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When Israeli-born author Ayelet Tsabari first immigrated to Canada in 1998, a strange sight caught her eye on the sidewalks of Vancouver.

Beneath every Canadian bus stop sign, as if commanded by an invisible drill sergeant, citizens young and old automatically formed into neat, ordered lines.

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“I was wondering, ‘Why are people standing like that?’” she said.

And the phenomenon is not only baffling to Israelis. Ms. Tsabari described bonding with an Iraqi friend over the “foreign and strange” practice. But from Russia to China to Italy to the entire Middle East, there are billions of people around the world who are genuinely confused by the penchant of English-speaking peoples to constantly form into queues.

“Lining up is seen as a universal sort of truth,” said J.J. McCullough, the Vancouver-based author of J.J.’s Complete Guide to Canada, an online primer for newcomers. “And if someone doesn’t adhere to the protocol then it must be because they’re uncouth or uncivilized, rather that this is a sort of idiosyncratic tradition that we’ve internalized.”