Major Pet Peeve.

As a Canadian one of my pet peeves, is hearing the United States of America, being called America. Last I checked, there were three countries in North America, Canada, the USA and Mexico. There are many more countries in central and south America. These people probably find it equally as offensive. 

Technically as a Canadian I'm also an American, as I live also in America. If anyone bothers looking at a map!  It used to piss me off when I was visiting Belgian relatives in my teens and they would talk in French all about l'Amerique. Same thing, calling the USA the name of a whole continent.  More insulting was that to come to visit us in Montreal, they felt they need to fly to New York first and then to Montreal!

I mean sure the USA is a big country that wants itself to be a #1 player in World affairs, but it is very arrogant of them to refer to themselves as Americans like they are the only ones on the continent.

Here's a link to a Life magazine slide show that's on topic  "How Canadians know you're an American". If you read the captions on all the photo's, one of them shares my sentiment exactly. :)