On my visit to Canada, people asked me where I lived in Sweden. Gävle is not really a world city, so people wanted to know where that was in relation to larger cities they might have actually heard of. I usually say it is just over an hour by train to get to Stockholm… although that depends on what kind of train you take.
Canada is a GIANT country, so you can’t expect to get across it as quickly as you can get across France or Germany or little Belgium. However, the infrastructure isn’t really set up for quick travel, even back East where urban centres are closer together. How long untill we get a bullet train between Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat? Probably never, but hopefully a Toronto-Montreal one does show up soon.