Stop using "Northeastern", "Midwestern", "Sunbelt" etc. for Canadian cities?

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

It's funny to think that Buffalo and Minneapolis were rivals as grain centers.

In a way Winnipeg kind of feels like those two cities immigrated to Canada and had a baby.

Did many Americans/Canadians move/immigrate back and forth across the border similar to what happened further west, with Alberta, for instance.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Did many Americans/Canadians move/immigrate back and forth across the border similar to what happened further west, with Alberta, for instance.

Of course. But Manitoba never had as many American immigrants as Alberta and Saskatchewan. I think this is because Manitoba developed around the same time as the Dakotas, and Alberta and Sask. were the "last best west."

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Well, Winnipeg is quite a lot closer to where wheat is grown than Chicago (at least nowadays). Don't know how different things were back a century or more ago.

Indeed. Chicago is not remotely a Great Plains city.

Kansas City is a Great Plains city. Minneapolis is a bit further east, but sort of serves the "big city" function for the Dakotas and Montana.

[Capsicum]

Winnipeg and Chicago or Midwestern cities in general shared the feature of lots of continental European immigration in the early 20th century, less so later.

But the demographics are kind of different even if alike in some ways. There's lot of German and Irish in both, to be fair, but Chicago has more southern European -- an Italian, Greek etc. presence Winnipeg lacks. My Big Fat Greek Wedding re-set its story in Chicago from its original setting meant to take place in Winnipeg (and filmed in Toronto), but it's Chicago that really does have a large Greek diaspora, not Winnipeg. Also Winnipeg is more typically Canadian in having a large Ukrainian diaspora represent the major eastern European immigrant group, while Chicago is known for its Polish population but also had diverse eastern European groups earlier on (Ukrainians, Czechs, Serbs, Croats etc.).

Also, when did Winnipeg start to have a large share of Aboriginal demographic? Did it always have this presence from its founding or was it largely a phenomenon of more recent migration to the city for jobs? Perhaps an analog would be the "Great Migration" for Chicago, a "native-born migration" that comes alongside continental European immigration.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Also, when did Winnipeg start to have a large share of Aboriginal demographic? Did it always have this presence from its founding or was it largely a phenomenon of more recent migration to the city for jobs? Perhaps an analog would be the "Great Migration" for Chicago, a "native-born migration" that comes alongside continental European immigration.

AFAIK there was always an Indigenous presence of one sort or another in town, even if it was mostly on the periphery (Google "Rooster Town" for an example of a semi-rural Metis settlement in what is now south-central Winnipeg).

But the situation with fairly significant numbers of First Nations people moving into the city didn't really start happening until the 1960s and picked up steam in the 70s and 80s. I suppose that unlike Chicago where the Great Migration ended decades ago, there is still a relatively modest but steady stream of people moving from reserves into Winnipeg.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

But the demographics are kind of different even if alike in some ways.

That's true pretty much everywhere in Canada vs. its neighboring regions in the US, since immigration policy is different in the two countries.

Manitoba and neighboring Minnesota/North Dakota are pretty different demographically.

The least "drastic" differences are probably New Brunswick/Maine and the Lake Superior region.

[Acajack]

There may have been slight variations across the country, but when I was a kid in the 80s it seems to me the population of virtually all of Canada's cities was very, very predominantly non-aboriginal.

As a result aboriginals and their issues were pretty invisible to the average Canadian.

I don't believe anything like the current demographics of Prince Albert, SK (a city of about 40,000 that's now close to half aboriginal) was even close to existing anywhere back then.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I don't believe anything like the current demographics of Prince Albert, SK (a city of about 40,000 that's now close to half aboriginal) was even close to existing anywhere back then.

With regard to prairie cities, the Indigenous people were always in the region... just not in the city itself. That has changed in the last 50 years or so. With regard to places like Prince Albert, North Battleford or Thompson, many of the Indigenous residents came from places no more than an hour or two down the road which in those areas, is not considered very far.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Acajack

There may have been slight variations across the country, but when I was a kid in the 80s it seems to me the population of virtually all of Canada's cities was very, very predominantly non-aboriginal.

As a result aboriginals and their issues were pretty invisible to the average Canadian.

I don't believe anything like the current demographics of Prince Albert, SK (a city of about 40,000 that's now close to half aboriginal) was even close to existing anywhere back then.

Originally Posted by esquire

With regard to prairie cities, the Indigenous people were always in the region... just not in the city itself. That has changed in the last 50 years or so. With regard to places like Prince Albert, North Battleford or Thompson, many of the Indigenous residents came from places no more than an hour or two down the road which in those areas, is not considered very far.

So, most Canadian cities became "racially diverse" through Indigenous people arriving domestically and visible minorities arriving internationally at around the same time, or on similar time scales. It wasn't like the most common "non-white" person an urban Canadian encountered on a day-to-day basis would have been Indigenous a generation or two ago, and now the most common "non-white" would be Asian/Arab/African etc., even though most non-European descent Canadians were Native for pretty much most of Canada's history.

It wasn't like the US, where one racial minority's migration (the Great Migration of Black Americans) took place much earlier than the later racial diversity that came from international migration (from Latin America, Africa, Asia etc.).

I wonder why Indigenous people only starting moving to cities from reserves fairly recently, unlike say the Great Migration in the US where the rural-to-urban transition took place much earlier, especially since the Great Migration also had a larger between-regions cross-country component.

Both groups sought opportunity from the relatively poorer countryside (Natives in Canada and Blacks in the US South) to prosperous cities despite facing discrimination from the majority. Is this just another case of Canadian cities "booming" later, and thus taking longer to be an attractive place to work, or was there any barrier -- legal/social etc. that prevented Native people from finding work?

[wave46]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

I wonder why Indigenous people only starting moving to cities from reserves fairly recently, unlike say the Great Migration in the US where the rural-to-urban transition took place much earlier, especially since the Great Migration also had a larger between-regions cross-country component.

Both groups sought opportunity from the relatively poorer countryside (Natives in Canada and Blacks in the US South) to prosperous cities despite facing discrimination from the majority. Is this just another case of Canadian cities "booming" later, and thus taking longer to be an attractive place to work, or was there any barrier -- legal/social etc. that prevented Native people from finding work?

There are several reasons I can speculate to the migration happening later:

1. The Native population was more tied to the reserve by government than the Black population was tied to the US South.

2. The economy of the Prairies was largely family based and agricultural prior to the 1950s. The large, unskilled, labor intensive industries were located in the eastern portion of the country until then.

3. While a large portion of the Black population in the US had at least some exposure to 'mainstream American life' of the day thus making adaptation easier, I suspect that a lot of the Native population did not have this, aside from those forcibly exposed to the residential school system. They were largely isolated from what 'mainstream Canada' was at the time.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by wave46

There are several reasons I can speculate to the migration happening later:

1. The Native population was more tied to the reserve by government than the Black population was tied to the US South.

2. The economy of the Prairies was largely family based and agricultural prior to the 1950s. The large, unskilled, labor intensive industries were located in the eastern portion of the country until then.

3. While a large portion of the Black population in the US had at least some exposure to 'mainstream American life' of the day thus making adaptation easier, I suspect that a lot of the Native population did not have this, aside from those forcibly exposed to the residential school system. They were largely isolated from what 'mainstream Canada' was at the time.

Those are very good points.

The differences between Black Americans' relationship to the South vs. Natives' relationship to the reserves is also totally different, now that I think of it. Even though both migrations involve leaving behind an "old culture" and family ties, and familiar comforts in a poorer area, to an unfamiliar but lucrative urban environment.

Many Native populations have a connection to, and are more culturally defined by, living on the ancestral lands, to have cultural continuity with their past generations.

While for Black Americans, the US South was not their ancestral homeland, and in fact the place where they were brought against their will and forced to labor for generations. They'd already been taken from, and lost much of their African connection and forced to develop a "new identity" stateside. So moving from one part of the US to another thus perhaps might not imbued with the same significance as moving from one's ancestral land to elsewhere.

So, that might also account for eagerness to "leave" the rural area to the city.

Though that might not explain the timing of movement to the cities when it did happen after all -- why it did within 50 years ago, and not say 100 years ago or 75 years ago, which probably also has to do with the economic/social changes you mentioned.

[Docere]

Hey...maybe I was onto something!

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=205872

(And if Toronto can be a "Sunbelt" city, then Winnipeg can be a "Great Lakes" city right?)