Which of these cities has the most firsthand/direct connection to Europe/Europeans?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I would guess yes. Eastern Europe would still be (relatively) poor, with few good jobs and a surplus of educated young people. In that sense, European integration has (arguably) been bad for white ethnic neighborhoods in the U.S./Canada.

Obviously once it became simple to just move to Germany or UK, there's little reason to attempt the difficult/expensive process to move halfway around the world. I doubt anything changes unless Europe has a severe economic crisis.

There was some talk of a new flood of emigration towards the US-Canada-Oz from Ireland when that country experienced a downturn a couple of years ago, but beyond a trickle it never really materialized.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

Pretty sure the "Bill Swerski fans" demographic has long departed the city:

not entirely.

because of city worker residency requirements in chicago, you'll still find "bill swerski" types on the fringes of the NW and SW sides.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

not entirely.

because of city worker residency requirements in chicago, you'll still find "bill swerski" types on the fringes of the NW and SW sides.

same in st. louis on the far sw side. maybe think of harry caray since he was a native st. louisan instead of bill swerski. they call into AM radio shows and sound like they may or may not be drunk at 9 am.

[samne]

Originally Posted by Acajack

There was some talk of a new flood of emigration towards the US-Canada-Oz from Ireland when that country experienced a downturn a couple of years ago, but beyond a trickle it never really materialized.

Anecdotally Ive come across quite a few younger Irish guys in trades, engineering, etc. over the past few years.

As far as other recent European, I noticed quite a few from the Balkan countries. Albania, Former Yugoslavia. Also, since the economic collapse in Greece, young Greeks as well.

This is probably since I live in the east end of Toronto. Could be different in other areas.

Brits have always been coming to Toronto. I think many don't consider this "European" because of the language and not from the continent.

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I can't find the exact stats but from my knowledge of the patterns it's quite possible that immigrants from France to Quebec (and therefore to Canada) had their peak intake year at some point in the 2000s. Owing to the fact that the numbers were extremely low for most of the 20th century, rose to a modest trickle in the 70s and 80s, and then spiked in the 90s and 2000s.

For some years in the 2000s, France has been the number one annual source country of immigrants to Quebec and is always in the top 5 or 10 (the only developed country on the list in fact).

France is top 10 on the list for the whole of Canada I think, so do the vast majority of French people moving to Canada go to Quebec or are there also significant proportions going to other provinces?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Jonesy55

France is top 10 on the list for the whole of Canada I think, so do the vast majority of French people moving to Canada go to Quebec or are there also significant proportions going to other provinces?

I think it's probably about 85% of the French immigrants to Canada that go to Quebec. Which is about the percentage of francophone Canadians that live in Quebec - about 15% of Canada's francophones live in the 9 other (anglo majority) provinces.

It's been a challenge for years to get francophone immigrants (from France and other countries too) to settle outside Quebec, but some progress has been made.

Now the challenge is getting them to stay there, and also getting them (and their kids) to remain francophone and not assimilate to (the ambient) English.

In places like Vancouver and Toronto which have very low native francophone populations, a disproportionate share of the francophone demographic is made up of immigrants from France. (Though the majority in these cities and most anywhere in Canada is still made up of native francophone Canadians, with origins in Quebec, Acadia, northern and eastern Ontario, etc.)

[Docere]

The top countries of birth for European immigrants from 2001 to 2016 for the Toronto CMA:

Russia 17,645
Ukraine 16,255
UK 11,675
Romania 10,370
Poland 5,865
Portugal 5,245

[goldeneyed]

A lot of good points have been made in this thread. The question is actually a bit difficult to answer. There are different ways a city can be "connected to Europe" or feel European.

In terms of the ethnic make-up of the cities, I would go with Montreal. New York and Toronto easily beat Montreal in number of European immigrants overall, but a visitor or resident will notice the European factor much more so in Montreal. Even though Italian, Greek and Portuguese immigrants mostly came to the country between 1950-1980, the restaurant scene here is filled with eateries with these types of cuisine. Nearly every pizza joint here also sells souvlaki, and Portuguese chicken restaurants are everywhere in the city.

The reason why Montreal feels more European in that sense is because NYC and Toronto have had a huge influx of immigrants from Asia and other places that make the European immigrants stand out less.

As far as architecture goes, all 3 three are pretty North American in nature. But Montreal has a lot of neighbourhoods and a cafe/terasse culture that makes it feel more European. NYC would come in second in this domain. As far as Toronto is concerned, there is something about the city that just doesn't give it a European vibe at all, IMO.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by goldeneyed

A lot of good points have been made in this thread. The question is actually a bit difficult to answer. There are different ways a city can be "connected to Europe" or feel European.

In terms of the ethnic make-up of the cities, I would go with Montreal. New York and Toronto easily beat Montreal in number of European immigrants overall, but a visitor or resident will notice the European factor much more so in Montreal. Even though Italian, Greek and Portuguese immigrants mostly came to the country between 1950-1980, the restaurant scene here is filled with eateries with these types of cuisine. Nearly every pizza joint here also sells souvlaki, and Portuguese chicken restaurants are everywhere in the city.

The reason why Montreal feels more European in that sense is because NYC and Toronto have had a huge influx of immigrants from Asia and other places that make the European immigrants stand out less.

As far as architecture goes, all 3 three are pretty North American in nature. But Montreal has a lot of neighbourhoods and a cafe/terasse culture that makes it feel more European. NYC would come in second in this domain. As far as Toronto is concerned, there is something about the city that just doesn't give it a European vibe at all, IMO.

Shit.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by goldeneyed

As far as architecture goes, all 3 three are pretty North American in nature. But Montreal has a lot of neighbourhoods and a cafe/terasse culture that makes it feel more European.

Does Montreal really have more cafes and terraces than Toronto though? If it does, it's certainly not an appreciable amount. Not that cafes and terraces are a particularly "European" thing either mind you, nice as they are.

Montreal "feels European" because it has more recent western European expats than probably anywhere else in North America, and because more of the media & cultural reference is from Europe & the Francophonie. Not becuase of any way that the city itself is built.

[Docere]

And France is more associated with the "good" kind of European-ness that people speak about than Eastern Europe is.

[Capsicum]

If the question were which city was more "eastern European" influenced rather than European in general, then it would likely be one of the other three cities (all of which have large recent eastern European immigrant communities of one kind or another), not so much Montreal, which would likely win.

[Docere]

In Manhattan, French is the third most common language after Spanish and Chinese. In Soho, 6% of the population speaks French at home.

https://statisticalatlas.com/neighbo...Soho/Languages

[Capsicum]

In New York city more broadly, French (1.1%) and "French Creole" (1.4%) add up to a sizable amount.

French Creole (there's actually a number of French creoles, but I'm guessing the main one is the Haitian one, the other ones are spoken by very few) is the most spoken non-English language after Spanish, Chinese and Russian, and "other Indic" (which is not a single language). If you take away the "other Indic" category since it's split among many Indian languages and perhaps even if you break up Chinese (like the Canadian census does), French plus French creole's ranking if put as a single category would rise, at least equaling Russian (and then behind only Spanish, and English and possibly one of the Chinese languages, if broken up).

On a side note, is it just me, or is the US scheme for classifying languages kind of messy and confusing?

You have categories like "Other Indo-European language", "Other Indic" and "Other Asian", which at face value, are categories that overlap very much. Yet again, I see the label of "African" as a single category, which is commonly critiqued (the whole "thinking Africa is a country" phenomenon). Also, if French Creole(s), such as the one spoken in Haiti are separate from French, do English-based Creoles like Jamaican Patois get counted as separate from English too?

[The North One]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Not becuase of any way that the city itself is built.

Huh? Montreal has lots of European-like old urban fabric which plays a major role in the European feel of the city. Toronto has nothing of the sort; it's not really about cafe's and terraces.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

French Creole (there's actually a number of French creoles, but I'm guessing the main one is the Haitian one, the other ones are spoken by very few) is the most spoken non-English language after Spanish, Chinese and Russian, and "other Indic" (which is not a single language).

Yes, it would be Haitian Creole. There are large Haitian communities in parts of Brooklyn and Queens.

Within the U.S., only South Florida would have similarly large numbers of Haitian Creole speakers.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by The North One

Huh? Montreal has lots of European-like old urban fabric which plays a major role in the European feel of the city. Toronto has nothing of the sort; it's not really about cafe's and terraces.

Which part of Europe exactly does this resemble?




Toronto's victorian vernacular is arguable more "European" than Montreal's plexes, since it was pretty much lifted straight from the UK.




Montreal's triplex vernacular is actually quite unique and really all its own (well, except for other parts of Quebec). It can seem quite foreign to wherever you might be from, but don't mistake that "Quebecoisness" for "Europeanness". The rectilinear gridded streets, highrise CBD, low density suburbs, and general typology & and spacial sensibility of the city is otherwise that of a thoroughly classic first-wave North American metropolis.

[jd3189]

Sort of off topic, but what about the European connection to Quebec City? It looks like a French provincial town took root in North America.

Québec City at dusk by marianna armata, on Flickr


Quebec city by ***Richard de sousa***, on Flickr


Quebec City Skyline by Bill Lindsay, on Flickr

[lio45]

Similar to Montreal's generally, but still, less connected, as most immigrants from Europe choose the bigger city. Architecture doesn't matter -- it's a more provincial city while Montreal is a more "world-oriented" one.

It's shocking how often you hear the French accent in Mtl these days (and even in Sherbrooke), but it doesn't strike me as much in Quebec City.

[goldeneyed]

Which part of Europe exactly does this resemble?

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.65791...7i13312!8i6656

None, cause it like like the inner suburbs of Pittsburgh or the Midwest.

This is a shot of a street outside downtown Montreal. It's not just the housing style. It's the whole fabric and feel of the neighborhood that makes areas like these in Montreal feel more European.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.52270...7i13312!8i6656

Either way, arbitrarily picking random Streetview shots from various cities won't prove anything.

Old Montreal and Old Quebec City are two areas in NA where people really feel like it's European.