Obviously we're not saying it's everyone in the GTA that is like this. We have die-hard CFL fans from the 416 on here, after all.

But I think one can generally observe in Toronto a lesser amount of knowledge and interest in the rest of the country than one normally finds in even the cockiest self-absorbed metropolises of the world.

I also think it's unfair to put this down to newcomers/immigrants. It's quite prevalent among multi-generational Torontonians, even those whose ancestry in the country goes back to the British colonial era.

I don’t see any Toronto in Auckland. It feels like a bigger version of Victoria.

If you watch Francophone Quebec media, you could easily think that there is hardly any world outside of Quebec. As much as I love my home province, it is like living in a bubble, and one that is more difficult to pierce than that bubble that Torontonians live in. As you have repeatedly said on this forum, because of the unique language situation of Quebec, it is much more insulated from American and ROC influences. You can't have it both ways.

It's about the size of Calgary, IIRC.

Of course, being the largest city in a small isolated island country gives it more oomph.

I think its share of the country's population is about the same as Toronto's in Canada.

Though it does have its Ottawa (Wellington) to contend with, there are no Montreals or Vancouvers to rival it nationally or regionally.

Airport and tall buildings aside, Shenzhen is 99.999% Chinese in ethnicity and feel.

Yes, this aspect does have its good and bad sides.

As for immigration, Montreal attracts large swathes of people from places that are perhaps less proportionately represented in the rest of Canada. In particular, places that were formerly French colonies, or under the French Mandate (Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Haiti, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, etc.). Of course immigrants from these places can be found elsewhere in Canada, much like how Chinese, Filipinos and Indians can be found in Montreal. But the relative proportions are quite different.

My two cents.

Agree again. Though in the case of Toronto, its bubble only filters out that which is uniquely Canadian. It's extremely open to outside influences (American first and foremost, but also from the rest of the world). Especially if they're not Canadian. It's quite paradoxical for a place that on the other hand exudes a high degree of Canadian pride in terms of symbols (the flag, the maple leaf) and rhetoric (Canada numer one!).

It depends how you view it.

In landscape, I agree with you. Housing can be hit or miss, but it's in a much warmer climate. Walking down Queen Street gave a Toronto-ish vibe. Or driving south from the Auckland Habour Bridge on the Northern Motorway with the Sky Tower dominating was Toronto-esque.

In terms of the role it occupies in the national psyche, yes. Or how its demographics are different from the rest of NZ. Or how other Kiwis outside of Auckland viewed it. I can't say how the average Aucklander views the world, but I suspect the gaze looks towards Sydney, Asia or London moreso than Wellington, or the South Island.

I'm not making a definitive claim, but to one person's vibe, yes, there are similarities.

It depends on a person’s background too. Truly cool 40+ people here look to MTL, and talk about how cool TO has gotten in the last decade. 40+ soccer Moms who vacation in Florida, though, look to HFX and complain we’re turning into TO every time a suburban apartment building 6 floors high is proposed.

I imagine the same thing is happening in TO, Auckland, etc. There are bound to be some suburban Torontonians deeply concerned about comparisons to Buffalo, just as there are people whose frame of reference is other world cities.

Comments from Torontonians/Vancouverites or ROCers in general à la "Montreal isn't diverse very all and has very few immigrants! I mean, where are all the dudes with turbans?" remind me of Americans who say Toronto and Vancouver aren't diverse because they don't have a ton of Hispanics or Black people, respectively.

I understand that cocky may be deemed un-Canadian, but there are plenty of other self-absorbed (possibily a bit insecure?) towns on the map. See epic, scrolling photo threads ;-)

As for 'it's unfair to put this down to newcomers/immigrants', it might be unfair to characterize my "it's hard to keep up" joke (that didn't land) this way.

Like my Calcutta-born Bengali Canadian father-in-law, who named his daughters Nova and Scotia, there are lots of Canadian realities with legit creds.

Still don’t see it. Auckland wears its British heritage, demographics aside, much more so than any other largish commonwealth city: the terrace housing, formal gardens, prevalence of high tea. It is far sleepier than Toronto, never had a large industrial base and is poorly integrated into other regions due to remoteness. The terrain is very PNW and the layout Northern California like, snaking through valleys and up hillsides in what is likely the world’s most sprawling city. It does look to the UK and Australia, but so does most of NZ.

My grandfather grew up on a dairy farm in what is now the southern suburbs of Auckland.

We're in agreement when it comes to this stuff! :tup:

I have never been to Auckland so I had to take a look - comparisons can be fun. CBD looks more Vancouver-esque to me than Toronto for sure. Lots of Victorian housing but most is 1 storey wood panel detached cottages which are extremely rare here. But this view is quite similar: https://goo.gl/maps/GpNyh7z6cdZJpcXz5

You are the king of the strawman - there is no reasoning with a comment like that.

Mine is admittedly a brief impression, so I'm not going to argue it as if it were gospel.

Well, jhikka said this and this yesterday, which is basically the same thing as my comment (minus the caricatural flair), but with different words. Which is to say that Montreal does not correspond or live up to the image of Canada's cities as immigration hubs.

Your so-called caricatural flair is the straw man. jhikka's post has heaps of nuance that you conveniently ignore.

It's plainly obvious that I am referring to people who think that if a city doesn't have the same kind of diversity as theirs, that it doesn't have "diversity".

Excuse me for assuming that most people here are educated enough to follow both "first degree" and "second degree" language.

Canada is to a degree a bunch of city states. I don't think it's an accident that most provinces have a primate city with roughly half the total population. Toronto's size is predicted by this model based on the size of Ontario.

To add a bit more nuance to this there are some winner-takes-all economic effects within Canada. Toronto is now the beneficiary of most of those.

I think these two phenomena come much closer to explaining how Canada works than a concept based around a country like Mexico or Russia where the capital dominates (and of course Toronto isn't the capital of Canada; I'm not even sure Ontario has as much influence on federal politics as Quebec).

When looking at the influence of a city I believe you also need to account for attenuation of influence over long distances. If you have a much bigger city 2 hours away, it will have a major impact on the economy and can turn another city into a bedroom community. If it's 3,000 km away the relationship is different.

Yes. Definitely agree with this.

I think it was wave46 who said that the larger provinces especially were almost like self-contained small European countries. Think of Sweden with Stockholm or Prague in the Czech Republic.

In terms of places to study, live and build a career, if you're an Ontarian, a Quebecer, an Alberta or a BCer, you don't really have much impetus to leave your province. They basically offer everything you need in terms of opportunities, lifestyles, living environments. Or at least, you usually won't gain that much by changing provinces.

Yeah, well the regulatory environment in Canada favours the creation of a very small club of corporate megaweights. Likely a legacy of when we had Crown corporations for everything under the sun - or at least it seemed so.

These big boys tend to congregate in a country's largest city. Canada generally speaking doesn't have major banks headquartered in cities on the level of Charlotte NC.

Thankfully you have the Québec Inc. crowd which can't fathom having its HQs anywhere but Quebec (generally Montreal) to counter-balance a bit, but even so corporate Canada is massively concentrated in the GTA.

Halifax is awful at preserving its historic buildings but it has more historical stuff than most Canadian cities, particularly pre-Victorian.

One thing I notice about Halifax is that it is for Atlantic Canada what people complain Toronto is not for Canada. This may be changing now but it used to have a lot of live music venues and was a popular destination for bands from around the region (who locally were as popular as the wider pop culture stuff, either Canadian content or international). Then the food scene had a distinct Atlantic component, etc. But when I lived there you were more likely to encounter a Newfoundland, New Brunswick, or Cape Breton transplant than an immigrant (though immigrants were not really that rare). These days that may not be so true, and newcomers to Canada may not feel the same connections to other parts of the region they live in.

Also, the notion of Halifax being the "big city" or cultural/business capital of Atlantic Canada upsets some in NL and to a lesser extent NB. I think a lot of people would resent Toronto even more if it were a stronger national cultural hub.

Yes but we do not have our own Canadian semiconductor manufacturing capacity, smartphone, operating systems, Google, or even Twitter or Facebook. We had one small piece of that at one point with Nortel, RIP.

(To those who always respond by listing off a bunch of Shopify type companies, I know these exist, but they are comparatively unimportant and they are not examples of regulated national monopolies or oligopolies.)

There is a clear trend of newer industries being globalized while it's old industries that are more regulated. In principle Canada could regulate the new ones too but that doesn't seem likely in the current political environment.

It's difficult, that's for sure.

I don't disagree but how many countries have their own Google, Twitter or Facebook these days?

Corporate Canada is rather depressing in its lack of ambition and innovation (and its obsession with selling out early to Americans in order to retire at 38), it is true.

You could start by telling us why Toronto and Vancouver embody the "Canada as an immigration nation" imagery more than Montreal does.

Since that seems to be what you were getting at.

Montreal's immigrant cohort is inherently sole-sourced from Francophone countries (generally-speaking), thereby providing a less diverse field of immigrants on the whole compared to other Canadian cities. It's not l'science du rocket.

Feel free to twist more of my words in five consecutive posts, though. Nobody else is allowed to have an opinion on Quebec on this forum anyway without going through the Quebecois Ninja Warrior gauntlet of fifteen pages of humming and hawing.

Almost none, and no countries the size of Canada. But I'm not making an argument about what we should have. I'm just pointing out that Canadians rely more and more on global-scale and imported products rather than national monopolies or oligopolies. Hence there are fewer winner-takes-all-in-Canada markets and a weakening sense that all of the best and brightest will move to the biggest Canadian city while other Canadian cities get the leftovers (Toronto post-1970's, Montreal before that).

It's also getting easier and easier to start up companies or open branch offices in more remote areas. In the past, there was often a sense that these areas were limited to resource extraction or at best secondary industries.

It's not about anything particularly Québécois mon chéri (I can insert cute French phrases too!) it's about facts.

You claim that Quebec is sole-sourcing immigrants from francophone countries, but the top 15 countries of immigrants in the past few years are:

China France Syria Iran Algeria Haiti Morocco India Philippines Cameroon Côte-d'Ivoire Colombia Tunisia Lebanon Egypt

Some of those are francophone countries, some are not. None of them provides over 10% of our immigrants.

As I mentioned already, 25% of Canada's immigrants are coming from India, with around 10% each from China and the Philippines. Most of these are going to Toronto and Vancouver. (And some to Winnipeg in the case of Filipinos. That's just under half of all immigrants coming from just three countries.

It's therefore hard to believe that Montreal's cross-section of immigrants is any less variably sourced or diverse than that of other Canadian cities.

You've certainly undergone an interesting personal transition, from the New Brunswick guy who lived in Ottawa to GTA newbie who defends Toronto's honour like Superman and Batman defend Metropolis and Gotham City.

I keep seeing Niagara Falls in top spot as the Least Canadian City or municipality in the nation and I get it totally, but I could also see it being near the top as most Canadian as well.

I won't bother focusing on the obvious things like Clifton Hill and Garish Hotels as they have all been covered.

Some of the reasons why it could sit at the other of the spectrum depending on who you ask are numerous.

The very first Capital of Upper Canada was Niagara, first named Newark, then the town Niagara, finally taking the name of Niagara on the lake. The entire region in and around the Falls is steeped in history with battlefields and graveyards full of loyalist and American soldiers who both fought for control of Upper Canada's southern border.

Also just west along the river there is a place called "the Crossing" this was the terminus of a major trunk of the underground railroad. Canada was just the second country to abolish slavery and the documents signed ending the trade of humans as property was signed at the Swan in near Fort George.

Once you remove yourself the neon lights and side shows near the actual falls you will find a city and region very proud of their past and how they helped shape the nation we now know. Tourists from oversee's most likely find it to be a very Canadian experience full of Canadian Flags, Maple syrup treats, and historical plaques. If you ever have the chance Bike from the Falls to Niagara on the lake, stop at the historical sites along the way and it will fill you with Canadian pride.

Some fun historical facts about Niagara.

-This is where Laura Secord walked 20 miles to inform British troops in Queenston Heights about an impending American Invasion

-In 1913 The Toronto Hydro Station was built making it the first fully Canadian owned and operated facility providing power from the falls to Toronto.

-in 1925 The Queenston - Chippawa Hydro Station was constructed making it the first large scale Hydro Electric Plant in the world.

source: https://www.snopes.com
https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2019/...gara-falls.jpg

If you talk to people from Niagara or Windsor, they'll actually tell you they're among the proudest Canadians because they live right next to the U.S. and can see what it's like every day with their own eyes.

Canadian pride and boosterism aside, they tend to be very influenced by the U.S. whether they realize it or not.

And visa versa. People in Buffalo drink Tim Hortons and listen to the Hip.

Don't want to start a Most like Canada/Least like Canada in Australasia/World thread, but New Zealand has always been on my bucket list, much more-so than Oz.

People one meets in world travel (and here at home) obviously impacts that list and so far Kiwis score an even 100% for me (went to school with a couple of 'em too). I sometimes think of NZ when Canada is described as the "mouse living next door to an elephant", though at least NZ is somewhat protected from Oz by a few thousand miles of sea water (and a 5 hour flight).

Unfortunately I have been jaded by some bad experiences interacting with (stereotypical) Oz-Americans, such as being (somewhat ironically) told to "f*ck off Yank" at the Taj Mahal and an almost a brother-in-law who hated Canada but taught me to speak Oz: "Sydney, Sydney, Sydney.. sips wine.. Sydney, Sydney".

Being fiercely patriotic, I have also taken issue with the Aussie-past-time of using the word "Canadian" as a pejorative term. Full disclosure, I watch the brilliant films of Baz Luhrmann in secret. Kiwis rock.

Even in the non-touristy parts, NF looks American. These kinds of wooden four square houses look like they belong in Buffalo.

This equivalent neighbourhood in nearby St Catharines is more Ontario-like, and could be in any Ontario city from Toronto to Orillia to Ottawa (differences in lot sizes, street widths and millions of dollars in property value notwithstanding).

Hamilton also has very American looking homes.

This is true to a point, though I think some Canadians tend to overstate this a lot.

The border is a lot more permeable in one direction than in the other.

Niagara Falls and Windsor feel way more "American"* than Buffalo and Detroit feel "Canadian". And I don't think it's just about city size.

*Though the "America" they resemble is not necessarily the America of Buffalo/Detroit.

I feel like the obvious answer to 'Most Canadian' is perhaps Winnipeg. Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, and Moncton are honourable mentions.

That's a good point. Also, on the touristy areas of Niagara, there's something to the specific aesthetic of Clifton Hill/Fallsview in the types of tourist traps, the chains, the garishness, the cheapness that make it feel like a very stereotypical hick American tourist trap town, like Branson, Missouri or Wall, South Dakota. The Hard Rock Cafes and TGI Fridays really seal the deal.

It has a very different feel/aesthetic than more typically Canadian-styled tourist traps, like Banff, Whistler, Magog, PEI, or even nearby in Ontario, places like Huntsville. More Beaver Tails and Moose Trinket Shops. Or, even closer to Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake feels more typically Canadian.

I noticed it a lot between Alaska and the Yukon. The way towns like Ketchikan or Skagway cater to the boomer cruise ship crowd produces a different feel than Dawson City or Whitehorse or Carcross. Even the restaurant selection is entirely different (and much worse :haha:).

Niagara Falls is a good contender for 'Least Canadian'. Windsor is another. I can see the argument for BC cities like Victoria, Vancouver, Kelowna, Abbotsford, but they don't feel exactly American (not that that is necessarily the criteria for being less Canadian looking).

I think the SW Ontario cities most directly influenced by the United States (Niagara Falls, Windsor, Sarnia) as well as British Columbian cities which are neither more Americanized nor distinctly Canadian in the same way as that which lies east of the BC-Alberta line are less Canadian seeming for different reasons.

what 'America' do you think they resemble more?

No they don't. If there are any, they're outliers. People in Western New York don't pay any attention to Canada. They might go to the odd Broadway-style show in Toronto because it's closer, though.

No it doesn't. You look at a street like this...

https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.90708...7i13312!8i6656

...and you know that you're in the Midwestern US, and that nowhere in Canada looks like this at all.

The Lower Mainland has a lot of American influence. It is a border region. People here tend to go on road trips to the US, or quick shopping trips, and there are a lot of American chains. In Vancouver proper the Asian businesses are more prominent but head east and the focus shifts toward American chains.

This was particularly noticeable coming from Atlantic Canada where there aren't even chains like Denny's. Many American chains that operate in Canada do not make it east of Ontario.

Western Canada has Safeway too. And Starbucks hit earlier here in Vancouver. People tend to think of the Tim Hortons -> Starbucks transition as being a movement toward more upscale coffee. But Starbucks is not great and many cities have better independent coffee shops. Some of the independents died when Starbucks was brought in. I guess Second Cup is a roughly analogous Canadian chain.

I have noticed that some American companies operating in Canada use generic BLM or other political advertisements and materials here. I'd guess some of those are designed for the US market and then pushed out to all locations.

I'm not discounting this. There's a fair bit of overlap between the Pacific Northwest and Southern BC. Vancouver and Seattle are more culturally similar than Toronto is to Buffalo or Detroit or Rochester. But the policies and development history and certain cultural nuances (hockey is still popular in BC while Seattle doesn't even have an NHL team...yet) make it so that a city like Seattle is still very American-styled and would not exist here and vice-versa for Vancouver (or Victoria).

Isn’t there a rule for immigrants though, that you have to live in an assigned city for at least a year? So I imagine a Chinese immigrant living in Montreal is likely to move to Toronto or Vancouver after their required time in Montreal is done.

I have seen very very few Asians of any sort and in Montreal

Fewer than half of immigrants to Montreal are francophone, no?

No such rule that I’m aware of - it would be unenforceable.

Americans do this all the time. For example, they'll say Seattle is a very "white" city though it's two thirds "non-Hispanic white".

For whatever historical reasons, the US highlights immigrant diversity less than historically underrepresented groups that may not necessarily be immigrants (e.g. African Americans) so tend to think of having a "black" presence as contributing to diversity more as an underrepresented minority than certain other groups (e.g. an IT worker from India).

But we don't see this for Canada -- people don't count say a First Nations or Métis person as contributing to diversity more than a refugee from Syria or a Filipino worker.

And Americans seem to count linguistic diversity less than Canada, except for where presence of the "Spanish" language is a proxy for Hispanic presence. Canada has not only the Francophone presence but lots of indigenous languages, immigrant languages etc. more so than the US, but this is rarely highlighted in diversity comparisons. The fact that Canada has a French-English binary like Switzerland has a French, German, Italian three-way split and India has 22 languages with official status seems to count for its own type of diversity that seems less popular to acknowledge than "ancestral/race" diversity -- why should lots of races of people who speak English count more than lots of people who speak lots of languages?

That's very astute. There's Canadian trashy tourism and there's American trashy tourism, and Niagara Falls, Ontario has a very trashy American tourist vibe.

Another thing I notice every time I'm there is the proliferation of license plates from southern US states that I rarely see in the rest of Canada. I always see license plates from states like Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina - I don't think I've ever seen plates from those states in the GTA or elsewhere in Canada. This means that Americans from those places step foot into Canada to view the Falls and then cross back into the US again.

NFON gets a lot of the crap of the US without the good.

Windsor is a little luckier. They're basically an extension of the Detroit metro, but they have some of Detroit's good features too.

You need to skip over the border cities in order to find anything resembling American peers for southern Ontario cities. There are black people in Niagara and Windsor but not nearly as many as Buffalo and Detroit where they are a much larger share of the population and their presence defines the character of large swathes of the city.

Places like Fort Wayne IN, Appleton WI or Ann Arbor MI (without the college town charm) come to mind. Though I don't think these are the best analogies.