A few years ago I was looking for a piece of pine in a HOme Depot. I was standing in an aisle full of construction grade spruce. A young female employee went by, and I stopped her and asked, "Where can I find pine?"
She looked at the shelves around us and said, "Isn't this pine?"
I said, "No it's spruce."
She said, "Oh, I thought they were the same thing." :icon_rolleyes:
I haven't heard the term whitewood. Perhaps there is something in Canadian law that says the woods have to be identified by species. They keep pine along with poplar, oak and maple in the local HD. Still, it's not as good as the stuff I can get at a real lumber yard.