Accent e"Gah?"

This past weekend, my cousin’s cousins came up to visit. They’re from Michigan. They have that funny mid-west accent. Yknow, the one where they say their ‘ohs’ as a long ‘ows.’ So instead of “so-rry” it’s “saaaaaaary.” They really stress the “a’s” and “i’s” as in “Eyyye saah thaht movie.” I asked them, what our (from Canada) accents were like. They said it was “Canadian” but we don’t have that “aboot” thing going on which is cool, because I find that stereotype pretty ghetto. Now this is the part that messed me up: I asked them if our accents were the same as NY/LA tv accents. “Is it like on ‘Friends’ or something?” and they said it wasn’t. What!? I talk different from people on tv!?! Messed up right? … So Monday came and I was talking to a new employee from work. Random chit-chat. I asked her where she used to work: it was some random Xpharma company. I told her I never heard of it before and then she asked me “are you new to Canada?” WTF?! I went home that night with a major case of BP (brown paranoia) “Do I speak with an accent?” I kept repeating random words to myself to see if they came out ‘normal’ Today I asked what she meant by that comment. Reassured, she said: “Xpharma is a big company and I was surprised you never heard of it before”