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Originally Posted by someone123
New England and the Maritimes is also more of a historical than present-day phenomenon. There isn't much right around the border; the areas where most people live in both of those regions are several hours apart. It's not particularly easy to move back and forth anymore. I'm guessing you'd find more people in the Maritimes who've been to Toronto, Calgary, or maybe Vancouver than have been to Boston, even though Boston is the closest of those cities.
A lot of tourists in the Maritimes are Americans but, well, there are a lot of Americans. I'm not sure the Maritimes are an unusually popular destination for them.
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Originally Posted by someone123
In much of Canada, if you went back in time by 50 or 100 years you might have found that the share of people who had lived on both sides of the border, or had family ties on both sides, was higher. I think the two countries have been diverging for a while. Some of this is undoubtedly due to the border itself but I think two other factors might be globalization and Canada's evolution into a bigger and wealthier country with better internal travel options and communications, a more complex economy, more developed institutions (which can run things differently, e.g. by providing healthcare and other benefits), bigger cities, etc.
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Originally Posted by Sarah89
As others have said the cross border "integration" is not that common in the day in age. Maybe 100 years ago but the ties, family ties especially have really diminished. I believe Canadians and Americans have drifted apart more culturally than one would guess.
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Originally Posted by Architype
The topic of this thread actually raises additional questions, like how current border security issues, Trump era politics, international relations, globalization, etc., will affect the integrity of these regions, perhaps lessening their functionality and importance. Presumably cross border regions will be weakened.
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Originally Posted by big W
Two things that I have not seen mentioned in this thread is that the cross border cultural integration is less so then previous generations are:
1. Significantly increased immigration in Canada with a corresponding shift in immigration patterns vs the US.
2. Significantly increased internal migration patterns in Canada. So for example 100 years ago migrants to Alberta were more likely to be from the US but now they are Canadians from other provinces.
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Interesting that many here observe the decline in cross-border connections and decreasing numbers of people who have family ties across the two. That seems to be my impression too.
It relates to the often discussed question of whether the US and Canada are drifting closer or farther apart.
On the one hand, there's the rise of Canadian cities as being larger, more attractive destinations for immigrants than fifty or a hundred years back. There's the difficulty of crossing borders and maintaining large chain migrations of people who may have families split in between the US and Canada in the modern era. Unlike even as recently as when the Americans who wanted to avoid the draft went north during the Vietnam war about just a couple of generations ago, it is hard to become citizens of either country so easily in the 21st century, so people and their families may be more likely to just stick to one side of the border.
On the other hand, there's talk of becoming more alike through globalization of talent, NAFTA, brain-drain of Canadians to the US, many more US chains and companies in Canada in contrast to Canada's ability to produce "homegrown" counterparts. Even talk of the Canadian accent being more "Americanized" relates to the question of how alike the two countries are becoming.
So you have two conflicting narratives of either becoming more alike or more apart in the modern, globalized era.