Geographic Misconceptions

[Architype]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

Greenland is the same size if not bigger than Africa. Stupid Mercator projection.

Maps lie. How to Lie with Maps

So much of what we know is based on how information is presented to us and a rather large percentage of the population knows little about how statistics and maps can be made to show many different versions of facts and lead us to all sorts of interesting conclusions.

Greenland is actually about the same area as Saudi Arabia (true).

[Andy6]

I can't say I've ever encountered anyone who thought that Greenland was remotely as important as Africa. Mercator's pro-Greenland plot didn't really produce the desired result.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by someone123

Of Americans who are aware that Nova Scotia exists, an alarming number think that to get to NS you start around Portland or Bangor then drive more or less due north (while New Brunswick is somewhere in New Jersey). They also usually think NS is much colder than anywhere in New England.

Well, when Carly Simon sang about flying a Lear jet to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the Sun, it sounded like a substantial journey, not a day trip. Practically the same as if she'd been singing about a total eclipse in Kerguelen.

[mcminsen]

Africa Is Way Bigger Than You Think
Africa is bigger than China, India, the contiguous U.S. and most of Europe—combined!



Source: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...han-you-think/

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Re how far north/south the Maritimes are perceived to be:
Back in the 1980's, Canada and the USA went to the the World Court for an adjudication of their maritime boundary in the Gulf of Maine. As part of their case, the USA argued that Canada's claim would extend its EEZ much too far south to be reasonable (ie. Canada is "north", USA is "south", right?). To counter this, Canada showed the Court a map that extended the latitudinal line of Canada's southernmost point (in Lake Erie, south of Pelee Island) across the continent and into the Gulf of Maine. That line passed just to the south of the furthest point claimed by Canada (iirc). As I heard the story, both the Court and the USA side were gobsmacked by the image and Canada's case benefitted greatly.

If this is true, it was a very clever negotiating ploy.

Canada's economic zone does extend quite far south of Nova Scotia, includes the nose of Georges Bank (the most productive part), and lies at about the latitude of Boston.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

Absolutely. One thing I quite like about AB is that you can experience mountain ranges, foothills, arid badlands, and prairie all within a few hours, at least in the western half of the province.

The Rocky Mountain area between BC and Alberta is also special in North America in having a concentration of types of deer together in one spot that doesn't really exist in most other parts of the continent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer#Distribution

The highest concentration of large deer species in temperate North America lies in the Canadian Rocky Mountain and Columbia Mountain regions between Alberta and British Columbia where all five North American deer species (white-tailed deer, mule deer, caribou, elk, and moose) can be found. This region has several clusters of national parks including Mount Revelstoke National Park, Glacier National Park (Canada), Yoho National Park, and Kootenay National Park on the British Columbia side, and Banff National Park, Jasper National Park, and Glacier National Park (U.S.) on the Alberta and Montana sides.

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I wouldn't rule it out. On this forum, most of us are probably in the top 20% of geographic knowledge; some are probably in the top 1% (I'm probably not one of them).

But the ignorance of most people about geography and of the world, in general, is really astounding, and you don't have to go far to find it.

About ten years ago, I worked for a company where we hired analysts in a series of interviews, one of which would be based on case questions (e.g. "How many kleenex boxes were sold in Canada?"). Anyway, someone we were interviewing began their answer on the right, logical track, but it went south very soon afterward. She began by saying that she would start with the population of Canada: "I think it's about 50,000" she guessed. She didn't get the job.

She'd be right if she was a time traveller from the 18th century

Hopefully the person being interviewed herself wasn't Canadian -- that would be embarrassing!

Originally Posted by Acajack

People who have literally no idea of the *scale* of a place's population are out there for sure. It boggles my mind every time.

I would think that people would at least have a general feel for what scales of population are encountered in agglomerations of people living in a given area (eg. a big city being a million or more people, a medium-sized or smaller city hundreds of thousands etc., a town usually tens of thousands or thousands etc.) but maybe even that seems kind of abstract for some people.

Originally Posted by someone123

I'm not sure how true this is but someone working in tourism in Vancouver once claimed that visitors to the city sometimes point at Vancouver Island off in the distance and ask "is that Japan?"

Interestingly, I was reading some time ago, that there was a distant, eastern land described in ancient Chinese mythology called "Fusang" (which many scholars tried later to claim to identify as various places ranging from Japan, eastern Siberia and even the New World), and that 18th century European cartographers often tried placing it on the west coast of North America, including many French maps at the time that placed this legendary place around British Columbia under the name "Fousang des Chinois".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusang

[manny_santos]

One I’ve heard in Toronto about BC is that Burnaby and other Vancouver suburbs are geographically much further away from downtown Vancouver than they really are. Burnaby is closer to downtown Vancouver than most of North York is from downtown Toronto, but I’ve heard people claim that it’s as much as 50 km away.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

One I’ve heard in Toronto about BC is that Burnaby and other Vancouver suburbs are geographically much further away from downtown Vancouver than they really are. Burnaby is closer to downtown Vancouver than most of North York is from downtown Toronto, but I’ve heard people claim that it’s as much as 50 km away.

I'm curious as to how something like the distances between downtown Vancouver and it's suburban municipalities becomes a frequent topic of conversation in Toronto.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

I'm curious as to how something like the distances between downtown Vancouver and it's suburban municipalities becomes a frequent topic of conversation in Toronto.

Maybe not a frequent conversation topic, but I think many people in general might imagine or just assume that other cities' downtown-to-suburban distances are similar distance-wise to their own cities, if they just hear the word "suburb" applied to a place, if they know nothing else about it.

Burnaby or Richmond to Vancouver are more like Etobicoke or North York in distance to Toronto, while Surrey or Coquitlam are more like Markham or Mississauga.

[GreaterMontréal]

People in Montréal think that Mont Tremblant is really far North, whereas it is south of Trois-Rivières. lol

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Maybe not a frequent conversation topic, but I think many people in general might imagine or just assume that other cities' downtown-to-suburban distances are similar distance-wise to their own cities, if they just hear the word "suburb" applied to a place, if they know nothing else about it.

Burnaby or Richmond to Vancouver are more like Etobicoke or North York in distance to Toronto, while Surrey or Coquitlam are more like Markham or Mississauga.

Then they'd freak out with how Aussies use the word suburb!

[Doug]

Which is more elevated?

Grouse Mountain on Vancouver's North shore:


or Nose Hill, North of downtown Calgary :

[savevp]

Originally Posted by Acajack

And with that comes the classic "par en haut" (up) and "par en bas" (down).

Je monte à Montréal. (Up to Montreal)

Je descends à Québec. (Down to Quebec City)

Another interesting example;
In my recollections of university in Ontario, someone would go 'up' to London, Kingston, Windsor, or wherever their school was. They'd go 'down' to Toronto, ie home. The only frequent exception I found was with Brock Uni in St Catharine's, ('up' to Toronto), possibly because Toronto is pretty much due North.

As an aside, the fact Niagara Region is largely east of Toronto seems to throw many of because the drive entails heading west from the city.

[ghYHZ]

Here in northeastern Nova Scotia....we go 'down' to Sydney (north) ....'up' to Halifax (south) and 'over' to PEI.

We also go up to Toronto, down to Boston and over to Newfoundland!

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by Doug

Which is more elevated?

Grouse Mountain on Vancouver's North shore:


or Nose Hill, North of downtown Calgary :

I don't think that's really a misconception, since I can't imagine that's incredibly specific. That's definitely an interesting fact I'd say but not a misconception.

A misconception would be that Calgary is nearly as far north as James Bay or that Toronto is significantly rainier than Vancouver for 6 months of the year.

[MonctonRad]

How about that the highest elevation on the Yellowhead Highway is somewhere between Hinton and Edson AB, east of the Rocky Mountains. I remember seeing a sign to that effect on the side of the road as I was passing through........

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by savevp

In my recollections of university in Ontario, someone would go 'up' to London, Kingston, Windsor, or wherever their school was. They'd go 'down' to Toronto, ie home.

Really? "Up" to London and Windsor? "Down to Toronto"?

This sounds fantastically weird to me. I wonder if this was an idiosyncratic tick of a few students in Toronto?

As best I can tell, there's not much "up" and "down" in southern Ontario unless you're going to cottage country, or Owen Sound, or somewhere like Windsor. You'll hear "going to Toronto," not "going up to Toronto." Not even in Hamilton do people say "going up to Toronto."

Though you would be likely to say "going up to Ottawa."

Originally Posted by savevp

The only frequent exception I found was with Brock Uni in St Catharine's, ('up' to Toronto), possibly because Toronto is pretty much due North.

Again, this sounds like a weird eccentricity on the part of students from Toronto. I've spent a lot of time in the Niagara area, and you never hear "up" in relation to Toronto. This is clearly because the QEW goes west before it goes north. If Lake Ontario weren't there and you could drive due north to get there, then going "up" to Toronto would definitely be a thing.

[kel]

Edmonton is closer to Banff than Jasper if driving.
Edmonton is 1:45 to the foothills and 2:15 you are in the mountians.

[Airboy]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

How about that the highest elevation on the Yellowhead Highway is somewhere between Hinton and Edson AB, east of the Rocky Mountains. I remember seeing a sign to that effect on the side of the road as I was passing through........

OBED Summit. Just East of Hinton.

[Airboy]

Originally Posted by kel

Edmonton is closer to Banff than Jasper if driving.
Edmonton is 1:45 to the foothills and 2:15 you are in the mountians.

Driving.
Jasper is 365. Banff 416.

I used to have a project in Jasper that had me out every 2 weeks. I did the drive from My place in St Albert in 3:10 if I did not stop.