I've only been to Canada once - to Vancouver/Victoria a few years ago - but I did have a couple of incidents with locals who were pleasingly helpful. In one case, a bus driver let us ride for free because we were going to the ferry port - a ferry ticket includes free bus transfers, but a bus ticket doesn't include a ferry ride. In the other case, we were going up on the cable car to the ski resort on Grouse Mountain, and a completely random person walked up to us and said "I'm a member, and I can bring in 2 friends for half price - would you like to be my friends today?", just for the sake of being nice to a couple of tourists. I was impressed...