Quote:
Originally Posted by BCTed
I find the provincial census divisions confusing --- Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa are all represented as city populations, while Waterloo is region, and Middlesex is county.
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In the case of Hamilton the Census Division is a legacy from when it matched Hamilton-Wentworth Region, pre-amalgamation. I think I recall the individual municipalities that comprised H-W each being Census Subdivisions, when I worked with that data during university (pre-internet, mind you... I had to go to the library to get the data and enter it into Quattro Pro and the GIS application manually!). Then eventually amalgamation made the city line up with the Statistics Canada CD.
I think it was the same for Toronto, and probably Ottawa too.
Region vs. county are just a different type of administration, but basically the same thing when it comes to boundaries. London has, over time, annexed a large chunk of Middlesex and at some point I could see the city swallowing the county and having the same boundary (though Middlesex is HUGE, so maybe that's a far off idea). Waterloo Region, comprising Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge plus some townships may never be a single-tier municipality, though I guess the townships could be amalgamated with the tri-cities. I don't know if there's a case nor appetite for that... probably not, after the experiences elsewhere.
Where it gets even more interesting is where current CDs are split to create CMAs - e.g., Hamilton getting chunks of Halton (Burlington) and Niagara (Grimsby). I believe London includes St. Thomas from the CD to the south. Waterloo Region may be analogous to the Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo CMA. These projections don't get that granular, but I imagine city planners break things down further based on what's developed within a boundary and what is not.
CMA maps can be found and downloaded as PDFs here:
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-r...ng.cfm?year=21
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