How do we fix Canada's "population void"?

[lio45]

Originally Posted by vid

The principal regions of Northern Ontario are not "Northern, Central and Southern". They're Northwestern, Northeastern and the Far North.

It seemed almost unthinkable that he wouldn't have known "Northwestern" and "Northeastern" as the two main subregions of Northern Ontario (even I know that and I barely know anything about Ontario), so I kinda suspected with his "Northern" and "Southern" subregions he actually was referring to Ontario. I went and looked at his post and this was correct.

I'm not sure he's right about "Central", and I think I've heard "Eastern" in the past which he's leaving out, but he's definitely right about some of the main subregions of Ontario being "Southern Ontario" and "Northern Ontario".

So your criticism of that one, as written, doesn't have a leg to stand on

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Procrastinational

That's really only the case with services industries. There is no guarantee that higher paying jobs will come with people. Doesn't strike me that people would move on mass to Northern Ontario to make minimum wage working at Tim Hortons or Walmart.

Fort McMurray is a good example. If you want people to move to more northern, isolated areas, there had better be good wages.

Exactly. In remote areas, good jobs (keyword "good") come due to the presence of local resources, not with people.

Add more people to a resource-less remote area and all you're going to do is increase the local amount of unemployed and poor, overall. Sure, those extra people will support a bit more service jobs, but the ratio for that is really weak -- the more people you add without pre-existing jobs, the worst off the population of that place will likely be.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Marshal

We do not "have all this land prime for settlement, sitting unused."

I'm pretty sure one can't find huge quantities of prime land sitting unused anywhere in this country, anyway. If it's good for something, it's likely getting used for it already.

And if you reduce it to being usable for settlement only (which he did), then still, let's face it, Northern Ontario certainly isn't a "prime" area for settlement in a Canadian context.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Do explain that more please!

Considering a given number of newcomers to Ontario, the greenest, most sustainable, and actually all-around best (I can't find one single disadvantage, really) way to have them live would be in highrises in the GTA.

I'm pretty sure that's his point. It's a good point that we often see circulate in urbanism circles (thrown around as a general notion of how to try to aim to do things long term). For example, I remember many years ago an article on a little British village that took drastic steps to make the entire place's environmental footprint as small as possible. One of the analysts remarked, "obviously, regardless of what they might manage to do with their efforts, it would be even greener if they just closed the place and all moved to London".

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by lio45

Considering a given number of newcomers to Ontario, the greenest, most sustainable, and actually all-around best (I can't find one single disadvantage, really) way to have them live would be in highrises in the GTA.

I'm pretty sure that's his point. It's a good point that we often see circulate in urbanism circles (thrown around as a general notion of how to try to aim to do things long term). For example, I remember many years ago an article on a little British village that took drastic steps to make the entire place's environmental footprint as small as possible. One of the analysts remarked, "obviously, regardless of what they might manage to do with their efforts, it would be even greener if they just closed the place and all moved to London".

This all might be true, but due to my upbringing on PEI, I really appreciate a traditional rural patchwork of farmlands and woodlots. It's pastoral, peaceful and good for the soul. The antithesis of this would be a Canada with a dozen cities and complete emptiness in between. I find this concept unfathomable, and without any interconnecting countryside, one wonders if we wouldn't just devolve into a group of disparate city states with nothing in common.

Northern Ontario is a challenge because of the lack of farmland and the dependence on an extraction based economy. It will be difficult to increase population density there, but I think it would still be a worthwhile goal, and would help to knit the western and the eastern halves of the country together into a unified whole.

Canada is an empty country in any event. NB has lots of potential farmland still consigned to the forest. I think you could safely quintuple the amount of farmland in the province without batting an eye. Even PEI is about 50% forested. Mind you, a lot of that is swampland, but you could add about 25-30% of the forest land on the island to the agricultural inventory. There are similar possibilities in northern NS.

What's the situation like in the praries? Is there any additional potential farmland in the mid north of the provinces or has all potential farmland been exploited? I know that there are farms well to the north in Alberta, even as far north as High Level. Is there more potential there???

[Marshal]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

This all might be true, but due to my upbringing on PEI, I really appreciate a traditional rural patchwork of farmlands and woodlots. It's pastoral, peaceful and good for the soul. The antithesis of this would be a Canada with a dozen cities and complete emptiness in between. I find this concept unfathomable, and without any interconnecting countryside, one wonders if we wouldn't just devolve into a group of disparate city states with nothing in common.

Northern Ontario is a challenge because of the lack of farmland and the dependence on an extraction based economy. It will be difficult to increase population density there, but I think it would still be a worthwhile goal, and would help to knit the western and the eastern halves of the country together into a unified whole.

Canada is an empty country in any event. NB has lots of potential farmland still consigned to the forest. I think you could safely quintuple the amount of farmland in the province without batting an eye. Even PEI is about 50% forested. Mind you, a lot of that is swampland, but you could add about 25-30% of the forest land on the island to the agricultural inventory. There are similar possibilities in northern NS.

What's the situation like in the praries? Is there any additional potential farmland in the mid north of the provinces or has all potential farmland been exploited? I know that there are farms well to the north in Alberta, even as far north as High Level. Is there more potential there???

Sorry to argue, but this is silly. Nothing about the world (save some fascist government forced resettlements) works this way. You guys talk as if Canada has a big problem that needs serious attention and fixing. I like pastoral land too. But we have plenty according to what is currently economically sustainable. Why does Canada need to become Denmark? We have a very different geography and economic pattern.

Its disappointing to write thoughtful posts only to have them completely ignored. Canada is not an empty country. Your pastoral dream does not rationally define any real preferred state of affairs. The way you talk indicates that the country is suffering for not being developed in every possible corner. To use your word, every corner does not need to be "exploited" for farmland or anything else. I live in Vancouver, a big city with almost complete emptiness right on it's northern flank. Its great. It also has the densely pastoral Fraser Valley on another flank. That's also great. Both of these are good for the soul. Canada is a complex mix of many kinds of land use and settlement. There is no problem here.

There are problems though in places in which there are plenty of people and farms but not enough economic reason for them all to be there. The american rustbelt? If your dream could be actualized, it would quickly be followed by decline and depopulation. Even beautiful Switzerland is seeing its tranquil rural areas depopulating (though city people are taking up some of the slack by buying farmhouses as cottages). Maybe when Canada has 60 million people you will see a bit of what you want, but most will be living in the same places (proportionally) as they do now.

Maybe the problem is that you see the world as if it was Minecraft. A real country is not a game in which you can be some kind of overlord.

[eemy]

What's kind of interesting is that the government in Ontario already tried settling the Canadian Shield back in the 1850s in a similar way to how land was opened up for settlement in Southwestern Ontario before that. Basically, the government built hundreds of kilometres of roads through eastern and central Ontario with the aim of opening up the land between Ottawa and Georgian Bay for settlement. Settlers who cleared the land and remained for a given amount of time were granted title to the land.

While this worked in Southwestern Ontario, it failed to work in Eastern Ontario due to the fact that land on the Canadian Shield is not very fertile. Most of the land grants ended up being abandoned. Many of these roads became highways or municipal roadways, but there is also a legacy of abandoned roads and towns related to this.

My parents actually own a recreational property that is just off of an abandoned portion of the old Victoria Colonization Road. There was once a small townsite on their property including a post office and school house. We've managed to find the old foundation of the school house, but otherwise there is almost no trace of the town at all.

[Marshal]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

What's kind of interesting is that the government in Ontario already tried settling the Canadian Shield back in the 1850s in a similar way to how land was opened up for settlement in Southwestern Ontario before that. Basically, the government built hundreds of kilometres of roads through eastern and central Ontario with the aim of opening up the land between Ottawa and Georgian Bay for settlement. Settlers who cleared the land and remained for a given amount of time were granted title to the land.

While this worked in Southwestern Ontario, it failed to work in Eastern Ontario due to the fact that land on the Canadian Shield is not very fertile. Most of the land grants ended up being abandoned. Many of these roads became highways or municipal roadways, but there is also a legacy of abandoned roads and towns related to this.

My parents actually own a recreational property that is just off of an abandoned portion of the old Victoria Colonization Road. There was once a small townsite on their property including a post office and school house. We've managed to find the old foundation of the school house, but otherwise there is almost no trace of the town at all.

Very interesting. I have never heard about this before. That was back in the days in which this whole conversation would have made sense. That was classic nation building when populating the country was key to its survival and development. It would be very interesting to see a map of these roads and townsites. I have seen a lot of maps like these for British Columbia. There were an aweful lot of big schemes that never made it off paper. So many towns had plans to be the 'Vancouver' of the future. It was not driven so much by government though . . . more by land speculators and mining companies. Having history like that on your own property (your parent's) is very cool. If the school was built, surely some other buildings also made to reality. Also, the name "old Victoria Colonization Road" is very evocative. Where is it?

[lio45]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

This all might be true, but due to my upbringing on PEI, I really appreciate a traditional rural patchwork of farmlands and woodlots. It's pastoral, peaceful and good for the soul. The antithesis of this would be a Canada with a dozen cities and complete emptiness in between. I find this concept unfathomable, and without any interconnecting countryside, one wonders if we wouldn't just devolve into a group of disparate city states with nothing in common.

Oh, of course -- I didn't mean that I'd like to see the countryside and picturesque villages get abandoned.

Life would be awful if we couldn't ever deviate from the greenest way.

Well preserved old little villages are lovely... I also like to eat meat once in a while, I sometimes drive my (fullsize 4x4 V8) truck when it's not strictly mandatory to use it, I like to take longer showers than would be minimally required, etc.

But the other extreme ("we have plenty of useless space up north, let's build there and incite people to go there") is just dumb.

I actually recall SignalHillHiker explaining that on some new remote Labrador project, the workers were forbidden from developing ties to the spot -- the site is just a temporary colony, and when the resource is gone, the camp vanishes. They don't want a lasting village there. I think it was a mine of some kind...

That is the right attitude IMO.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

What's kind of interesting is that the government in Ontario already tried settling the Canadian Shield back in the 1850s in a similar way to how land was opened up for settlement in Southwestern Ontario before that. Basically, the government built hundreds of kilometres of roads through eastern and central Ontario with the aim of opening up the land between Ottawa and Georgian Bay for settlement. Settlers who cleared the land and remained for a given amount of time were granted title to the land.

While this worked in Southwestern Ontario, it failed to work in Eastern Ontario due to the fact that land on the Canadian Shield is not very fertile. Most of the land grants ended up being abandoned. Many of these roads became highways or municipal roadways, but there is also a legacy of abandoned roads and towns related to this.

My parents actually own a recreational property that is just off of an abandoned portion of the old Victoria Colonization Road. There was once a small townsite on their property including a post office and school house. We've managed to find the old foundation of the school house, but otherwise there is almost no trace of the town at all.

Interesting. I'd imagine this is where the whole "they gave us Irish the worst land" thing came from given that huge waves of Irish immigrants were pouring into the country around that time.

Al Purdy wrote one of his greatest poems about the abandoned towns and farmland near the Canadian Shield.

[vid]

The most notable example of that in the Thunder Bay area is the village of Pass Lake. Some Danish people were told about the land and came to Canada a little over 120 years ago, and settled there. The farming sucked and most left, but a few remained and their descendants are still there.

A similar thing happened to Finnish people north and northwest of Thunder Bay, many places up there have Finnish names like Lappi, Kivikoski and Intola.

There is a fair amount of farming in the Kirkland Lake/Rouyn Noranda area, and around Thunder Bay and Fort Frances, but otherwise there isn't much. Thunder Bay's microclimate allows the growth of several varieties of wine grapes in the city though, there is a house in my neighbourhood with a trellis that gets covered in giant green grapes every August. A lot of Italian immigrants brought grapes with them to make wine when they got here. Like the Danes, Irish and Finns, they were also lied to about the growing potential of the region.

[eemy]

Originally Posted by Marshal

Very interesting. I have never heard about this before. That was back in the days in which this whole conversation would have made sense. That was classic nation building when populating the country was key to its survival and development. It would be very interesting to see a map of these roads and townsites. I have seen a lot of maps like these for British Columbia. There were an aweful lot of big schemes that never made it off paper. So many towns had plans to be the 'Vancouver' of the future. It was not driven so much by government though . . . more by land speculators and mining companies. Having history like that on your own property (your parent's) is very cool. If the school was built, surely some other buildings also made to reality. Also, the name "old Victoria Colonization Road" is very evocative. Where is it?

Mostly it is Kawartha Lakes Road 35, but the section near my parents' property has been abandoned.

More info about it and lost towns of Ontario here: http://www.ontarioabandonedplaces.co...asp?entry=1762

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by FFX-ME

Jobs come with people. Those areas need people. Only in Canada do people have the attitude that you can't take people if there are no jobs. Everywhere else they would say there are no jobs because there are no people.

well, putting the carriage before the horse doesn't work out too well.

Jesus, when times get shitty somewhere, people move from said place. I don't understand the logic of what you are proposing. Neither do any economists of merit.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Marshal

Now I have to go to the beginning.

How do we populate such places? We don't. We don't choose where we populate. There are human decisions which play small roles, but the real dictates come from forces we don't control. Plus, this has nothing to do with the health of our country. The bridge we need to link the two halves of our country is a better road, not people, towns and cities. And if Ottawa is a bridge by geography, so is every other place, it just depends on what you define as the parts being linked.

We do not "have all this land prime for settlement, sitting unused." Human use is not the only form. We are one of the luckiest pieces of political geography on the planet. We have populated areas with cities, farms, industry and connecting infrastructure, and we have vast stretches of land that nature still plays a major role. Unused? Please think again?

[ssiguy]

It's also not just economic.

As the old expression goes "you can't keep em down on the farm once they've seen Montreal". Kids leave the small towns {everywhere in Canada} to go to school and even if they can get a job in their hometown, the fast majority don't want to. Towns are not very inviting for young people because they are generally have a much older population.

Unless a town is completely dependent on mining or lumber and the plant shuts down, town and rural areas do not experience massive drops in their populations. For the vast majority it is not a collapse but just a slow and very steady decline. The population who are settled there tend to stay there but the young move and rarely come back leaving the rural/small town areas slowly declining with an ever increasing older population.

Older people not only don't have kids but of course more likely to die so the pattern repeats it's self. Even if you stuck, using Northern Ontario as an example, 50,000 people in the smaller towns and rural areas of the province and they miraculously got jobs, the population would still begin to decline within a generation.

Young people go away to school, meet new friends/partners and don't go back. People are willing to accept the much higher cost of living, noise, endless traffic, packed buses and subways, and living in a glorified walk-in-closet in order to enjoy the bright lights of the big city.

If you get a good job in a rural area, rationally you would be far better off staying there but people don't live rationally. From a purely financial point of view, the vast majority of people are grossly better off living in the rural/small town areas but they simply don't want to and no government program will ever change that.

[GreaterMontréal]

the small cities in southern Quebec are not losing population. (40k-200k)

the villages are losing population. In rural Quebec, they leave their villages for the regional centers. All regional centers are growing at a steady pace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_Quebec

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by GreaterMontréal

the small cities in southern Quebec are not losing population. (40k-200k)

the villages are losing population. In rural Quebec, they leave their villages for the regional centers. All regional centers are growing at a steady pace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_Quebec

You can't compare Southern Quebec to areas like Northern Ontario. Southern Quebec is within easy driving distance of Montreal or Quebec as well as has many other major population centres. You can live the cheaper quieter lifestyle and yet still enjoy all the benefits of the big city.

Areas like Northern Ontario {or Quebec} are a days drive from Montreal/Quebec with few educational institutions and even less things to do.

Commuting towns are still doing OK but not isolated ones and any town or rural area in Southern Quebec is not isolated.

[Marshal]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

Mostly it is Kawartha Lakes Road 35, but the section near my parents' property has been abandoned.

More info about it and lost towns of Ontario here: http://www.ontarioabandonedplaces.co...asp?entry=1762

OK, this is one of the freakiest coincidences I have ever experienced. I looked up Kawartha Lakes Road 35, and it was in an area that is a little familiar to me. I had a hunch and dug out the maps of a bike trip I took with my wife in the early 90's. I recorded the route from start to end. In early May 1993 we rode right up Kawartha Lakes Road 35. Coming from Montreal, that day we rode from Buckhorn to Bobcaygeon to Fenelon Falls, along route 8 to 35 at Glenarm, then north to routes 503/45, checking out the Kirkfield Liftlock, and west to Orillia for the night. It was a beautiful day and beautiful country along the edge between the farmland and the forested lakes. A very good memory. Pretty crazy!

[eemy]

It's actually a really nice area and quite unique in Ontario. I've never actually driven Road 35, but I have driven Road 45 a lot (another Colonization Road, the Monck Road). My favourite drive in that area is County Rd 6 between Dalrymple and Kirkfield. There's some pretty unique landscape there due to the limestone bedrock which lies close to the surface. The Monck Road is also interesting in that it skirts along the contact between the Precambrian Shield and the Palaeozoic bedrock further east and south; every other rock cut on the road seems to change.

[Marshal]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

It's actually a really nice area and quite unique in Ontario. I've never actually driven Road 35, but I have driven Road 45 a lot (another Colonization Road, the Monck Road). My favourite drive in that area is County Rd 6 between Dalrymple and Kirkfield. There's some pretty unique landscape there due to the limestone bedrock which lies close to the surface. The Monck Road is also interesting in that it skirts along the contact between the Precambrian Shield and the Palaeozoic bedrock further east and south; every other rock cut on the road seems to change.

Yes, that was what impressed me: the uniqueness and the rock, when I was expecting a simple change from the woods to flat farmland. Its too bad, but I will probably never get back there.