[SignalHillHiker]

Yeah - Paddy Daly always points that out to Irish callers to Open Line when they call in to go on about how much they feel at home here. They're usually surprised, crack a joke about not holding it against us.

The Irish identity just stands out because it's the dominant one where most people live. The English are greater in number but mostly rural.




In the City of St. John's, it's 48.4% Roman Catholic and just 16.1% Anglican. But add in the entire CMA and the Anglicans outnumber the Catholics.

Then beyond the Anglican towns surrounding the city, the entire Avalon is mostly Irish. That's where most of us live, so that's why it's the dominant culture.

It's just that very, very few Catholics live anywhere else and, since we're still a very rural province, that means Anglicans with basically the whole of the rest of the island are the most numerous. And it's stronger than you can get from a census because, as in 1949, about half the population declares its ethnicity as Canadian. And just like back then, they're overwhelmingly rural and English Anglicans. In 2011, 173,865 who indicated their ethnicity as Canadian chose no other option - so they're completely invisible to an English/Irish comparison. It's not far from accurate to just add those to the English line.