It's horrible that people treat you like this because of your origins (an American friend of mine has also suffered from anti-American racism here in Canada), but it's not like you can do much about it without hemorraging potential customers... much better to take the Racist One's money away from him, is how I'd look at it :-).
As lalitha suggests, saying that you're Canadian would probably work most of the time. Somehow, I had actually been under the impression that you were... Having been to Australia, I didn't get any hostility for being Canadian. I may have just been lucky, though: I suspect that to the average Australian, our accents probably sound about the same, unless yours is a thick Southern one, or something like that. Generally, identifying a Canadian accent is a one-way thing: there are some people that you know are definitely *not* Canadian, but there are Americans who sound so close to Canadian that I could speak with them for a few minutes without being sure. There are also Canadians who have accents that are close to some American accents... there's a huge grey zone in there... effectively, I'm saying that unless yours is a marked regional accent, you'd be able to pull this off fairly readily.
Anyway, all I really wanted to say is that I didn't get any hostility in Australia, as a Canadian, who may or may not have been identifiable as such.



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as you are just using this in "polite conversation" as such.



Thanks alot Dubya


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