdom as its "Mother Country" at the time. We didn't just want to be like them, we thought we were them.

There's no significant segment of Canada as a whole that has that type of devotion to the United States. Parts of it used to have, toward the United Kingdom. But none of us do anymore.

Even the sentiment that existed here is foreign to me. That local level of devotion to the United Kingdom, instead of Ireland, feels like it couldn't possibly have existed here - but it clearly did.

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One aside regarding the OP - Someone123 already mentioned many settlers to the Maritimes came directly from Europe. I'd like to add a clarification from the other direction that some Newfoundland settlers did not. Many, many families - including portions of my mother's - arrived via Boston, or even settled there for years, before coming to Newfoundland.