TORONTO—The conversation drifted into finance and economics. Finger food and wine in hand, half a dozen graduate students from my department huddled together to talk shop.

The name of a politician popped up, one that this new resident of the country didn’t recognize. Hoping to be clued in, I quietly asked a second-year public-policy student beside me: “Sorry, who’s Paul?”

“Just nod and smile,” she replied.

So I did, keeping up the polite appearance of interest but feeling alienated from the conversation. That was the last time I saw her in school. I could only guess — through the snippets of that night’s conversation and readings of Canadian politics later — that the politician might have been Paul Martin, a former prime minister.

The episode ignited my interest in Canadian mannerisms and made me ponder what it could mean for a newcomer like me. Soon I learned that in Canada, smiles and cordiality — often masking indifference and distance — are no recipe for forging meaningful connections. Sometimes, they can be an obstacle.

Born and raised in China, I moved to Toronto last August to attend graduate school, with the goal of settling down here after completing the program. Like any transplant eager to make friends, I’ve seized upon every opportunity to adopt the Canadian way.

I’ve learned not to summon waiters by hand in restaurants like I would in China. I hold the door for people. And now I probably apologize as frequently as the average Canadian. Having witnessed how China’s economic rise has diluted social ties and trust in that country, I found Canadian niceness refreshing.

I had hoped to capitalize on that to make friends. Lots of friends. Little did I know that in Toronto, that’s no easy task. I’ve carved out time for one-on-one coffees with classmates and to attend social events. I’ve been invited to parties. Yet one year after arriving here, I’ve made little more than acquaintances.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, I thought. A former journalist, I consider myself a people person, always ready to mingle with new crowds. A friendship debacle in the land of niceness just doesn’t make sense.

The reality check kicked in quickly. Niceness — some here say politeness is more accurate a description — seems to breed transient relationships, even flakiness. In Toronto, coffee and brunch plans often get shelved after endless postponements. “Sure” can be an overused word disguising tepidity and reluctance. Nodding and smiling, usually accompanied by handshakes and bon mots, rarely produce lasting bonds.

To understand why, I turned to my classmates Ben and Vijai, who grew up in and around Toronto. Both said they could very well relate to my frustration and offered their own interpretations.

“We would like to avoid conflict as much as possible and we can be super passive aggressive,” said Ben. “No one wants to be mean. Also, it really hurts to have someone say, ‘I just don’t like you.’”

And according to Vijai, Canadian mannerisms are closely linked to what he says is the “moderate nature” of Canada, which leads to a pattern of behaviour “that is not boisterous or overzealous like the U.S.” In a highly competitive city where people remain highly vigilant about their self image and reputation, such a culture is fertile ground for passivity, he said.

That Canadians are nice is a fact hard to dispute. But in many ways, making sense of it all is like peeling an onion.

There is the nice you see in public and in news reports. The “doing good” kind of niceness. You see it in the cyclist who gets off his bike to lift up a fallen road sign. And the shoppers with carts full of groceries asking if you want to pay before them because you have just a box of cornflakes in hand.

Or the niceness that means welcoming. Ask Irish Canadians in Toronto whose forefathers arrived in the city by the thousands fleeing the 1847 famine, determined to rebuild life in a city that greeted them with open arms. Or the U.S-bound airline passengers forced to land in a Newfoundland town that sheltered and cared for them after the Sept. 11 attacks. Or the Syrian families greeted by Justin Trudeau whose government resettled more refugees last year than any other country.

Indeed, Canada’s signature openness and multiculturalism are very much the byproducts of its niceness. But beneath it lurks the lesser-known side of the Canadian etiquette, one that seems steeped in aloofness and reservation, and most pronounced at the personal level.

“We shake hands and are friendly but reserved. Halfway between English and American,” the late CBC journalist Claire Wallace observed in her book Canadian Etiquette. “If people come to Canadians with an introduction, then the Canadian is hospitable, but it is not general to accept people into the home unless something is known about them.” And according to Will Ferguson, author of How to be a Canadian, Canadians have “found a way to sort of get along without having to embrace each other.”

Nowhere is that more obvious than in Toronto, an urban mosaic where more than half of the population is foreign born. Walk through downtown Toronto and you will breathe the air of multiculturalism, in the city’s street signs and in the skin colour of passersby.

Yet despite the institutional endorsement of diversity, the No. 1 friendship tip people give me is this: Join a meetup group or find people who share similar interests. Most often, I would nod at such advice — perhaps feeling the need to be nice — while quietly bemoaning the herd mentality.

And for some who live by the niceness mantra, there can be a price.

Evelyn Sommers, a Toronto psychologist, knows it firsthand. For decades, she has counselled clients whose life was upended by being too nice. In her book, The Tyranny of Niceness: Unmasking the Need for Approval, she decries excessive niceness as damaging because it blocks the expression of true feelings. Romance gone awry. Abusive relationships allowed to fester. Niceness, she writes, can produce passivity — often manifested through “a stiff smile, strained conversation and tightness inside the chest.”

“We end up feeling very disentitled to our feelings. We become alienated from ourselves, and that creates a lot of anxiety. We can’t go out and be who we are,” she told me in a phone interview.

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Outside factors are contributing to the problem, too. A slew of factors — including longer commute times in cities, a housing affordability crisis and heavy social-media use — has made connecting on a personal level more difficult.

The predicament doesn’t just affect newcomers like me. A 2018 UBC study found that Toronto and Montreal were the least happy cities in Canada, citing low levels of community belonging, among other factors. In Metro Vancouver, nearly a third of 18-24-year-olds experienced loneliness “almost always” or “often,” according to a 2017 survey by the Vancouver Foundation.

As for me, I’m still learning and adapting, mindful that the transition to any new culture takes time. And that building social ties from scratch takes effort. Though sometimes I wish Canadians were less “nice” and more willing to share and open their hearts.

Owen Guo is a second-year master of global affairs candidate at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Prior to this, he was a researcher and writer in the Beijing bureau of the New York Times.

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