[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by ciudad_del_norte

This is also a factor of different colonial approaches by the Spanish. While they still cherished notions of superiority and were hardly benevolent, they were generally much more open to the ideas of mixing with indigenous populations than the French, and much much more than the British. There were class implications for sure, but the historical/cultural role and concept of meztizo in latin america is one of the defining features of most of that region.

But along those lines...What if something similar had happened farther north? Canada as a predominantly Métis nation?

Another factor in the larger native proportion of ancestry in places in Latin America like Mexico and Central America in particular, is just that the indigenous population was larger to begin with (the tropics can support more people living on the same unit of land than Canadian geography allows). Places like Mesoamerica and Peru (I know the civilizations there were not necessarily tropical in climate though, since they were often highland) had larger denser settlements. So, highland South America and Central America, where the settlements and cities that natives had were large and dense, happen to be places in Latin America or in the Americas as a whole with more indigenous ancestry today relative to places like Canada, the US, Argentina etc.

Originally Posted by Acajack

I've noticed that French-speaking Canadians definitely have a mindset that they and their language are "at home" here on this continent. We seem to have this in common with Mexican-Americans (and often Latin Americans in general).

This does not always prevent assimilation, but it does make the two populations somewhat more resistant to assimilation when they are in minority situations.

True, there's an element of "our languages were here before the Anglos" that both Latin Americans and French Canadians share. Others like German Midwesterners, Ukrainians on the Prairies and Gaelic Maritimers, were much more prone to assimilation even if their populations were large at one time.

Then again, without institutional support, Quebec-style, you still have language loss (eg. Cajuns, Franco-Americans in the US, even Spanish-speaking Americans in places without large critical mass), regardless of if the language was a "colonial period" one, not an "immigrant" one. Acadians could still keep their language better than Franco-Americans though even without support from government.

But I don't know how Acadians who stayed in Canada did compared to their counterparts that became the Cajuns. Louisiana according to a quick wiki search is claimed to have 150, 000 to 200, 000 French speakers, less than the Acadians remaining in Canada but still large in number.

Originally Posted by Mister F

Yup, and it's not just navigation either. It's the land itself. AFAIK Ontario and Quebec have the biggest areas of prime farmland in the country while agriculture in the Maritimes is mostly confined to relatively small valleys. In a 19th century agrairian society that makes all the difference.

The Maritimes had (and still has) forestry and fishing and coal mining, though I don't know how that could compete with agriculture and the other advantages that Ontario and Quebec had. I wonder if in theory you could have an economically powerful Maritimes that mirrors more like the US situation (large, powerful cities on the east coast).