Looking For Space

Thinking about "red states" vs. "blue states" recently, it suddenly struck me that the colour scheme used in the U.S.(Republicans red, Democrats blue)is pretty much the inverse of Canada. That is, in Canada, the left-wing party, the Liberals, uses red, and the right-wing party, the Conservatives, uses blue. So "blue provinces" are right-wing, as opposed to "blue states" which are left-wing. (To a first approximation in each case, of course.) A quick check on Wikipedia, though, indicates that the association of red with the Republicans is of quite recent vintage, starting only with the 2000 election, and possibly only introduced by the media in displaying the election maps, as opposed to actually chosen by the parties. Certainly the whole "red = Communism" thing would lead me to associate red with the left-wing, so I might have gotten confused about the American practice.

Anyway, I have a nagging feeling that at some point after the last election I mentioned living in a "blue province". So just to clarify, "blue province" = "red state".