Right, time to put the 'aboot' thing to rest for good.

In central Canadian English, the diphthong /aw/ becomes /∂w/ (sort of like a slurred-together 'uh-oh' if you can't read IPA) before a voiceless consonant such as t. For Canadian speakers it does not rhyme with 'boot' /buwt/ or 'boat' /bowt/, though people whose dialect doesn't have /∂w/ tend to mis-hear it as one or the other.

This is called 'Canadian raising' and was much written about by Jack Chambers, a sociolinguist at U of T who used to work across the corridor from me.

The two pronunciations of 'route' are a completely different issue. The Canadian/French one really does have an /u/ sound, whereas the USese one has /aw/. (Of course if a Canadian were to attempt the US pronunciation it would come out as the Canadian /∂w/. )

</regurgitation of first-year lecture>

I think most people in France would disagree with you there. They all insist that I have a very marked Canadian accent (except for the people with no ear for accents, who tend to think I'm Belgian ).