Canada's "Bible belts"
 

i.e. generally rural areas with many evangelical Christians. Some I can think of are the Annapolis Valley NS, Saint John river valley NB, the rural Niagara peninsula and pockets of SW Ontario, much of southern Manitoba, and the Fraser Valley of BC.

In the Maritimes evangelcials are mostly Baptist, while outside the Maritimes they usually have a Mennonite or Dutch Canadian presence.

For BC yes both the Fraser Valley centred by Abbotsford, and I will add the Creston region of Southeastern BC -(see Bountiful BC/polygamists). Both are very "farmy" as well. Two of the few places to buy a tractor in BC haha. Coincidence? Are all the other places you mention also "farmy"??

Given how bitterly, often violently divided our province has been between Catholics and Protestants, most Newfoundlanders - whether actually religious or not - still have a tribal affinity for one over the rest. Only 2.5% of us chose Atheist in the census, with the rest almost entirely Christian.

Within that, the big three are Roman Catholic (36.8%), Anglican (26%), and - since Confederation - United (17%; mostly Methodist in origin). These are the ones that are strongly associated with ethnic heritage (Irish, or English, etc.) and tend to be declared even by people who've never seen the inside of a church.

Outside of those three, you get denominations that are more about religious faith than cultural dogma. The biggest two among those are Salvation Army (7.8%) and Pentecostal (6.6%).

It's the latter that plays the role of a Bible Belt in Newfoundland. It's the faith mainstream society teases, uses in jokes, grows concerned about, etc (i.e. once heard an MHA dismiss another from that region by saying, "Don't you have to be at church?"). It's the faith with highway signs, stadium-filling religious concerts, religiously-motivated political opinions, etc. It's the one outsiders worry about.

In most of the province, they're a minority and don't impact the overall atmosphere of a place. But on the Eastport Peninsula, they are the dominant social force. There are Christian symbols engraved into the stucco of commercial and industrial buildings, Christian-themed hotels and tourist attractions, and a wealth of Christian bumper stickers and the like. The hairstyles are big, the LGBT youth from that region who end up in the city are traumatized. I've met quite a few of them and can't believe their horror stories even occurred in this province, but they did. Personally, I've always felt a little uncomfortable there. It's the type of place where, "What church do you belong to?" is a common second or third question upon making someone's acquaintance.

http://i68.tinypic.com/icmgjn.png

Glovertown is one of the main communities up there.

Nearer to the city, basically all the suburban communities around are called "God's country", derisively by townies, affectionately by baymen. The most notorious of these is Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove, which even uses a Christian message as its official town motto (Three in Unity Become One, or something). The local church has a permanent statue in memory of all the aborted babies outside. But it's still pretty benign in comparison to Eastport, and the religious aspect isn't the dominant atmosphere of these more suburban places - just an obvious, notable one.

I don't believe Quebec really has one.

The Annapolis Valley never struck me as particularly religious in this day and age - I actually know far more die-hard atheists/Satanists than practicing Christians from there. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I think of a "Bible Belt" region as somewhere where all age brackets are particularly religious, not just older people. It is however a farming-intensive area and Acadia University does have Baptist roots (although most Universities on the East Coast have some historical religious affiliation).

The Lethbridge, KWC, and Kelowna areas are regions I've heard described as Bible Belt-like. The stretch between Salmon Arm and Revelstoke in BC also seemed considerably more "devout" than what I'm used to.

The Church of Rome heritage means there was never any Bible to belt! :runaway:

You'd have to go back seventy years or more, but rural Presbyterians in Quebec tended to be the real deal.

If by KWC you mean Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, that's not really accurate. It's more rural southwestern Ontario that is a little bit devout.

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=3817

I don't know of any bible belt in Northern Ontario either.

In Canada there isn't much correlation between people's declared religion and where they fall on social issues. Some of the places with the highest prevalence of declared religion in the census are the most liberal on social issues. I think the stances on concrete issues are more important whereas declared religion is a murky mix of true adherence, cultural identity, and guilt.

I wonder if some of the "Bible Belts" that people talk about today aren't merely just examples of typical rural areas that happened to contrast against more liberal cities nearby.

Steinbach and Winkler for Manitoba! Mennonite central. Steinbach actually makes the news quite regularly for its religious laws and personalities still. Example:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manito...bach-1.3788276

that article could also belong in the "Ugly Canada" thread.

Closest thing to one would be just south of North Bay, in east/central Parry Sound District.

Coming from eastern Ontario I thought the North (drove highway 17 this September) was pretty bible-belty. There were road signs saying Jesus loves you everywhere.

The Upper Ottawa Valley is a strong bible belt from my observations as well. Significant Polish and Irish Catholic populations in the rural areas.

It is also one of the most conservative parts of Ontario.

Umm not Kelowna.

Here's some data for Ontario, using "Baptist + Pentecostal + other Christian" as a proxy for evangelical:

Census divisions (20%+):

Elgin 26.8%
Haldimand-Norfolk 22.6%
Chatham-Kent 21.1%
Oxford 21%

Federal ridings (20%+):

Kitchener-Conestoga 26.6%
Elgin-Middlesex-London 24.5%
Chatham-Kent-Leamington 24.4%
Niagara West 24%
Perth-Wellington 23%
Haldimand-Norfolk 22.7%
Oxford 21%

Not sure if there is a real bible belt in Alberta, but there are pockets of very religious people. The main one I can think of centers around Three Hills, home of the Prairie Bible Institute, people there are very churchy for obvious reasons.

Another one would be Cardston, that's home to a very large Mormon population, pretty sure there are no liquor stores or bars in that town. The Mormon Temple is cool looking at least lol.

Southern Alberta along highway 3 struck me as being very religious, even more so than the interior of BC (which really varies from town to town). Seemingly every farmer had slapped a giant aborted fetus poster on an abandoned semi-trailer and parked it in his field.

This is a bible belt thread, and not a "religiousness" thread, but it's possible that the census tracts with the highest percentage of "very devout" residents could probably be South Asian Muslim communities in Toronto suburbs. That's obviously not something the census asks, but you might find some large-scale social survey on the matter.

Also, there's a striking number of Pentecostal/Evangelical churches in the lower income suburban 416.

This reminds me of a talk I once went to in NYC. An author was writing about evangelicals in America, and the general mood of the East Village audience was that that was a "Red State/Flyover Country" phenomenon. The author corrected them by pointing out that you could take a subway ride to any number of Spanish-speaking Evangelical churches in the Bronx whose pastors were just as ardently conservative as those in rural West Virginia.

The high result for Kitchener-Conestoga is almost certainly due to the high number of Anabaptists (not at all evangelical) in the area. The riding covers most of the rural areas of the region where they are mostly concentrated.

Deer Lake has a huge evangelical thing going on. They get the travelling evangelists coming through and preaching the gospel with upbeat and raucous music, then have faith based debates about readings of the bible on Facebook (I know a few personally and get to witness these). I'm not sure what they call it, but it's become a significant movement in addition to the traditional protestant denominations.

The whole town shuts down on Sunday, everything is closed. In the summer you see people out walking around in their Sunday best going to and from church. We had a couple of guys come out and play junior hockey with us when I was a bit younger and they always made sure we said a prayer before leaving the room for game time, and they were never shy about trying to make religion a topic of discussion in the locker room (ie: what church were you baptized in). The whole town is a bit bizarre, especially on Sunday, it feels like you're in the Twilight Zone and maybe stepped out of your car into 1926.

The Cardston area of Alberta is basically Canada's Mormon belt. They're not evangelical, but they're "religious right" socially and politically.