a guess: montreal had a high profile with older millennials and young gen x during the early 00s as music/arts from there was prolific into the states/globally - but toronto has really owned the 10s as a matter of perception, i think.

Really?

I get your point about national boundaries being not arbitrary but to say that most Americans would be denied entry to Canada seems a bit overblown.

Americans and Canadians can visit each others' countries easily as tourists, just that living and working there, or immigrating there is hard.

Raptors, too.

Well, I am from New York (and from Upstate no less) and you would be correct.

a majority of americans still do not have a passport, although the percentage has increased dramatically since 2000 and i imagine that the majority soon will.

Right, "We the North" and the fact that Toronto is the only team left representing Canada there (also in baseball, after the Expos were no more) probably has made it the face of the country for the younger generation.

If I were to talk to people in my entourage randomly about cities in NYS other than NYC, most would probably be shocked that Buffalo, Albany and Rochester are similar in size (since it's the metro that counts). My sense is that they'd place Rochester and Albany in the same size category as Syracuse, with Buffalo quite a bit larger.

My guess is that most people in this area think that the Buffalo metro area is somewhat larger than the Ottawa(-Gatineau) metro area, which it isn't.

As has been said, this is partly due to sports (Buffalo is in the NFL, and has been in the NHL for far longer) but also other cultural icons and references to Buffalo like chicken wings, "shuffling off to Buffalo", and TV shows or movies with references to the city.

Well back before 2007, no passport was needed (I think for Mexico too) and people have taken time to get used to the requirement. since as you mention, the share with passports is slowing trending upwards, it's just a matter of time before the majority is eligible again.

OK, so maybe I was wrong, and at the current moment, most Americans can't (though it's like 42% with a passport), but between the pre-2007 no-passport requirement, and the now increasing share that does have one, I'd think the time span when Canada is off-limits to the US tourist is only a relatively short one in the long run.

I'm an older millennial and I've always thought of Montreal as secondary to Toronto. In truth, Canada never really registered as a place that had big cities when I was growing up, so I was never that curious about Toronto or Montreal (youthful ignorance). But I always assumed Toronto was the most important place in Canada next to Windsor.

Yeah, I used to cross the border into Canada regularly until I was 21, because Canada's drinking age is 19, and I did it without a passport. Since the passport requirement, I think I've only crossed once or twice by land (but many times by air).

nope.

the sabres were founded in 1970.

the bills were founded in 1960 as an AFL team, and then joined the NFL in 1970 with the big AFL/NFL merger.

so buffalo became a major league city in both leagues in the same year.

Sorry, I meant Buffalo has been in the NHL far longer than Ottawa.

Though actually that's not entirely correct, as there was an earlier incarnation of the Ottawa Senators around the 1920s that pre-dates the Sabres by something like 50 years. But the current Senators franchise only came back in 1992 I think. (Unsure if there was a short-lived Buffalo team in the early days of the NHL though...)

BTW I think you're right about sports playing a big role. Green Bay is the second city most people would name in Wisconsin, but it's metro is smaller than Madison and Appleton. (I actually had to look up Appleton, and I am a geography geek. I knew that Madison was second biggest though.)

While I agree that Toronto is likely most known in the U.S. nation-wide, there can be some regional variations.

If you asked a random person on the west coast of the U.S. to name a random city in Canada, Vancouver would likely come up a lot.

If you asked them to name the biggest city in Canada, many of the geographically challenged (which is to say - lots of people) would likely answer Vancouver too. (Though less than for the previous question.)

In the Boston and New England region, to a lot of people (even most?) Canada is a predominantly French-speaking country and Montreal is *the city* up there. A decent chunk of them (most again?) probably also think that it's the biggest, or at the very least is basically equal to Toronto.

For some reason, even people not so far West in the states like Denver, Dallas etc. still seem to recognize Vancouver as having outsized importance in their minds when I bring up Canada -- they'll often occasionally know Alberta by name as a place in Canada above them (though they won't necessarily know details of the cities) too.

Obviously there are implications of these lines but: *and economies

All of this holds much more objective weight, for example regions of Europe and Asia do not start and stop at country lines and it's no different in North America.

Toronto can exist as the first city of both but if we're talking about regions it makes more sense to me to compare by Great Lakes than a term that basically has no meaning in 2019.

People also like to say that Canada and the US are the most similar countries (or at least one of the most similar) so if you are going to allow transnational cities (as in Europe or Asia) to be a concept or a thing, then the US-Canada border cities would not stand out internationally at all as an exceptionally divided border region.

Although not the second-largest cities in their respective states, I think Santa Fe and Savannah essentially function as 'second cities' and are good candidates here.

Buffalo is definitely New York's second city. They have sports teams and the metro area has Niagara Falls. How many people from California or Texas have been to Buffalo/Niagara Falls? Now how many people from California or Texas have been to Rochester? How many don't even know Rochester exists?

Some smaller state considerations.

Rapid City is the second city of South Dakota.
Lincoln is the second city of Nebraska.
Reno is the second city in Nevada
Montgomery (I think) is still the second city in Alabama, but is losing pace to Huntsville and Mobile.
Tulsa is the second city in Oklahoma

I guess I got into some more mid-range states so lets keep going...

Is there a second city in North Carolina?
Madison is the second city to Milwaukee... will that hold?
Minnesota, (excluding St. Paul ) is it Duluth as it was historically or is it Rochester now?
Annapolis in Maryland, or is D.C. so dominant that Baltimore is now a second city?

Canada is a little unusual because while Toronto maybe Canada's top city, Montreal is Canada's top francophone city; Quebec has always had its own thing going on. I grew up just south of the border seeing both more or less on an equal footing even if Toronto is the more prominent of the two. Especially now.