Which countries have a city or cities that dominate more than here?

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by kirjtc2

I watch it. It has its faults but CBC is all we have for real journalism in this province.

CTV Atlantic is formulaic but polished, and actually does a good job of covering the entire Maritimes. CBC fare tends to be more province specific. Since I have spent significant amounts of my life in all three Maritime provinces, I like the regional coverage that CTV provides. The CBC news program in Freddy has suffered since the cutbacks which have reduced it to only a half hour broadcast. CTV News on the other hand is two hours (with Live at Five).

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Acajack

In the Greater Moncton area perhaps but certainly not to any significant degree in places north or northwest of the Centennial Bridge in Miramichi!

In greater Moncton for sure, and up into Kent County too. I'm of course less certain what happens in the far north of the province, but one of the segments on the more folksy "Live at Five" part of the CTV News broadcast is when they announce significant milestones like wedding anniversaries (yes they do that here), and you would be surprised how often they will announce a 50th wedding anniversary for Alcide and Clothilde from Tabusintac (or such)......

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

In greater Moncton for sure, and up into Kent County too. I'm of course less certain what happens in the far north of the province, but one of the segments on the more folksy "Live at Five" part of the CTV News broadcast is when they announce significant milestones like wedding anniversaries (yes they do that here), and you would be surprised how often they will announce a 50th wedding anniversary for Alcide and Clothilde from Tabusintac (or such)......

Same. Even CBC does It, but NTV is most infamously bad at it:

http://ntv.ca/features/birthdays/

The best part is the extremely obvious divide among the elderly as to who is from a larger town and who is from an outport.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

one of the segments on the more folksy "Live at Five" part of the CTV News broadcast is when they announce significant milestones like wedding anniversaries (yes they do that here),

Believe it or not the local CTV station in Ottawa CJOH also does this. Anyway, if they've stopped it's been very recently.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

anniversary for Alcide and Clothilde from Tabusintac (or such)......

Good choice of names there , although I am pretty sure Tabusintac is a predominantly anglo town surrounded by mostly francophone locales.

Anyway, no doubt there are some Live at Five viewers among francophones in the north as well, but I know lots of people all across the north and have for decades, and their go-to news is Radio-Canada out of Moncton with second place clearly going to Gaspésie TVA station CHAU from Carleton-sur-Mer on the north side of the Baie des Chaleurs.

CHAU is such a fixture in northern NB that it has offices, sales reps and reporters based all over the region.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

What's ironic is that for all of the rhetoric about Toronto being Canada's global interface, in much of the country it's not really an essential middle man at all for accessing the wider world.

You see things like people in Toronto arguing why Canadian city X won't ever get international flights, because they all go through Toronto, and that's how the world is and we need to get used to the Alpha City world order and cutthroat capitalists who run everything and don't care about Podunk towns. But actually city X already has a bunch of international flights...

It is similar with immigration where there was this narrative of immigrants not wanting to move to smaller cities that persisted for years after the relative decline of immigration to Canada's largest cities.

This is the sort of stuff I push back against a bit. I'm not saying Toronto isn't the most important or most "global" city in Canada. Mostly I'm saying the others are more successful and connected than a lot of people suppose, or than the strict hierarchical national urban model predicts. And a lot of people get carried away with the globalist plutocrat narrative, which is important but doesn't fully describe how the world works.

[megadude]

Interesting stuff about Belgium. The country itself doesn't have a very big profile globally, but it is more important and interesting when looking at it in depth.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Brussels is historically a part of Flanders, even though it is (now) majority french-speaking.
largest Metro areas of Belgium
Brussels 2,608,000 (historically Flanders, but majority French, and now its own region)
Antwerp 1,091,000 (Flanders)
Liège 744,000 (Wallonia)
Ghent 591,000 (Flanders)
Charleroi 488,000 (Wallonia)



wikipedia

French was considered the lingua franca among elites in Belgium for much of the past century (Even among many Dutch-Speaking Flemish, including some of my ancestors). Tables have turned somewhat, with an inevitable counter reaction from the hithertoo underclass Flemish (not unlike Quebec's situation, but there with French vis-a-vis English), who are now on top, economically-speaking. Without a strong central state, Belgium has descended into extreme bickering along language lines.

Didn't realize that Brussels is majority French-speaking. So I guess that's means that Montreal is the third largest French-speaking city after Paris and Brussels?

[Laceoflight]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Didn't realize that Brussels is majority French-speaking. So I guess that's means that Montreal is the third largest French-speaking city after Paris and Brussels?

Lyon is larger than Bruxelles with an agglomeration of 2,26 millions.
And though there are anglophones or allophones in Montréal, the RMR still amounts 3,7 millions french speakers. And anyway, I don't think that the statistic about Montréal being the 2nd french-speaking city worldwide ever was accurate.

[GreaterMontréal]

Originally Posted by Laceoflight

Lyon is larger than Bruxelles with an agglomeration of 2,26 millions.
And though there are anglophones or allophones in Montréal, the RMR still amounts 3,7 millions french speakers. And anyway, I don't think that the statistic about Montréal being the 2nd french-speaking city worldwide ever was accurate.

in the Western world.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Didn't realize that Brussels is majority French-speaking. So I guess that's means that Montreal is the third largest French-speaking city after Paris and Brussels?

Montreal is still quite a bit bigger than Brussels both city proper and metro.

Montreal is a bigger French speaking city (i.e. has more French speakers) than any city in Europe except Paris.

Where Montreal ranks in the world's French speaking cities only depends on how you rank African cities like Kinshasa and Abidjan - as primarily French speaking or not.

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by GreaterMontréal

in the Western world.

"What is the closest North African city to France?"
"Marseilles!"

[Loco101]

Should have noticed that it was for metropolitan populations!

Montreal metro population today is about where Toronto was at in the late 1980s? Does that seem accurate? (yes, I know that Montreal used to have more people than Toronto)

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

"What is the closest North African city to France?"
"Marseilles!"

[White Pine]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Is the CBC run by an arm of the British royal family? You'd think it was.

Well... erm..... Technically it is...


But not in a way that should affect programming, so you still have a point.

I was going to say that I didn't think Toronto dominated as much as some people think, but I've been beaten to that apparently. Anyways, I'll throw Vienna in there as a better candidate? Not sure if Austria has a comparable city.

Toronto does feel like its own universe, and I can understand why people think it dominates Canada, but it really doesn't. Sure, banking headquarters are there, but people don't think much about that stuff so long as they get their money.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Didn't realize that Brussels is majority French-speaking. So I guess that's means that Montreal is the third largest French-speaking city after Paris and Brussels?

?
Montreal's close to 4 million, Bruxelles is at ~2.5M.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by White Pine

Well... erm..... Technically it is...


But not in a way that should affect programming, so you still have a point.

I was going to say that I didn't think Toronto dominated as much as some people think, but I've been beaten to that apparently. Anyways, I'll throw Vienna in there as a better candidate? Not sure if Austria has a comparable city.

Toronto does feel like its own universe, and I can understand why people think it dominates Canada, but it really doesn't. Sure, banking headquarters are there, but people don't think much about that stuff so long as they get their money.

It's entirely possible to do all your banking and insurance business with companies that are not headquartered in Toronto. Would that be possible for a British with a company not headquartered in London ?

[mistercorporate]

Originally Posted by Martin Mtl

It's entirely possible to do all your banking and insurance business with companies that are not headquartered in Toronto. Would that be possible for a British with a company not headquartered in London ?

Yes, there are dozens of foreign banks with branches in London. Just because something is possible, doesn't mean it's preferrable.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by mistercorporate

Yes, there are dozens of foreign banks with branches in London. Just because something is possible, doesn't mean it's preferrable.

I have no idea if he's right about London and the UK, but that highlighted portion doesn't really address his point I think.

[Gerrard]

Originally Posted by someone123

You see things like people in Toronto arguing why Canadian city X won't ever get international flights, because they all go through Toronto, and that's how the world is and we need to get used to the Alpha City world order and cutthroat capitalists who run everything and don't care about Podunk towns. But actually city X already has a bunch of international flights...

Actually, you never see people in Toronto arguing about why Canadian City x won't ever get international flights. I'm not even sure why that would ever come up in conversation.

But I suppose what you really mean is people in Cdn city x have conversations in which they imagine what Torontonians might be saying and that just (needlessly) boils their blood.