The following paper is presented from a Canadian and an Ontario point of view. In our country we have a tendency either to accept both the American and British ways of doing things or to take a position somewhere in between. For example, one can find advocates for either leaving out or keeping the “e” in ag(e)ing. On the other hand, after much wrangling, we have neither accepted the British specialty of geriatric medicine nor what appears to have become the American position not to have such a specialty but finally have opted for geriatrics becoming a subspecialty of internal medicine. It is questionable sometimes whether we are picking the best or worst of both worlds or what can in fact be labelled as essentially Canadian.