Giving up the 'U'

Met some awesome Canuck writers here. Makes me feel less alone.
I miss my Ink Canada groupies. It's nice as a writer to get out once in awhile.

So, during the game that bumped the Canucks into the final round (yay), we had a discussion about the differences between Americans and Canadians, esp in the film world.

One woman vowed she would not give up her 'u' which I loved.

As a writer, how much do you conform, or is this our little way of being patriotic. I wonder if a reader would flag 'neighbour' or 'colour' on your script as a mistake.

Then we joked about the words Americans THINK we say (I swear we DON'T say Aboot!) and words we actually say different. IE: Drama (Draw-ma vs DrA-ma, Foy-yay vs Fo-yer) and it was interesting to see that since we covered, east/west coast and prairies words we actually each say differently.

We do say ZED though - and as Zach kept trying to spell with a 'Z' we realized it's a fast way to confuse Americans.  The phone tech took awhile to catch on but every time Zach would say 'Zed', he'd repeat 'Zee'...just to let us know. 

So, what I took away is this, I'm going to need a lot more practice and relearn my dialogue.
How about it, would you give up your 'U'?