Paul Farquhar
Legend
Extending it to North America generally, Icewind Dale looks suspiciously like Alaska.I decided it would be best to spin this off into it's own discussion.
The original creator of the Forgotten Realms is Ed Greenwood who is a Canadian Librarian and Author and for those who knew what to look for the Forgotten Realms is infused with Canadianess. This makes it distinct in a way from all the American created settings. Which is not to say that FR doesn't have some American influences, it does, or that the Canadian influence strong in every part of FR, but it's a very Canadian setting at heart.
You see it in the environmental descriptions and the way heart urban centres are weaved together with vast and I mean vast regions of nature and rural farming regions, the fact that most of the races and cultures of FR are in fact immigrates to the world.
You see it in the fact that around the great cities of the Swordcoast you Native American like Tribes of Uthgardt.
You see it in the Parliamentary Democracy of Turmish.
You see it in the farm communities of the Dales.
You see it in the Law and Good government ideals of Cormyr.
You see it in the two solitudes of Aglarond and its history.
You see the era of Hudson's Bay (a corporation that ruled most of what would become Canada before Canada bought the land from them) in Merchant Ruled nations like Sembia and Amn.
You see it in the multiculturalism of the setting, the greater comfort with diverse forms of sexuality in the setting, and so on.
Ed Greenwood was the biggest Canadian influence on FR, but he is not the only one, Bioware which made the BG games was also Canadian and there possibly others.
Thoughts?
To someone who isn't American, the Americanness of FR (and especially the North West of Faerun) is perhaps more apparent, and makes for an exotic contrast to the very English Middle Earth.
I hold Bioware (based in Edmonton) responsible for establishing the look of the Flora and Fauna of the Sword Coast though.
Canadian Forest:

English Forest:

There is also a North American worldview colouring the more exotic cultures of the East. Notice how those Red Wizards wizards switched from trying to take over the world with raw power to using commerce and the magic item trade round about the same time as the fall of the Soviet Union in the real world?
This seems like an outsider's view of Norman England & France to me. You need a licence to carry a weapon, and there is an obsession with Knights, nobility, chivalry and courtly romance.You see it in the Law and Good government ideals of Cormyr.