It wasn't just Halifax under blackouts during the war. My parents lived in Borden PEI during WW2, and they told me stories about nightly blackouts during the war. Borden was at risk because it was a ferry terminal. The PEI ferries were all painted camouflage grey during the war. One of the ferries was sunk by a U-boat, but it was returning from drydock in Halifax at the time, so no passengers were on board. There was a lot of shipping sunk in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by U-boat attack, including, ironically the corvette HMCS Charlottetown.

The war was a lot closer to home than a lot of Canadians realize.

Newfoundland had blackouts too. A Nfld ferry was also sunk, 137 people died.

This may be a first but I'll disagree with Aastra here. 400,000 people and there are only two Walmart's, a third in the works. For years people went up island to a tiny town called Duncan of they wanted Burger King as there were none in town. It's only been a decade or so since there has been a Tim Hortons downtown and there are still just two, neither that busy. In fact Moncton had more Hortons than all of greater Victoria. Not too mention, just one Costco, which is the suburbs of Victoria.

Interesting Halifax history, maybe in the future the Pacific will be more relevant for Canada in terms of the Navy, but that's more likely to be the Arctic.

Come on, the Uptown Wal-Mart is definitely not your typical Wal-Mart (the Langford Wal-Mart is a typical Wal-Mart). Victorians embraced the Woolco Wal-Mart but they've mobbed the Uptown store since the day it opened. And when the Hillside store opens there will be a pair of modern two-level supercentre stores effectively within walking distance of each other.

Yes, Victoria was always lighter on Tim Hortons but (much) heavier on Starbucks.

Dude! I actually stripped this out of my original comment just to keep things brief. Check it out below:

"Sometimes I wonder if Burger King's first departure from Victoria was the origin of the myth re: Victorians and fast food. If Burger King didn't succeed then Victorians must not care for fast food chains (pay no attention to the dozens of established McDonald's, A&W, and fried chicken locations all over town)."

In Canada an urban core can have a distinct lifestyle catering to unique demographics, often more transit or walking or biking oriented and with more unique cultural amenities and businesses. Then there are more generic outer suburbs. One important distinction is whether or not the core has enough critical mass to be an interesting place to live or visit. The ratio of population between the core and periphery is I think much less important. I tend to think of the presence of the interesting parts as being much more important than whether or not there are uninteresting areas next door.

Canada also tends to have regional clusters with the differences between regions being larger than the differences within regions. Yet the dominant cultural view is often near-twins in a region will be contrasted. They are only significant in a regional context. Zoom out and they look very similar compared to a city in a faraway region. Zoom out farther to the whole world and every Canadian city is pretty similar in many ways.

Anyway, far be it from me to sully the atmosphere on this board by being argumentative. I invite you (zoomer) to take up my comment in the McD's thread over on VV. We can sling mud all day over there.

Yeah, there is rarely a perfect choice for these things, but I can't think of a better one.

I thought about them too as did others, but they're not really cities. Winnipeg has a large Indigenous population for sure, but it's not really a city where that culture predominates. The relationship is also confrontational and uneasy at times.

And of course, while Indigenous culture is clearly "of the land now known as Canada", more than any other, whether it's actually "Canadian" is a matter of debate. Most of the questioning about that comes from Indigenous people themselves.

Québécois culture OTOH is quite clearly Canadien, and denials of that fact, by either anti-French ROCers or séparatist Québécois, is at a minimum a historical fallacy.

I don't actually disagree that much with the idea, though I suspect we'd differ quite a bit as soon as the discussion got even a little bit deeper.

Some of these exchanges remind me of my university days in Ontario, when some people would argue that Canada's identity was to not have an identity. And the fact the the country didn't have an identity is what made the country unique! So maybe Canada did have an identity after all!

It was all very confusing. Especially to foreign students and of course the handful of Québécois. (I was not one of the latter at that point.)

And no, I am not the one who instigated those discussions.

That is very true, I think of both the Québécois and Anglo as equally Canadian (it's ironic to be so Canadian and yet so distinct or even separatist). But the Que. culture is not as "average" Canadian as the Anglo culture by percentage.

It's puzzling to me to see so many saying Toronto is least Canadian. I always thought of Toronto as ultra Canadian. Most of Canada is very Canadian.

For least, I would say Windsor and Hamilton.

U-Boats travelled as far as Quebec City during WWII.

https://alchetron.com/cdn/battle-of-...esize-750.jpeg

You can really see the merchant ship killing ground that was the area not covered by air cover until early 1943.
https://weaponsandwarfare.files.word...09/5993286.jpg

Indeed. As I said earlier, on Dec. 31, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve is "more typically Canadian" numerically than Le Bye Bye on Radio-Canada. (Though the numbers are probably pretty close.)

For us in the hinterland, it seems that Toronto has turned its back on the rest of the country as it tries too hard to be a "World Class City" Whatever the heck that means.

The USA is very much a part of our cultural "bubble", but we always use some cultural distancing for good measure.

There are quite a few arguments on this thread as to why some people think that's the case, though. It's not just something that people just threw out there as a slag. (Obviously some may disagree with the arguments put forward.)

I don't see how others' resentment makes Toronto less Canadian. I get that people hate Toronto, they do where I live too, but it's so Canadian in my mind, especially 70s to 90s era Toronto.

Toronto was Canadian (if in a somewhat didactic way that grated on the rest of the country) back when that meant Robertson Davies, Northrop Frye, Pierre Berton, Gordon Sinclair, Foster Hewitt, Peter Gzowski, Margaret Atwood, the Grey Cup game at Varsity and the like. I was in on the tag-end of that era but it doesn't seem real anymore. Toronto is a headless monster now, though probably a toothless one too (which I suppose follows from being headless).

70's to 90's Toronto sure, not today's Toronto.

I know the reaction of many to what you're saying is to claim that other Canadians want to impose something on Toronto that just doesn't fit. I don't think that's true. I think there is room for Toronto to be Toronto. (Just at there is room in the US for NYC to be NYC.) I just don't think there much interest in mutual sharing and dialogue on the part of the GTA. And also that there is an unrequited eagerness in the ROC to see Toronto play more of a leadership role as the head of the family so to speak.

As I said upthread, the attitude seems to be "That Canadianistic stuff is cute and all, but we're just too busy doing more important shit with New York and New Delhi. So just follow our lead and STFU."

(This is also an appropriate moment to recognize that Quebec most definitely doesn't play ball very much with the rest of the country on such matters. Even less so than Toronto of course. But at least Quebec doesn't lay claim to a coast-to-coast leadership role.

I wonder what kind of country Canada would be today if René Lévesque had not been elected and that had not kicked off the exodus of Corporate Canada from Montreal to Toronto. Would Montreal then be the #1 city in the land? And much more importantly, would the Expos still be playing?

Toronto is certainly "downtown Canada" but it does not represent the country in an overall sense. This has nothing to do with resentment but simply the fact that Toronto is incredibly diverse and cosmopolitan and far more so than any other city in the country or planet for that matter.

Toronto's dizzying ethnic and racial makeup does not reflect the reality of Canadian demographics outside the GTA. Outside of Asians in Vancouver, most of Canada is decidedly white and of European extraction.

St. John's was under total blackout at night (you couldn't even have a light on inside your home) until May 18, 1945.

In addition to the ferry sinking Architype mentioned, the Battery neighbourhood was torpedoed, causing damage but no deaths. Suburban Bell Island was torpedoed, killing 60+.

The Nazis snuck ashore and installed a land-based weather station in Labrador.

Subs captured after the war had mementos from St. John's on board - ticket stubs, etc. That's one of the reason they're suspected for some of the more suspicious accidents in the City during WWII, such as the Knight's of Columbus Fire that killed 99.

You can make the same counter-argument the other way too, though, in that the Peterboroughs or Kingstons don't reflect the mass multicultural makeup that our larger cities have. Canada in Toronto or Vancouver is very different from Canada in Sudbury or Corner Brook.

There's no turning backs on anyone - it's pushing forward with whatever we aspire to. What would you prefer Toronto do to not "turn its back" on the rest of Canada? Would you rather Toronto be held back from becoming a world city?

Toronto represents is more an image of the world than a representation of Canada. For a city to really be "canadian" or "canadienne", I think it must be, to a certain point, a meeting place between the English, the French and the Frist Nations. It also has to be a place where immigration happened (toutes proportions gardées). For that matter, I really think that the 3 most "canadian" cities of the country would be :
- Moncton (English, French, Mi'kmaq);
- Montréal (French, English, Mohawk);
- Winnipeg (English, French, Métis, various FN);
- Honourable mention to Ottawa, though it lacks the FN factor...

The least "canadian" places would be those monolithic enclaves, with no real connection to the rest of the country. The example that comes to mind is Westmount, QC. They never tried to blend or whatever...

Anyway, just my POV. I had a great time reading the 7 previous pages.

You basically stepped into what I was getting at.

I think a valid question is whether Toronto is a world city that is Canadian or just some random world city.

I would argue Toronto is more of the latter.

Paris London NYC Tokyo are bona fide world cities that act as the interfaces of their nations and their cultures with the wider world.

Even Montreal is arguably like that for Quebec and French Canada.

Toronto does not really play that role for Canada and does not seem interested in taking it on.

Ironically, if it were it would probably beef up its global status.

Who are "the English"? As far as I know, actual Englishmen were not all that influential in Canadian history. If you mean Scots and Americans, then I get it (although many of the Americans who were Loyalists were of German background and didn't even speak English).

For administrative reasons Ottawa actually has a sizeable indigenous population, with people from all groups from all across the country.

But yes the locally rooted indigenous culture and presence is fairly weak.

Perhaps not English in origin but Anglo-Canadians are clearly an identifiable group.

No one would argue Québécois or French Canadians are not a real thing because many have Irish, Scottish or indigenous origins.

The stereotype of Toronto being too "Provincial" (vs. Montreal) in terms of being able to assume "World city" status, is outdated. Nowadays, Toronto is certainly being noticed in ways that it was not outside of Canada. It therefore plays the role (for Anglo Canada) that Montreal plays (for Franco Canada), while being nearly twice the size and representing three times the hinterlands. I find it strange that people would suggest otherwise. That may have been true in the 70s, but not today.

While I would agree that Montreal is more 'unique' than Toronto (history, language, in North American contexts) I would disagree that Toronto is a notch below Montreal...it is probably a notch above (albeit not at the level of Alpha++ cities like NYC, London, Paris, Tokyo, but on par with the level immediately below, e.g., Sydney, Seoul, Milan).

I do not think Toronto's ethos is provincial in nature. It is not that, it is something else. It is a city obsessed with not being provincial. And on this front at least, it definitely succeeds.

Obviously I agree that Toronto is higher than Montreal on the global pecking order at this point.

I would agree with this on the face of things. Toronto isn't a top-tier world city but I think it's nestled nicely in that secondary level.

Most of the immigrants i'm friends with in Toronto never really mention Montreal as a possible landing point before moving to Canada. Typically before moving to Canada they considered Vancouver or Toronto. I'm sure Montreal plays a larger role for people from Francophonie but on the whole i'd imagine it's well behind in consideration for a lot of immigrants.

On the one hand I think Toronto is a large, cosmopolitan, and generally interesting city with its own feel (I tend to like the "old Toronto" stuff like the original subway development, 70's office towers and residential projects, etc.). It is often maligned in an ignorant manner by people who don't like big cities or feel like their city is an underdog and so they can or should crap on the bigger city. I think part of the problem in countering it is the tall poppy syndrome mentality is very simple and visceral while the interesting aspects of Toronto are kind of subtle.

On the other hand I don't think that just being large or "diverse" is in and of itself that interesting or unique, and Toronto did hitch itself to that wagon. The notion that Toronto has some kind of near-monopoly on immigration in Canada is very out of date and it was at best half-truth decades ago. In 2020 this has hit an absurd level where people in the 50% immigrant town act like people in the 20% immigrant town are sheltered rustics who would be shocked to see a non-white person. Also, we have the US right next door.

When I was in Auckland, I couldn't help but feel the similarity to Toronto.

It had British bones as we wandered the streets near Mount Eden, but it definitely had a global feel in its population. It was clean, safe and a fine city, but it wasn't where I think I'd find representative New Zealand, as it were.

It definitely felt like where NZ might be headed in the decades ahead and I speculate if I spent more time there, I'd find that Auckland's gaze didn't focus on Wellington, Canterbury or Dunedin.

It suffers from drubbing from Kiwis from outside it. Look up what JAFA means and you'll get my gist, so it too has the tall-poppy analog there too.

It even had its own similar-looking fancy tower. :P

I would think that most people on a forum like this one would be aware that Toronto-Vancouver and Montreal often operate in pretty different spheres when it comes to where they draw their immigrants from.

Toronto is another story but I don't think Montreal is behind Vancouver in terms of immigration and certainly not well behind. Montreal has been getting more immigrants for a number of years I am pretty sure.

In any event, not sure what total immigrants really tells us anyway. If Nova Scotia were a sovereign country all of a sudden and it opened up the floodgates it could draw 100k immigrants a year to Halifax if it wanted to, simply by snapping its fingers.

I would say Toronto is least Canadian as the city lives off being lumped with American cities and culture, has virtually little to no historical buildings left or preserved. Culturally the city seems to look down on Canadian culture and common Canadian pastimes and activities be it curling, canadian football or even hockey now which seems that it is being overtaken by basketball and soccer in popularity in the GTA.

Most Canadian I would say a 3 way tie between Regina Quebec City and Halifax. The 3 cities still participate in many canadian cultural activities and pastimes, Quebec City and Halifax obviously have done a tremendous job preserving their historical buildings and they don't seem to have this embarrassment to things that are canadian that some other cities in Canada seem to have in their populations to a degree.

My point wasn't so much that Vancouver receives more immigrants per year than Montreal (in 2017-2018 MTL attracted 70K versus Vancouver's 40K, 52K to 32K the year before, and 45K to 23K the year before that) it's that more people over a wider swath of international countries are cognizant of Vancouver and show a desire to move there versus considering and moving to Montreal. Whether or not that's true or not is tough to say, but in the anecdotal evidence I get from immigrants here it is. I think it makes a difference if a city is getting immigrants from a wide slew of countries around the world instead of a handful of countries from specific pockets, but perhaps i'm wrong.

I was responding and reacting mostly to this post:

I agree with this sentiment at its base but I also think that international immigration and the integration of those peoples is a key aspect of Canadian history and culture. Being accepting of others, whether they were boat people from Vietnam, Syrian refugees, or just simple economic migrants plays a large role in our national and cultural psyche. The cultural mosaic, as it were.

When it comes to immigration there are different worlds with strong self-sorting effects. This is true of Francophone vs. Anglophone immigration streams but it also happens because of existing clusters and personal relationships or cultural infrastructure, economic factors, geography, etc. A city on the radar of one group might be completely obscure to another.

Here in Vancouver I bet the cost of living has an impact on who finds the city attractive. If you are well off it is a nice city with good quality of life but it's a tough city to get started in if you are not.

Montreal is a high-immigration city by any standard, and has generally been so for a couple of centuries. I don't know how it could be considered anything but that.

If this is an essential Canadian trait, Montreal certainly fits the mould.

I am not sure that having a diversified sourcing of immigrants is relevant to this discussion (it's arguably desirable for other reasons, but that's another debate), but even so, do Toronto and especially Vancouver really have more variety in where their immigrants come from?

If we look at where immigrants to Canada come from, the top three countries (India, China, Philippines) typically make up over 40% of immigrants that come here in any given year. India by itself supplied one quarter of all immigrants to Canada in 2019. Very few of these immigrants are going to Montreal, so one can assume a huge chunk of them are going to Toronto and Vancouver.

So somehow I doubt there is a major contrast between a kaleidoscope of source countries in Toronto-Vancouver and just a handful of countries represented in Montreal.

I tend to agree with you, bearing in mind London, Paris and Tokyo are exponentially larger cities that are also administrative HQs.

The thread: the very definition of "being Canadian" is obviously fluid and is perhaps changing (with some regional exceptions) faster than a large chunk of the world's "being whatever". Can being (most or least) Canadian now include more love for basketball (thanks Dr. Naismith), than love for the CFL, rather than a laundry list of internet stereotypes or a specific 1867 to the present declaration?

Random thoughts from a random world city.

*We sometimes forget that NYC (sorta like Toronto) is not exactly beloved (understood?) by the rest of planet america, and lots of (non-colonizing) Brits choose curry over roast beef or fish ' chips.

Curry is so ingrained over there now I bet there are Brits who assume it’s English in origin.

Most of you are undervaluing Canadianess in the forest<trees way you can only pull off from deep inside a culture.

I'm reminded of an infographic comparing culture to an iceberg, with all the superficial things—language, food, music—poking above the water, while the bulk of the culture lies beneath. Of course, all anglo cultures connect as a vast iceberg; deep enough it's all just Calvinism. Obviously you'd see similarities between Aukland and Toronto. You see London reflected in Toronto if you straighten the streets out. You see Amsterdam in New York too.

None of that takes away from the big part of the iceberg that is just Canadian. It's something you can't exactly analyze, but when you meet a Filipino dude from Winnipeg who hasn't lived in Canada for 20 years and in some ineffable way he reminds you of Gord Downie, you know it's there.

So, what is a random global city, anyway? Cairo? Singapore? Is Toronto really more like these places than anywhere else in Canada? If you look past the generic aspects of all big cities, it's not.

Scorn for the metropolis from the regions is as old as the Roman Empire or older.

But if you choose to compare Toronto's relationship to its hinterland to New York's (or any other metropolis) there is a difference.

New Yorkers look down on other Americans and say "ewww, those people eat Grits" and "pffft only hillbillies watch Nascar". But they do know what that stuff is.

Many Torontonians are more like "getting screeched in... never heard of that!" or "WTF is the Brier?????".

In the case of the NBA (and even NCAA) vs. the CFL, that ship has already sailed for a decent chunk of the country. Up next: hockey.

If we take the example of NYC again, even if it's a global city, people there aren't turning their noses up at baseball and football as passé, and preferring soccer instead. Yes, soccer is growing fast there just as it is here but no one is throwing the other traditional all-American sports into the dumpster for the Next Big Thing.

They're not swearing off Hollywood movies and TV shows just because India's Bollywood has a "bigger scene". (And is actually producing better and better stuff.)

Yes, Auckland is derided for being too American by other Kiwis, but if you've ever been to Sydney it's even more Americanized than Auckland is. (Of course Toronto being a Canadian city will be way more Americanized than either of them.)

But in terms of Auckland it still has a fair amount of residual Britishness (that like it or not is a huge part of NZ's heritage) plus the indigenous element is also more present due to both demographics and government promotion of it that has been progressively enhanced in recent years.

We are arguing about subtleties. None of the cities in Canada aren't Canadian. I've never felt alien anywhere in this country. Different, sure, but not alien. So, yeah, we're going to argue about the subtleties.

The knock against Toronto in this debate is that on that spectrum of representing the entire country (English/French, old-stock versus new Canadian, domestic-looking versus internationally-focused) it definitely trends toward one side. Which is fine and generally what happens in big cities. It just doesn't capture the whole very well. It doesn't make it not Canadian, it actually is probably a leading indicator of where we are going.

For random global cities, my interpretation is that it's somewhere relatively new, but big. A big tree without a deep root system, or a city that reminds you of the last bland international airport you passed through.

Some examples off the top of my head (IMO):

Toronto
Auckland
Sydney
Shenzen
Seattle
Phoenix
Bangalore
Singapore
Dubai

They don't necessarily capture the ethos or feel of their home countries very well. They are generally clean and orderly. They don't have tons of history, relatively speaking.

It's harder to find in Europe and certain parts of Asia.

Exactly to me Toronto is Canadian in geographic location only now, when I visit the city it has no sense of any connection to Canadianess or Canadian culture whatsoever.

"Many Torontonians are more like "getting screeched in... never heard of that!" or "WTF is the Brier?????"

^ yes it was time to unearth this classic myth... adored/celebrated by worldly, domestically-informed Vancouverites, Montrealers and even transplanted Ontarians who passed their Calgary entrance exam.

I was "Screeched" 1000 feet (300 metres?) above a fjord in Gros Morne, and I have made most of the folks in southern Ontario watch slideshows from my three coast to coast trips (never made it to the arctic). Everyone expected wheat, not vast forests and lakes in (northern) Saskatchewan.

Just sayin' I did my best, but new folks keep moving in and it's hard to keep up.

*The Brier is a rabbit right?

I only spent a couple of days in Auckland, so it was a brief impression. It's an OK city, but if you want to see NZ, Auckland is not the place to spend one's time.

I do agree with the British feel of the country. It definitely has the colonial feel still, far more than Canada. Their history has an uncanny similarity to ours, which is unsurprising from a theoretical point-of-view, but hard to reconcile in person. It sure doesn't feel half the globe away from Canada, that's for certain.