If the US and Canada had been one nation, would Toronto or Montreal still be big?

[Qubert]

So this is an interesting alt-history question I've always had:

If either A) The American revolution had spread to Canada or B) The Revolution was crushed and all of North America would evolve into a British Dominion then commonwealth nation, would Toronto or Montreal be the cities they are today?

The reason this question intrigues me so much is that we always talk about how weather and geography affect settlement patterns and one has to ask if all of North America was one political entity what would be the basis of having two major great lakes mega cities (Chicago and Toronto) or in having a major inland port along the St Laurence (Montreal)?
IMHO I think Toronto would still have emerged as a major hub due to it's resource rich Ontario hinterland, but Montreal might be more questionable. With the St Laurence no longer outside American hands I can see Montreal being more of a provincial mid-sized city akin to a St Louis or Nashville first being a manufacturing hub then later transitioning to a cultural one. Toronto would be a manufacturing powerhouse like a Cleveland or Detroit, and would also probably have vastly different demographics with it becoming a magent for the Great Migration of African-Americans northward as well as Latino and Jewish immigration. By the mid twentieth century Toronto would be affected by White Flight and suburbanization and maybe wouldn't quite be as much of a draw as it is today since "Canadians" can basically live in Arizona or Florida as they so wish.

In other words, Toronto would be another rust belt city and Montreal would become a kinda cold-weather New Orleans. What do you think would have occurred?

[Crawford]

No way. The portion of this fantasy U.S. in Canada would have a fraction of Canada's present population, for obvious climate, logistical and immigration policy reasons.

[Steely Dan]

Ya never know.

A combined US/Canada might have meant that the Erie canal never got off the ground.

Maybe Montreal is even larger than it currently is and New York City is smaller.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Ya never know.

A combined US/Canada might have meant that the Erie canal never got off the ground.

Maybe Montreal is even larger than it currently is and New York City is smaller.

My knee jerk reaction is that the population within the footprint of "real" Canada would across the board be way smaller in counterfactual Canada. But, as you allude there may be some interesting complexities here to consider.

Generally speaking I think Montreal would still be a major thing, whereas Toronto may be less certain. Maybe more of a Duluth scenario, an array of raw material processing ports, there.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Crawford

No way. The portion of this fantasy U.S. in Canada would have a fraction of Canada's present population, for obvious climate, logistical and immigration policy reasons.

I don't think climate has anything to do with it. There are plenty of cities with similar climates in the US to Toronto, and obviously a lot of people live there: Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Boston all have long winters and three of them are lakeside cities. So why would that change anything with Toronto's climate?

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Doady

Toronto is much more of an industrial city now than it was 1950 when all those other cities started to decline.

The thought experiment here isn't about how actual Toronto was different from actual US Great Lakes cities in 1950. Rather, it is about how a seamless continental Fantasy Canada would have developed over the centuries. Whether that Dream Dynamo developed more like actual Canada or actual America, I think it is fair to say that Toronto and other cities in that region of North America would have developed uniformly through the same processes driven by the same forces. So in that thought experiment, Toronto wouldn't have necessarily been an outlier in 1950 or any other year.

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I don't think climate has anything to do with it. There are plenty of cities with similar climates in the US to Toronto, and obviously a lot of people live there: Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Boston all have long winters and three of them are lakeside cities. So why would that change anything with Toronto's climate?

Now name all of the major US metropolitan areas that are not in climates similar to Toronto. Hint: most of them.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by craigs

Now name all of the major US metropolitan areas that are not in climates similar to Toronto. Hint: most of them.

So what? Is Boston not as big as Houston because Sun Belt cities like Atlanta, Miami, and Nashville exist? Or is Boston not as big as Houston because of other factors, like dominating industries and municipal boundaries?

[craigs]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

So what? Is Boston not as big as Houston because Sun Belt cities like Atlanta, Miami, and Nashville exist? Or is Boston not as big as Houston because of other factors, like dominating industries and municipal boundaries?

My point is that most Fantasy Canadians would live in warmer climates, just like most Americans do now.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I don't think climate has anything to do with it. There are plenty of cities with similar climates in the US to Toronto, and obviously a lot of people live there: Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Boston all have long winters and three of them are lakeside cities. So why would that change anything with Toronto's climate?

These cities were all established and boomed long before air conditioning, the jet age and the rise of the Sunbelt. Over the last 50 years, these cities basically haven't grown much.

And Canada is even colder. Toronto slightly colder, Montreal significantly colder, Winnipeg one of the coldest cities on earth. These were the three largest cities pre-Sunbelt.

And Canada's recent growth is entirely due to some of the planet's most liberal immigration laws. Under U.S. immigration norms, this wouldn't be the case.

And something like 1/3 of Canada's population lives in Ontario, with the GTA closest to Buffalo, Rochester and Cleveland, three of the slowest growing cities in the U.S. Toronto would likely be most similar to its closest cities. It would probably be a stagnant, midsized city with a strong industrial heritage and some decent legacy industries. Rochester, more or less.

[Acajack]

Montreal's growth is also dependent on whether French Canadians would still flock to it en masse as they did (as the closest big city and "their" metropolis) or would the fact there was no border with the US lead more of them to spread out across "Canamerica" or whatever the megacountry would be called.

[hipster duck]

Toronto would 100% be smaller and less important than it is today. To start with, the whole point of Ontario is that it was settled by refugees of the American revolution loyal to the British crown.

Toronto is also not a strategic location if Canada were subsumed within the US. Lake Ontario is a dead end unless you build the Welland canal, and you can easily bypass the city if you were to settle the west.

[hipster duck]

Ontario isn't that rich in natural resources - or at least not in natural resources that need to be transported in such quantities that you need a major port on both the resource-shipping and the resource-processing/manufacturing end.

The big mineral deposits are things like nickel and copper around Sudbury and some cobalt and gold/platinum deposits further north. I'm not an expert on this, but those kinds of resources were probably more useful in mid-to-late 20th century industrial applications, when there was far more automation and specialization in mining and processing compared to the more 19th century resources like coal or iron ore. You didn't need thousands of men with pick axes to move to Sudbury.

Mining has given Toronto a certain amount of wealth and prestige, even internationally, but the kind of mining we have would have never driven population growth.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Crawford

These cities were all established and boomed long before air conditioning, the jet age and the rise of the Sunbelt. Over the last 50 years, these cities basically haven't grown much.

And Canada is even colder. Toronto slightly colder, Montreal significantly colder, Winnipeg one of the coldest cities on earth. These were the three largest cities pre-Sunbelt.

And Canada's recent growth is entirely due to some of the planet's most liberal immigration laws. Under U.S. immigration norms, this wouldn't be the case.

And something like 1/3 of Canada's population lives in Ontario, with the GTA closest to Buffalo, Rochester and Cleveland, three of the slowest growing cities in the U.S. Toronto would likely be most similar to its closest cities. It would probably be a stagnant, midsized city with a strong industrial heritage and some decent legacy industries. Rochester, more or less.

Your third and fourth paragraphs explain why the first two paragraphs don't really matter, and why climate doesn't factor into things as much. The growth in Toronto compared to places like Detroit or Cleveland is because of political factors, such as being the financial center of a separate nation with Toronto, and the outsourcing of manufacturing in the Rust Belt with Detroit and Cleveland.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I don't think climate has anything to do with it. There are plenty of cities with similar climates in the US to Toronto, and obviously a lot of people live there: Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Boston all have long winters and three of them are lakeside cities. So why would that change anything with Toronto's climate?

Those US cities have had slow growth for decades. Why would Toronto etc have grown any faster?

[Docere]

Assuming a similar-sized Toronto exists as part of the US in 1940 and then follows a "Great Lakes" trajectory, it would probably have a metropolitan area population of about 2 million today.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

Assuming a similar-sized Toronto exists as part of the US in 1940 and then follows a "Great Lakes" trajectory, it would probably have a metropolitan area population of about 2 million today.

In a uni-nation scenario, I think the capital of Upper Canada (Ontario) likely stays in Newark (Niagara-on-the-lake). Without the threat of US aggression, there would have been no reason to move that capital up to York (Toronto).

That's why I think Toronto would most likely be a lot smaller than it was in 1940, and the Niagara region would be the alpha population settlement of Lake Ontario.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by mhays

Those US cities have had slow growth for decades. Why would Toronto etc have grown any faster?

If it followed their trajectory, Toronto could have done the same thing as them by getting large back then rather than doing it more recently. So it wouldn't need to have the recent high growth we see today in order to become large since it would have already been large at that point.

[Wigs]

All of Canada's current major cities would be Toledo sized except for Montreal.

[llamaorama]

Hard to say.

I do think Canada's natural resources would have still been a major economic attraction. So Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton would still be major cities and perhaps even bigger. There would probably be a railroad connecting Alaska with the rest of the country, and perhaps a 4-lane interstate highway. Winnipeg would also be more significant if it had a bigger geographic hinterland not spliced by the border.

But I also like the prediction that Ontario would have become rust belt and stagnated. Toronto would probably be like a second Cleveland or Buffalo, Ottawa would be a small town or not exist, and there would be no reason for Montreal to have grown very large either. Atlantic Canada would probably be about the same.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

there would be no reason for Montreal to have grown very large either.

As the fall line port city of the St. Lawrence.(Which empties the entire great lakes basin), Montreal was probably destined to be a thing by geography alone.

And as I said earlier, a combined US/Canada could have meant that the erie canal never happened, which could have in turn increased montreal's profile as a port city and diminished NYC's.