I can even understand the geographic lack of knowledge, we all know that public education in America is extremely poor and the reading level of the average American is grade 4.

But the appalling part of this interaction I had, was coming to understand that they literally believed that the minute we crossed the political border back into Canada, the green grass, the sunny skies, the flowers all disappear as though it's a game loading transition... and the landscape transitions immediately into a glacier-covered hellscape.

No amount of geography education can teach people how to think.