I expect there is a through-line between politeness and awkward moments. There are lots of awkward moments for Canadians on the internet.
Canadian have enough awkward moments that there's a CBC article detailing Canadian and U.S. leaders from 1965 to 2019. Wouldn't you conclude that's a long history of not getting along. Here's the relationship to politeness.
Before he became prime minister, Lester B. (Mike) Pearson was a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957.
But when he made a speech accepting a similar prize, the World Peace Award, from Philadelphia's Temple University in 1965, the reaction from his U.S. counterpart was anything but peaceful.
"You pissed on my rug!" Lyndon B. Johnson told Pearson, as retold by journalist Lawrence Martin in his 1982 book, The Presidents and the Prime Ministers.
Here's a moment of cultural differences:
"Martin's book told another story. An enraged Johnson lit into Pearson on an outdoor terrace after lunch at the Presidential retreat Camp David the day after his speech.
As two aides and the Canadian ambassador looked on through a window, Johnson grabbed Pearson by the shirt collar, twisted it, and lifted the Canadian by the neck."
And then Trudeau and Nixon:
...a telephone conversation Nixon had with Trudeau would be recorded in the Oval Office, along with pejorative remarks about the prime minister that the U.S. president made to staff ahead of the call.
Trudeau would later quip that he had been called "worse things by better people."
Good to know that our world leaders have the distinction of being like the rest of us.
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