Some random observations:
- Edmonton probably has the most consistent street grid in the country. The newer areas have cul-de-sacs, but anything built before the 80s is made up of a set of almost square grids, with alleys in between.
- On the topic of alleys - that is very much a prairie province thing. Almost all homes in Calgary and Edmonton have a detached garage backing onto an alley in out back.
- Another interesting thing in Edmonton at least, is that there is about a 1.5" height gap between peoples' driveways and the road. This always confused me until the first winter arrived and I realized they don't plow the roads. Over the course of the winter the snow gets compacted/crushed, and basically levels out with the driveways.
- On the topic of concrete ... in Southern Ontario at least half of the utility poles and street lighting poles are made of concrete. There's nowhere else in Canada that you will find such a large use of concrete poles - considering how heavy they are to work with, and expensive to transport. The reason for this of course is that Southern Ontario is the hotbed of concrete production (numerous quarries, St. Marys, Lafarge are all here, as are a large number downstream finished good producers), so the all-in cost is relatively cheap - but this only applies in Ontario. Once you get about 200km away, steel becomes cheaper because of the extra transportation costs. It doesn't surprise me that the Ontario Tall Wall, which uses a lot more concrete than Jersey barriers, comes from Ontario. What steel is to Pittsburgh, concrete is to Ontario (to an extent).
- Where Edmonton is consistent street grid, Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge is the complete opposite. It's a mishmash of windy curvy roads, many of which will sometimes start going north, then west, then south for a minute, back west, etc. It takes about 2 weeks to get to know Edmonton's streets, but about 6 months to get to know KW's streets lol. KW also has an absurd number of roundabouts. Most of them are okay, but some of them are overkill, eg. this example of two massive roundabouts 100m apart:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/drdwpPbbm13M9Y6V8
- The GTA's freeways are on a completely different level. There is nowhere else in Canada that you will find multiple highways that are each 10 lanes wide for such long distances. They are also all consistently 100 km/h. Montreal is the closest equivalent, however the freeways are smaller, and a lot of them have 70 km/h speed limits. There is also nowhere else in Canada that I've seen signs on highways saying "Minor collision? Steer it and clear it." ... meaning, unless someone's dying get the f out of the way, our traffic is bad enough already.
- Windsor and Niagara Falls have a LOT of war-time bungalows as a % of their housing stock. I suspect it's due to a slow down in their growth starting in the 70s, so while other places kept building new houses with new architecture, these two slowed down. But it pretty cool when you enter them and see all these well maintained houses built in the 40s. Most of these that were built in the GTA have been torn down by now, but not in Windsor and Niagara Falls it seems.
- Calgary has a lot of clay-tile roofs. Only place in Canada that I've seen this. It reminded me of the houses you would see in and around Johannesburg (where they also get torrential hail storms).
- A very high percentage of cars in Windsor (my estimate is 80% or so), are made by one of the Big 3 American automakers. Makes sense given the proximity to Detroit and the local production. But it's interesting none-the-less that the automotive pride crossed the border. Of course when you cross the border into Detroit it's like 90% lol. Barely any Toyotas across the river, but not very many Windsor either.
- St Thomas, ON has a 2-lane grade separated expressway (
map link). Granted it's a very short section, but this is very rare to see and I found it interesting. I believe St John's has one as well.
- Quebec City has by far the most advanced freeway network of our mid-sized cities, even beating larger cities like Edmonton and Calgary in this regard.