ABSTRACT Objective: to analyze the distinct features, incongruencies, and harmony between the features of Canadian-Brazilian community health nursing as well their practices. Method: ethnographic research conducted in primary healthcare clinics (city of João Pessoa, Brazil). Data collection unfolded from July to September 2018 and included direct, unstructured participant observation of collective social and professional-clientele interactions, with a structured personal digital log and reports of the researcher's observations, as well as social immersion in community settings. The fieldwork log was thematically analyzed to build the meaning of the comparative nursing practice. Results: analysis of observations’ reports identified challenges and opportunities to promote sustainable changes and create a supportive environment. Nurses’ competencies to promote health are in consonance with conceptual, political, and ethical sounding perspectives. Among the distinctive practices observed was that in Brazil, the prescribing practice has been well-established because legally the registered nurses are allowed to prescribe within the primary healthcare programs. In Canada, registered nurses have been granted authority to do so, upon receipt of specific training and under certain scope of advanced practice. Thematic analysis revealed uniqueness of the grasped information, incongruence between community health nursing practices and harmony between contextual practices of Brazil-Canada community health nursing composed the empirical evidence. Conclusions: this research uncovered the compatibility between Canadian and Brazilian practice as well as intricate features of Brazilian community health nurses. Unquestionably, the evidence sums up to the consolidation of the well-established Brazil-Canada cooperation in the field of primary health care. This evidence addresses the political perspective of cooperation for global health.