Being neither dyed nor dead, but being a fan of language and communcations, I found this particular Canadianism quite interesting, so I looked it up -- there is good evidence you may have your causalities tied up wrong because 'yous' is the Old English form that has been largely usurped by your urban-fueled invaders foisting their Imperial officialdom on traditions stretching back into unfathomable depths of history. That it shows up still to this day in the rural New World is perhaps due to the all-too-common heritage-story of fleeing the persecution of the afore-said Imperial foisterers driving them first here on wooden ships, and then progressively eating away at their lands by profiteering land development, driving the more sober good enough for grandpa is good enough for me folk out into the hinterland.

That's a good yarn in itself, but it could well simply be that the same tenacity which brings folks into these long comment-chain discussions here on the Peninsular is that same bit of stubbornness that would let the rootsier sorts retain their idioms of language, even in the face of rampaging Academic Pronouncements of What Is Right.

Which is, you may be proud to note, a particularly Ontarian thing, most evidenced by that recurring faux battle in the media every decade or two wherein the Self-Appointed Guardians of Canadianisms run chicken-littling around with their heads cut off fearing the Americans are crushing our children into saying "Zee" ... when, in point of fact, it is a much documented phenomenon that the spontaneous adoption of the local linguistic idiom shifts them over to a very strong Maple Leaf Waving Zed long before they hit middle school. Linguists muse that the reason this effect is so very strong here in Southern Ontario may be precisely because you are all nearly completely surrounded by Americans and their media, and especially their multi-billion-dollar Early Childhood Education Media. Yet you, I and even all the kids now senior at the Peninsular Shores, they all say Zed.

Now here is the really funny part: historically, the original speakers of English said 'Zee'!!! And you guessed it, they were long since trampled and coerced by the harbingers of What Is Right and Correct into dropping the ways of their forefathers and going with the New Thing.