This is really, really interesting to me and I totally agree, it's all about research and practice. And that's still true if you're North American, since we're anything but a single unified culture. Chicago isn't very much like San Antonio or Los Angeles or Miami. A city of 4 million isn't like a college town of 60,000. Western Canada is different from Eastern Canada, etc.
Reading Canadian novels helps my sense of regional Canadian culture and helps me get a better handle on the show's Canadian characters. There's something that reading a novel does (full immersion, I guess?) that I don't get from watching Canadian TV shows or movies. Likewise, Chicago is its own thing, and reading helps me get the city a lot more fully than watching some sensationalized Hollywood version of it. Luckily with DS, Toronto is subbing in for Chicago and the show itself is a festival of things that don't make sense -- so there's a certain amount of leeway. :)
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Reading Canadian novels helps my sense of regional Canadian culture and helps me get a better handle on the show's Canadian characters. There's something that reading a novel does (full immersion, I guess?) that I don't get from watching Canadian TV shows or movies. Likewise, Chicago is its own thing, and reading helps me get the city a lot more fully than watching some sensationalized Hollywood version of it. Luckily with DS, Toronto is subbing in for Chicago and the show itself is a festival of things that don't make sense -- so there's a certain amount of leeway. :)