Where the West begins

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

haha, I made a Trudeau. Saskatchewan is definitely Western Canada.

So you think there's a big difference between Southeastern Saskatchewan and Southwestern Manitoba? You step into a different world from one to the other and vice versa?

[RWin]

Originally Posted by someone123

...BC is also similar to Ontario. Seattle isn't far but it takes a long time to drive to a substantial town in Alberta. The BC interior is lightly developed and difficult to travel through.

This is assuming BC is the same thing as Vancouver. An attitude that always bugged be as a kid growing up in Vernon.

In the 70's it took just as long to get to Vancouver as it did to Calgary.

For a lot of people in Vancouver... I mean BC, Seattle is a lot further than a substantial town in Alberta.

[240glt]

A great number of folks in the BC southern interior go to Spokane rather than Seattle if they're taking a short trip to the states

[ciudad_del_norte]

Originally Posted by Acajack

There is a difference for sure between east and west of the mountains, but it's not on the scale of for example the Alps when going from French-German Switzerland to Italian Switzerland and Italy.

That's actually a really cool transition in a very short distance. Not only because of language and culture but also architecture, plants, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Quite neat in fact.

I've never been there but obviously there is a huge difference on either side of the Himalayas as well.

I think that the mountains in BC-Alberta might have had a bigger contrast on either side had they been primarily settled before the era of modern transportation links.

This was my thought as well. Rail is essentially what allowed "the west" to become populated enough to become any sort of entity. It also signficantly reduced the degree of barrier the rockies represent. Looking at population heat maps of canada, the sheild appears to be a bigger barrer in terms of size and relative emptiness than the mountains.

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by RWin

For a lot of people in Vancouver... I mean BC, Seattle is a lot further than a substantial town in Alberta.

Given that about 80% of BC's population lives on the south coast it's not really that outrageous of a blanket statement to make that Seattle is closer to people in BC.

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by 240glt

From this westerner's point of view, it's hard to even consider Manitoba as "west"

Really the "west" is BC, AB & Sask

Wow, this is laughable, ever hear the term prarie provinces as in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta? Manitoba has more in common with SK and AB than any other provinces in Canada.

The real vast open prairie starts about 80 KM in to MB from the Ontario border just before Steinbach.

In western Canada there is no central Canada, your either from the west or east. Politically Manitoba outside of north and central Winnipeg it is mostly Conservative just like SK and Alberta.

[240glt]

^ It's the view from out here man.. Especially from BC.

It seems no one wants to be lumped in with Manitoba for some reason

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I think that the mountains in BC-Alberta might have had a bigger contrast on either side had they been primarily settled before the era of modern transportation links.

The area was settled before then—thousands of years before then, in fact. First Nations on the Pacific coast are distinctly different from their counterparts to the east of the Rockies. They have much different languages and different livelihoods. Their traditional forms of dress, architecture and political organization are also quite different.

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by 240glt

A great number of folks in the BC southern interior go to Spokane rather than Seattle if they're taking a short trip to the states

Yup! It's roughly the same distance from Castlegar to Spokane as it is from Vancouver to Seattle. And at a quarter million people it is a decent size and less than two and a half hours away.

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by lio45

So you think there's a big difference between Southeastern Saskatchewan and Southwestern Manitoba? You step into a different world from one to the other and vice versa?

What exactly are you trying to get at? this is based on a map, Manitoba is in the center of the country, thus it's central and not west. Better get all excited about it though

Originally Posted by rrskylar

Wow, this is laughable, ever hear the term prarie provinces as in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta? Manitoba has more in common with SK and AB than any other provinces in Canada.

The real vast open prairie starts about 80 KM in to MB from the Ontario border just before Steinbach.

In western Canada there is no central Canada, your either from the west or east. Politically Manitoba outside of north and central Winnipeg it is mostly Conservative just like SK and Alberta.

So are we talking about the prairies, politics or something decided based purely on the size of a country and a province's places in the middle of the damn country? People on here really will argue anything!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

The area was settled before then—thousands of years before then, in fact. First Nations on the Pacific coast are distinctly different from their counterparts to the east of the Rockies. They have much different languages and different livelihoods. Their traditional forms of dress, architecture and political organization are also quite different.

Note that I said "primarily settled".

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

What exactly are you trying to get at?

That I wouldn't choose to place a major boundary between distinctly separate sub-federal spheres in the middle of the Prairies.

The Rockies, the great void in NW Ontario, the linguistic/cultural borders on both sides of Quebec, would be the main candidates for these boundaries.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

What exactly are you trying to get at? this is based on a map, Manitoba is in the center of the country, thus it's central and not west. Better get all excited about it though

By that definition, it would be Southern Nunavut that would qualify as "Central Canada". Manitoba is excentric, hugging the southern border.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

First Nations on the Pacific coast are distinctly different from their counterparts to the east of the Rockies. They have much different languages and different livelihoods. Their traditional forms of dress, architecture and political organization are also quite different.

That was Acajack's point - given that the dominant culture in BC and AB is from newish settlement that has always enjoyed at least railways and now cheap and convenient flying, the Rockies haven't been anywhere near as much of a barrier for culture as they would have been in earlier times.

[someone123]

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.

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.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

That was Acajack's point - given that the dominant culture in BC and AB is from newish settlement that has always enjoyed at least railways and now cheap and convenient flying, the Rockies haven't been anywhere near as much of a barrier for culture as they would have been in earlier times.

I think this is accurate.

One thing to note for people looking at a map, however, is that the distances you see are not proportional to how hard it is to get around. Vancouver to Nelson is about 500 km as the crow flies but it takes about 8 hours to drive there, and the drive is pretty treacherous for a large part of the year. To give you a sense of what it's like, winter tires are mandatory on the highway east of Hope BC on October 1 or later.

The Maritimes don't have the same issues with elevation but they're effectively pushed farther away from the rest of Canada by circuitous routes. Montreal is 800 km from Halifax but the drive is about 1,250 km. The VIA train is even more ridiculous. It takes over 22 hours. In a fully-functional modern geopolitical environment, that train would take more like 6 hours.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I think Ontario is isolated in the same way that California or Texas is isolated. It's a very large province that's big enough that it can turn inward and still feel like a legit country. Its only psychological Canadian neighbour is the only province that feels even more autonomous than Ontario, and is separated by language and culture, so that reinforces Ontario's autonomy a bit more. This might sound extremely arrogant and stereotypical, but, growing up in Ontario we really felt that we were the de facto English Canadians. There were 13 million of us and we didn't have to leave our province to do anything. We all went to different universities and colleges, but they were dotted around the province, not around the country. We learned that Canada was a country of two languages and cultures, and we could see that implicitly because Quebec was right there. We assumed we were the other half.

It's different living in Northeastern Ontario like I do and living in a city where 40% of the population has French as a first language and towns to the North are majority francophone. Although most Franco-Ontarians don't speak French as well as Quebeckers due to societal differences and English being dominant in Ontario as a whole so many terminologies, expressions and words are anglicized in Ontario. But French is still commonly used here whether it's well or poorly spoken. We here in this region have excellent relations with our Quebec neighbours in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region. And that's business-wise, visiting and even politically. It's very different than what you see in the media between politicians in Ottawa and Quebec City.

[Acajack]

And another good chunk of the Timmins population is not francophone at all but has French Canadian roots in Quebec. Cornwall is like this too.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

That was Acajack's point - given that the dominant culture in BC and AB is from newish settlement that has always enjoyed at least railways and now cheap and convenient flying, the Rockies haven't been anywhere near as much of a barrier for culture as they would have been in earlier times.

Yeah it was not meant as a slight on aboriginals or even forgetting them.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by Acajack

And another good chunk of the Timmins population is not francophone at all but has French Canadian roots in Quebec. Cornwall is like this too.

I'd say that about 60% of the population in Timmins is mainly of French-Canadian background and about 75% of the population has at least some French-Canadian background. A lot of those people have mixed backgrounds.