Does Toronto have the same magnetic pull among Canadians that NYC has for Americans?

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Those results are from a few years ago, and there's been a lot of... erm... "stuff" going on in Canadian schools since that time.

It'll be interesting to see if our results hold up. (I agree we've been doing quite well.)

No idea about Sweden, though as North Americans I think many of us often automatically assume that their public services, including schools, are top-notch. Rightly or wrongly.

Canada/Canadian students have done well on PISA tests for many years. Far better than USA, UK, Australia, France, Germany, or almost any other peer nation.
Covid lockdowns across Canada, particularly in Ontario (I believe we had the longest Covid interruptions) really interfered with student learning, yet these 2022 results still show Canada near the top for students globally.

Meanwhile, Poland #12 is now scoring better than most of Western Europe, just barely ahead of Finland--a nation known for bringing all students up to a high standard of education.
Old stereotypes of Central/Eastern Europe die hard. Poland has went from suffering decades under the Iron Curtain to mass exodus of Poles to UK, Germany, USA elsewhere to in 2024 now becoming a country where Polish expats want to return and the tech sector is starting to really find its headwind.

Since this is SSP, 9 out of the 10 tallest buildings in Warsaw have been constructed since 1999, an indication that the economy is doing well. Varso Tower is similar in size to Calgary's The Bow tower, also built by Foster & Partners.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...ings_in_Warsaw

Edit: I have no doubt that the foundation of a solid public education system in Poland and most young Poles learning and having a decent command of the English language is paying off dividends now and into the foreseeable future.

Even though I often seem to go way off tangent Warsaw is a becoming a city that doesn't just have magnetic pull for people within Poland, an increasing pull for Polish expats to move back but is becoming the shining star of Central/Eastern Europe.

[Nouvellecosse]

^ That's quite interesting to hear of Warsaw's success. I always viewed it as a sort of European Winnipeg in that it just sort of exists in a geographically central location without being particularly close the centers of power or prestige and without really being a success or failure. So it's nice that they can enjoy some real success.

[kool maudit]

No, Warsaw is a booming capital with a lot of energy right now. One of the places in the Western world where the sense that the future will be better than the past is most solid.

[Crawford]

Warsaw might be the ugliest, least appealing major European capital. Main train station neighborhood is dystopian. Reconstructed old town is weird. Granted, I haven't been to Tirana, Bucharest, Sofia and others.

It's great that Poland is doing well and something of an optimistic outlier, but that town and surroundings are pretty grim.

[Wigs]

^Well, I mean Warsaw was basically leveled to the ground by Germany during WWII. Almost the entire Old Town had to be painstakingly rebuilt from scratch. Then Warsaw was run by Soviets, or aligned with/a satellite State of USSR until 1989.

So Poland has only been Polish controlled with full self determination for the past 35 years and they've accomplished amazing things since. Their GDP is heading towards $1 Trillion and they've consistently had some of the highest growth in Europe year over year since joining the EU in May 2004.

Germany and Poland's economies are now heavily linked. I have an online friend that lives in North Rhine-Westphalia. He's trilingual. Half of his immediate family live in Germany. Half live in Poland.

Germany is Poland’s largest trading partner, responsible for 27.9% of Polish exports and 19.8% of imports in 2023, notes news service WPN, citing calculations by the Polish Economic Institute (PIE).

I think post Soviet era, in 35 years time they've built and are in the process of building a special city with Warsaw. It's just not noticed let alone appreciated by most yet.

• Video Link

[Docere]

I'd say if anything Lviv is the Winnipeg of Europe.

[biguc]

Poland in general these days is '80s USA as seen in the movies by eastern Europeans. Warsaw is all cocaine money and glassy skyscrapers against a backdrop of public neglect and social conservatism. I like it but I'm not trying to live like that.

[Acajack]

...........

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Canada/Canadian students have done well on PISA tests for many years. Far better than USA, UK, Australia, France, Germany, or almost any other peer nation.
Covid lockdowns across Canada, particularly in Ontario (I believe we had the longest Covid interruptions) really interfered with student learning, yet these 2022 results still show Canada near the top for students globally.
.

Hopefully we can keep it up. I for one am very happy my kids are out of K-12.

[LuluBobo]

If anything, New York is the New York of Canada.

From the people I graduated high school with (2009) more have ended up in Calgary, or Vancouver or New York than Toronto.

For my peers that moved to the US, it is the New York/LA/Seattle/SF show. I'm never met anyone from Saskatchewan that moved to the States where it wasn't one of those cities.

[Zeej]

Originally Posted by LuluBobo

If anything, New York is the New York of Canada.

Echoes the words of Mordecai Richler

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Docere

5-year migration (2021 Census)

Intraprovincial Migrants

Montreal CMA 107,560
Ottawa CMA (Ontario part) 62,850
Toronto CMA 119,845
Calgary CMA 48,495
Vancouver CMA 44,760

Interprovincial Migrants

Montreal CMA 43,280
Ottawa CMA (Ontario part) 46,270
Toronto CMA 80,555
Calgary CMA 60,215
Vancouver CMA 81,120

Francophones:

Intraprovincial Migrants

Montreal CMA 92,985
Ottawa CMA (Ontario part) 6,090
Toronto CMA 1,890
Calgary CMA 675
Vancouver CMA 325

Interprovincial Migrants

Montreal CMA 9,735
Ottawa CMA (Ontario part) 8,885
Toronto CMA 3,405
Calgary CMA 1,820
Vancouver CMA 2,590

^ Not for francophones.

[Crawford]

There's definitely an Anglo Canadian presence in NYC (and likely other hub cities in U.S.). I don't notice much of a French Canadian presence, but maybe they head to Paris or elsewhere in the world.

There's a French (as in France) expat presence of professionals, particularly in the Cobble Hill-Carroll Gardens areas of brownstone Brooklyn, and a small elite presence on the UES. The French-language private schools in the city proper are all on the UES or in a small corridor in brownstone Brooklyn.

[UrbanImpact]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There's definitely an Anglo Canadian presence in NYC (and likely other hub cities in U.S.). I don't notice much of a French Canadian presence, but maybe they head to Paris or elsewhere in the world.

There's a French (as in France) expat presence of professionals, particularly in the Cobble Hill-Carroll Gardens areas of brownstone Brooklyn, and a small elite presence on the UES. The French-language private schools in the city proper are all on the UES or in a small corridor in brownstone Brooklyn.

The French Canadians are all down here in South Florida.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by UrbanImpact

The French Canadians are all down here in South Florida.

Of course, though relatively few of us go down to Florida to work.

I'd say working-age French-speaking Canadians spread out all over the economically prosperous parts of the US, with perhaps concentrations in certain areas like Los Angeles (and at one time Las Vegas to some degree) for the entertainment industry, for example.

[Docere]

Been a long time since they've separated out French Canadian immigrants in the US. Up until the 1940s I think the Census used to separate out Canada - French and Canada - Other.

Not sure if Acadians from New Brunswick or Franco-Ontarians in the US would have been classified as the former or latter though. I think the latter because I think it was a geographic split not a language split.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Docere

Been a long time since they've separated out French Canadian immigrants in the US. Up until the 1940s I think the Census used to separate out Canada - French and Canada - Other.

Not sure if Acadians from New Brunswick or Franco-Ontarians in the US would have been classified as the former or latter though. I think the latter because I think it was a geographic split not a language split.

According to the US Census, a lot of places in the NE US (especially in New England) have for example 10% of people of French origin and 10% of people who are of French Canadian ancestry. Hard to believe that 5,000 or 10,000 people in Lewiston, ME or Woonsocket, RI are descended from that many people who moved there directly from France at some point the past 100-200 years.

Most people of "French" ancestry in most parts of the NE US especially (except for the very biggest cities) are people whose ancestors transited through Canada at some point in previous centuries.

[Docere]

Yes I combine French and French Canadian responses when looking at ancestry data because there's never been much direct immigration from France.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There's definitely an Anglo Canadian presence in NYC (and likely other hub cities in U.S.). I don't notice much of a French Canadian presence, but maybe they head to Paris or elsewhere in the world.

There's a French (as in France) expat presence of professionals, particularly in the Cobble Hill-Carroll Gardens areas of brownstone Brooklyn, and a small elite presence on the UES. The French-language private schools in the city proper are all on the UES or in a small corridor in brownstone Brooklyn.

French-speaking Canadian expats tend to primarily "caucus" with themselves where they are in sufficient numbers abroad, though in certain places some may do so with the international francophonie population (which is usually dominated by the Euro French*). In a place like New York when they're mixed in with the broader French-speaking in-group it's probably not that easy for the average American who doesn't speak any French to tell them apart.

Beyond that some francophone Canadians abroad may also gravitate to Anglo-Canadians and even Americans, but this is mostly true of those from outside Quebec who tend to have better English and also more anglosphere cultural references.

(*My first point is a bit surprising as we really are a bit more different from the Euro French than, say, Americans are from the Brits.)

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by LuluBobo

If anything, New York is the New York of Canada.

From the people I graduated high school with (2009) more have ended up in Calgary, or Vancouver or New York than Toronto.

For my peers that moved to the US, it is the New York/LA/Seattle/SF show. I'm never met anyone from Saskatchewan that moved to the States where it wasn't one of those cities.

As I think has been mentioned before, Canada is huge and sparsely populated and there are long distances with few people that are geographic and psychological barriers - northern Ontario is a huge one for example. This tends to keep a lot of people's sights on the biggest city in their specific region of Canada.

If you're from Saskatchewan and willing to go cross-continent that far, may as well go all the way to the Big Apple.

Toronto is a big city though and of course there are many many people originally from western Canada living there.

Borders and permits and visas do matter as well.

Even in a prosperous area like mine (more on the Ottawa side than here in Gatineau) with consistently low unemployment over many decades, everyone you talk to has sons, daughters, nieces or nephews that have moved to the GTA.