Quote:
Originally Posted by Docere
In Ontario, Waterloo, Kingston and Guelph clearly make the cut.
Waterloo (99,000): University of Waterloo (37,000) and Wilfrid Laurier University (20,000)
Kingston (123,000): Queen's University (22,500)
Guelph (122,000): University of Guelph (21,000 excl. Guelph - Humber)
London and Peterborough are borderline.
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I wouldn't say Waterloo really is a college town. It may have 99,000, but it's in a metro of over 500,000 which is a bit big to be considered a college town and makes the post-secondary institutions less predominant, though still prominent. Guelph and Kingston, though, are great examples.
The only place in Alberta that I feel sort-of qualifies is Camrose. It has the UofA's Augustana Campus, which has about 1,000 students for a city of 18,000. So more like 5% of the population. It's kind of like Kitchener-Waterloo, where the university is prominent and important, but not overbearingly predominant. Camrose is still primarily an agricultural and services centre.
You could make the argument for Lethbridge, with UofL, which has 8,000 students in a metro of 100,000. I'd still say that's pushing it as UofL doesn't feel like the centre of life in Lethbridge.
Then there's Athabasca, with Athabasca University, but most of its students are through distance learning online. So it doesn't really qualify.
Major, esteemed universities in the West really popped up in the larger cities -- Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Winnipeg. Increasingly Saskatoon and Calgary. We don't really have an analogue to Kingston, let alone Antigonish.