Probably, though how you define francophone can be complicated. Is a Haitian Creole speaker a francophone or not? Their native language is not French, but they start using French as soon as the get off the plane at Dorval.

What states do you see most in the GTA? I see the big eastern seaboard states (NY, NJ, Florida) often or just bigger, more big-city states, but occasionally others (I will say southern states are rarer in general in the GTA, and probably Canada in general).

You are correct that some immigrants to Montreal (probably more Asians than other groups) move on to other parts of Canada. And there are no restrictions AFAIK.

In terms of population, there are about 100,000 South Asians in Montreal, and about 200,000 people with origins in Eastern Asia (mostly Chinese and Vietnamese).

Out of a population of 4 million people.

As much of a francophone as a speaker of Jamaican Patois is an anglophone.

On that note, it's funny how a French term ("Patois") is used to describe an Anglophone Creole in the Caribbean with little French influence itself. Creole itself is also borrowed into English from French as a term, though it has Spanish/Portuguese origins as a word.

Niagara Falls On was smart and Clifton Hill from it's start has been set up to entertain the out of towner when they are done looking at the falls. Aside from this year for obvious reasons their # 1 tourist on weekends comes from the other side of the border. A huge number of Young people from both sides who think chain restaurants a quality places to eat lol.


Here is Clifton House built in 1833. It was marketed to Americans because at that time Buffallo was a booming city with lots of money. Toronto was still a fairly small city.
Source:https://www.cliftonhill.com
https://www.cliftonhill.com/sites/de...ivities-02.jpg


She started off classy and changed with the times. Now you can shoot Zombies.
Source:https://www.cliftonhill.com
https://www.cliftonhill.com/sites/de...ck-niagara.jpg

In that specific case, I would have said “yes”. Where it might get greyer might be the case of NAfricans and sub-Saharan Africans, who might have less-than-native-speaker abilities in French. But my understanding was that a majority of newcomers had limited to no French. Perhaps that includes refugee applicants?

In the pre-Covid days, my anecdotal observation was that the frequency of US license plates driving around the GTA went (in decreasing order):

NY
Michigan
Pennsylvania
Massachussetts
Ohio
Florida
...
the rest.

But the rest would include places like California, Illinois, Minnesota, Texas, all of the Northeastern & New England states, Georgia. Often Caribana would be a good time to see these.

But then there were the states I've never seen, which is why Niagara Falls sticks out:

Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Tennessee, Kentucky. Mostly stuff in the south. The Americans have more memorable-looking license plates than we do, but I can't even conjure up what those license plates look like.

Depends on if there's a spectrum-like perception of "francophone-ness".

People have come up with models like this for English (e.g. the inner circle, like Brits, Canucks, Yanks who define the base and core of the English-speaking world, the outer circle of English-speakers who speak English but may not necessarily be native-speakers or live in English-dominated spaces if educated, like Nigeria or India, and also speakers of English-based creoles like Jamaica, until you get to the "expanding circle" in places like China that lack these historic ties but are still learning English due to globalization).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...of_English.svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Englishes

I might put Texas and California higher on the list. You see them in K-W and Ottawa as well - I assume because of high tech connections.

Might have a correlation with % of people owning a passport (especially post 2000s), and also possibly percentage of people with relatives in Canada? I think it's also curious that the Midwest (except Michigan) is less tied to Ontario than the latitudinally similar points on the "eastern seaboard" despite the geographical commonality as the great lakes region, so places like Ohio, Illinois are less common than places like Penn. or Mass.

My intuition seems to be more cross-movent between GTA and the east coast than the midwest in both directions (though what part of that is the midwest being more "insular" outside the border areas, vs. the eastern seaboard being more "cosmopolitan" and other factors like the east coast being the center of finance/media/power stateside, though California is no slouch).

^The thing is that the people from those southern states who visit Niagara Falls, Ontario obviously have a passport. What's interesting is that once they come over, they seemingly just cross back over again. It's as if they're on a cross-USA trip and the only reason they brought their passport was to see the Falls from the Canadian side.

I don't even see those plates on the QEW between Hamilton and Niagara, which is a route some Americans take if they're going from Michigan to Upstate NY. The trip through Ohio is a bit of a detour and is also tolled.

K-W and the American tech scene are getting more and more tied.

There are the occasional quips about how Waterloo's a feeder school/brain drain pipeline to Silicon Valley, but it's cool to see growth in the other direction.

One of the noted trends in human migration is that every migration generates a countermigration (even if small, for instance "returnees" or diaspora links).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_...y_of_migration

"He established a theory of human migration in the 1880s that still forms the basis for modern migration theory.

The following was a standard list after Ravenstein's (1834–1913) proposal in the 1880s. The theories are as follows:

Every migration flow generates a return or counter-migration.
The majority of migrants move a short distance.
Migrants who move longer distances tend to choose major sources of economic activity.
Urban residents are often less migratory than inhabitants of rural areas.
Families are less likely to make international moves than young adults.
Most migrants are adults.
Large towns grow by migration rather than natural population growth.
More long distance migrants are male.
More long distance migrants are adult individuals rather than families with children."

It's interesting to consider what routes these southerners take. On a map, it's curious how "close" southern Ontario is to the American South/Appalachia even though culturally it seems so distant.

West Virginia's northern end is so close to the Canadian border, even though it's a state lacking big cities, and is chided as being one of the least "cosmopolitan" states.

I wonder what compels someone to want to journey up to Canada to Niagara Falls but not want to see Canada's largest city, even if it's just a couple hours more of a drive.

Just comparing built environment, how about a couple of blocks down from your example, same street:
https://goo.gl/maps/7cVhrdN6XtErp6mB8

Now Hamilton:
https://goo.gl/maps/69VURpgX1MtJa9Vi8

There is a lot of similarity among Great Lakes cities, on both sides of the border. This is just one example.

If you are strictly referring to some population loss aspects between the US and Canada, that's different. But FYI the street view of the area you provided is now 9 years old, and it has seen quite a bit of gentrification since that time.

Not arguing that Montreal isn't diverse, but this piece of information is interesting. Immigrants are certainly dishonest about their intentions of living in Quebec.

https://www.immigration.ca/provincia...here-in-canada

Somewhere there's a parallel to be made about whether immigrants "really" want to move to Quebec as opposed to use it as a stepping stone to the rest of (English-speaking) Canada (or use smaller provinces as stepping stones to say big cities like Toronto and Vancouver).

and

Immigrants moving to Canada being questioned if they "really" like Canada or want to use it as a stepping stone to the US.

Also does it really matter if a person/family/group/community wanted to become part of a nation/region/province/city at the start or never did intend to stay, if eventually they do settle down and put down roots etc.

After all, plenty of people who never wanted to become *insert part of group/nation/place* eventually did and now see themselves as undeniable participants in their own societies, ranging from conquered people like Native Americans/First Nations becoming part of or at least living within the nation of the colonizers, conquered Francophones not wanting to become part of the same nation as English-speaking Brits prior to Canada's founding, African Americans' ancestors never wanting to go to a distant land against their will, even some refugees who longed to go back to their home country but never returned so eventually put down roots in the new country with their kids having never known the "old country", or well, even some rich expat who wanted to return home but found true love and married some local so now they have kids here. Some would probably not see all these disparate scenarios as appropriate analogies but they all have something in common which is even if the original intent was never to stay/belong in a place, now they do and once they belong, they have equal claim to belonging as those who voluntarily came and intended it to be their final destination/goal all along.

Is the percentage of Canadian LIs who subsequently emigrate to the USA very high? It’s not something that gets much attention, istm.

It's also one of the few states with a declining population over the past decade, down -3.3% in the past ten years.

Probably a lack of interest in cities as a whole. As you've said, WV is a very uncosmopolitan, and for a few at least that's probably a choice made.

I see lots of New Jersey plates in Toronto, seemed to be right up there with Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Of course nothing else comes even close to the number of NY Plates, they are almost ubiquitous during tourist season.

Keep going down the street in those links and the standard typologies come into play providing evidence of how distinctive they are from each other. The feel is just totally different, not least due to how dominant brick is in southern Ontario, by contrast with how much wood siding there is in Western NY (and indeed the northeast and midwest US as a whole).

Immigration patterns are a big part of the connection. When one branch of a family from country x moves to New Jersey and another to Mississauga, you wind up with much more cross-border traffic than you'd find with closer-by parts of the US where fewer family connections exist. These connections often exist to California as well, but it would be far more common for visiting family members to fly (for obvious reasons).

Was it different even a couple of generations ago? I got the impression that Ontario had people with more cross-border family or immigration connections in the Midwestern region earlier throughout in the 20th century, and further back, when most immigrants were sourced from Europe (e.g. Joe Shuster, the co-creator of Superman who immigrated with family to Toronto, and then to Cleveland in the 1920s). Wasn't there an era when Toronto was far more tied to Rochester, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago etc. than to New York, LA, etc.? Maybe this is true of other Canadian regions too -- e.g. was Vancouver more tied to Seattle back in the day, for instance when Jimi Hendrix moved between those cities?

Did this change happen with the economic decline of the Midwest, the rise of regular plane-based immigration, or something else -- I'm wondering if we can pinpoint the time it changed.

For the Mexican border (because much of the immigration is associated with land), US-city and Mexican-city ties are still strong cross-border, but less so with Canada. Now Canada's immigration ties are now big cities tied to big cities, without regard to distance like you say.

There are quite a few Lebanese, African (many countries) and Haitian families on my street. In the summer it's common to see plates from New York, New Jersey, Florida and even California. These are visiting family members.

The people I am closest to in these communities (either on my street or elsewhere) almost all have relatives in the U.S. somewhere.

And my kids have friends from these communities who occasionally go and visit their cousins in LA, Silicon Valley, Tampa or Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Don't know about stats, but I feel like this was talked about more in the 90s and even 2000s. The brain drain discourse talked not only about Canadian citizens moving stateside but also those temporary "bright" immigrants who unfortunately used Canada (work experience, education etc.) as stepping stone to the US as bigger more lucrative economic destination.

Now the narrative has shifted a bit with the reverse under the Trump years but even somewhat before in the 2010s (would-be immigrants under things like H-1B visas who can't stay long term due to more restrictive immigration policies heading north of the border). But you still get the lingering impression, though increasingly less commonly, that Canada is the "second choice" that immigrants settle for when they're not high caliber enough to make it big in the "American dream".

I've heard numbers in the 20-25% range for immigrants to Canada who eventually move to the U.S. within about a decade.

I don't have a link that proves it right now but I've seen it several times from different sources over the years.

I suspect that it probably ebbs and flows depending on the economic and political climate in the U.S. (relative to Canada).

You are correct that it does not get much attention.

Some may not even know much about Toronto at all, or at least not have a good idea of how big it really is.

I think that things have gotten better with the Internet and also Toronto's visibility in the U.S. has gone up a few notches, but there are stories that aren't urban legends of Americans crossing the border, driving into Toronto and exclaiming: "Holy shit! There's a humongous city here! How come I never knew this?".

(This also happens to some degree with other Canadian cities like Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City.)

I've wondered if cross-border ties are stronger for those of more recent immigrant ties or those with older, multigenerational family histories in Canada.

You could argue both ways.

Newer families in Canada are perhaps less likely to stick to one side of the border as a family block than past immigrants, but have members in all of the lucrative economic destinations all across the continent, especially when distance/social connections are less of a barrier than in the past.

On the other hand Canadians with many generations in Canada are more likely to perhaps see "the US and Canada" as North America, and share North American culture. So they may see either country as similar enough to move back and forth for jobs etc. Also, I get the impression, no stats but ancedotes, that people who have a foot in both countries as "snowbirds" or own homes stateside in places like Florida, Texas are not necessarily particularly associated with having family that are new immigrants but are more likely "old stock Canadians".

I have known quite a few people in my life for whom Canada was a second or third choice (behind the U.S. and Australia), and Canada simply said "yes" first.

The vast majority do not regret settling in Canada at all, and many even say it was the better option of the three, all things considered.

I often say humans are like plants. No matter where you set them down, roots inevitably will start growing into the ground.

Having kids and everything that goes along with that also makes a huge difference. For myself and my wife especially it was the final kicker in terms of feeling Québécois.

I have also noticed among Canadian friends and acquaintances who moved to the U.S. that when they had kids is when they started talking more and more about "Americans" as being an "us" that included them. Before that they were simply Canadians living (long-term) in the U.S., and "Americans" was a group they weren't a part of.

Do you mean not being aware of the city at all prior to the road trip ("I've never heard the name Toronto before, but hey let's check out what it's like") and finding out about it on the fly during an unplanned visit, or having heard of it, just being unaware or shocked it's so big. :D

Oh I am sure people have heard the name(s) at least vaguely especially if they're travelling in the vicinity. Mostly it's a shock at how big these places are.

I guess it's partly because if you have kids (presumably born or raised there), it would be odd to talk about your kids as part as the "them" in a way you aren't. I don't know how awkward it is to say "I'm Canadian, but my kids are American" or "my mom/dad are Canadians, but I'm American". I know you mentioned Canada is among the most user-friendly countries to become "one of us" but these examples show the US isn't too dissimilar or far behind for all the rhetoric otherwise.

But then again, you get this all the time with kids of immigrants in other contexts (e.g. a Mexican-American referring to their first-gen. immigrant but already-naturalized dad as still "Mexican" but they as American, or Chinese immigrants who call their kids Canadian but are hesitant to use the label "Canadian" for themselves because they themselves don't perceive themselves as assimilated as their kids, citizenship or not).

Though a counterpoint would be all those videos when an adult immigrant to Canada (there are quite a few posted online) who despite often audibly having a foreign accent, responds to a xenophobic taunt or rant by insisting that they're Canadian too.

That's curiously one thing I've seen less of stateside. I'm struck that immigrants to (Anglo) Canada will defend their new found sense of Canadian-ness even if someone can hear that for instance, they have a slight Chinese or Arabic accent, while Americans who defend their American-ness tend to be those with an American accent. Maybe it's similar too with even Francophones as you mentioned Haitians identifying quickly with Quebecois upon immigrating. American citizens who naturalized but still show signs of a foreign accent may defend their honour in other ways against racist/xenophobic attacks (e.g. yelling back against their harasser for these racial slights) but don't take up the mantle of "American-ness" in a "Canadian is a Canadian" Trudeau-esque way as much. After all the "I'm born here! I'm just as American as you" is a clincher for arguments about belonging stateside due to sharper views about what it means to be American, but that means naturalized Americans seem to shy away from claiming Americanness if they weren't naturally born citizens the way naturalized Canadians don't seem to put focus on (we, for instance don't have the equivalency of their rule for presidency to born citizens only, and thus "birtherism" doesn't play into things as much, not to say Canadians don't still see the natural-born as more "Canadian" just less so of a difference than other countries maybe?).

I have been saying this for a long time.

You just did it! You've lived in the U.S. for a while and just used Canadians as the "we" and Americans as the "them". :)

Haha! That example might have been particularly salient ("we don't have a rule about our leader being born here, unlike them"...) because the US election is coming up in a few months!

And since I can't vote in it while residing stateside (not a US citizen, have not naturalized), might as well remind people about my Canadian-ness (especially Americans who ask me about if I'll be voting!). Thinking about it, given so much lack of cultural, cuisine, dress differences between the two countries, political differences then become a major talking point.

The whole born-in-the-USA thing is ridiculous. Nobody seemed to care much that Ted Cruz was born in Canada (Calgary) and that John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Oh yeah, it is because they were White and Republican. But Obama and Harris? Born in the USA, sez who?

If someone moved to Canada at a young age, and was a Canadian citizen, I could care less where they were born, or where their parents were born.

The Ted Cruz Canada thing was brought up many times by Donald Trump during the campaign. It's debatable how much people cared about it but then again Obama was elected.

The Harris “birthers” (for want of a better term) do not question that she was born in the USA. They base their (mistaken, racist, sexist, stupid, take your pick) view on the fact that her parents were apparently not yet U.S. permanent residents when she was born. Somehow, they imagine that she was not subject to U.S. jurisdiction as a result. It’s specious, but it’s good enough for those of the necessary mindset.

It's also situational. I have lived in Sweden for about a minute and so I almost never bake myself into the Swedish "we", but when I'm talking with the fam about COVID (i.e. why we can't see each other) I will fall into the "our government says" or "our policy is" thing. Because it's a life-experience I have only ever had in Sweden. I have never been in a pandemic in Canada.

I guess these are the things that pile up...

I have had an American speak to me that their tour of eastern Canada went directly from Montreal to Toronto not knowing the significance of Ottawa and how close they were.

You just wait until you have a little Sven Maudit running around!

Perhaps they didn't have time. Either that or they didn't have a particularly good tour operator.

I'm trying to imagine the American equivalent -- if you could have a tour of say, the eastern seaboard that missed DC in this way. Say a visit to NYC, to Philly, to Atlanta, or then down to Florida. I couldn't imagine it'd be all too likely.

The thing is the media keeps giving air time to these "controversies" making them seem like they matter -- it also trickles down to lots of Americans in the general public who feel insecure (especially immigrant and minority) who see themselves represented in these public figures/candidates, and thus you see a lot more "I'm born in the USA!" defensiveness stateside, and overcompensating for "proving their Americanness" in ways you don't see for Canadians, politicians or your average Joe or Jane.

If they're already eligible for a position, they're eligible period. Give no more air time to naysayers. The original birtherism thing with Obama was similar -- why was this obsession drawn out for so long?

Like MolsonExport just said, we should care less about someone's birth or parent's birth as their station now. It's weird that the US, home of the "American dream" and "proposition nation", "we're exceptional in the way anyone can come here and be an American" narrative still harps on family background.

I find it weirdly "old-world-ish" the way the US (even slightly so) focuses a bit more on ancestry/family background in some walks of life. Having more political dynasties like Bushes, Clintons, Kennedy's etc. while before the Trudeaus and infamously for Ontarians, the Fords, the political dynasty thing seemed not particularly a thing for Canada. Even stuff like legacies in US colleges and universities and alma mater links (rare for Canadians to talk about caring if their mom or dad graduated from the same school). Even things like Americans caring more about descendants of the Civil War (Quebecois of the most separatist persuasion even de-emphasis pure laine now and don't talk about fighting on which side of the Plains of Abraham, and will say identity is about current language/cultural loyalty not ancestry or ancestral loyalty). Also stuff like the split between people who identify with ADOS (American descendants of slavery) who say people like Obama and Harris with more recent immigrant black roots are co-opting the "American black experience". Also something about native American ancestry being 1% or 0.1% like the Elizabeth Warren debate.

Maybe it's just that I've lacked exposure to living full-time in societies that care even more about ancestry/family connections (e.g. Europe, Asia, Africa) but the US strikes me as a wee bit obsessed with "lineage" for lack of a better term. While Canada seems more "individual" and in situations like politics, business, education, academia, public figures seem to be under far less pressure to represent a "group", "bloc", "lineage", "family", "ethnicity", "race", etc. Family backgrounds of public figures aren't held up to a magnifying glass in some way that evokes "family pride" or "family shame" as if we're talking about Confucianist ancient China or something.

Maybe I'm off-base about my thoughts and Canuck identity politics are no less damning than Yanks', but say what you want about Trudeau's cliche " a Canadian is a Canadian" is a more individualist ethos than almost anywhere I can think of.

And yes, I realized a few posts ago, I said alongside Acajack's posts that "US and Canada are less different than people make them to be in terms of user-friendliness to newcomers" etc.

But some of the symbolism and rhetoric (e.g. no examples of "birtherism" ever in Canada because it's not even part of our requirement) does stick out just a bit.

Different immigrant communities have these tour buses that ply the Northeastern and Ontario-Quebec circuit. I'm most familiar with the Chinese ones like Safeway tours.

Some of them are hilarious. About 20 years ago my uncle came to visit us and he and his family did Toronto-Boston-NYC-DC-Toronto in 4 days. I think he spent 4 hours in Manhattan, during which he visited Times Square for 1 hour (mostly spending his time at the Disney Store) and the Statue of Liberty. There was an obligatory stop in Hershey, PA to visit the chocolate factory. The bus stopped at Chinese restaurants or Swiss Chalet-type places if they were in the sticks, and they slept in exurban Hampton Inns.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a bus trip like that that skips Ottawa.

There's someone in the city discussions "overlooked cities" topic that says they'd never heard of Toronto at all before they joined this forum, and this is a person who is presumably interested in big cities and skyscrapers.

A lot of Americans have little or no knowledge of Ottawa. I think this was the case here. When they spoke to me, they realized a missed opportunity on their trip.

That's extremely hard to believe. Especially since he apparently lives in California.

If he was an illiterate shoeshine boy in Bhutan, perhaps...

What are the main general differences for "immigrant communities' tour buses" vs. mainstream tour buses? Is it mostly about the language of the announcers, food and other comforts or are the stops that they stop at very drastically of different interest -- for instance, I could see Times Square, or the Hershey's factory being stuff that is touristy in general. Or do they for e.g. stop at historical ethnic communities for the city in question vs. ones geared towards the general public), for example going to Chinatowns and talking about the historic Chinese communities in each city, if the audience happens to be Chinese, and likewise for a different ethnic community.

The Chinese tours are conducted in Mandarin or Cantonese (now mostly Mandarin), and are basically about checking off as many boxes as quickly and cheaply as possible. That and outlet shopping.

They stop at Chinese restaurants because they’re cheap, people get homesick and they can bark at the waiters in Mandarin. I don’t think there’s much introspection going on.