Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
But BC is definitely more integrated with other provinces than [Southern] Ontario is. The interior of BC doesn't feel like some out-of-sight appendage to me in Vancouver the same way Northern Ontario does to Southerners. I visited the interior within 2 years of moving here; I still have never been north of Sudbury in Ontario, and few people I know from Southern Ontario (regardless of whether they were from Windsor or Ottawa or Toronto) have either.
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I agree with this. Then again, imagine a hypothetical scenario that involves cutting most of Northern Ontario out and squishing the remaining parts of the country together. In that alternate universe, Winnipeg is 2 hours away from Sudbury. Would that really change much about life in Toronto or London or Kingston?
Toronto itself is a bubble with a lot of immigrants who have few ties even to other towns in Ontario. The Lower Mainland is like this too. I think this is a stronger factor than the physical distance between adjacent regions.
The central part of the Maritimes is its own little bubble as well. If I had to compare it to the GTA and Lower Mainland, I'd say that it is the odd one out. From the Maritimes, almost everywhere is considered a flight away. There isn't a whole lot of distinction between flying to Toronto, the US, the Caribbean, or the UK. There are no quick road trips down to the US, and there's comparably little sense of connectedness to or importance within Canada as a whole.