Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
One historical piece of trivia is that the Maritimes were never really a part of Canada until they artificially became one in 1867. They were separate colonies that weren't aligned with St. Lawrence and Great Lakes trade in any significant way. There were more imports and exports to and from the UK and US than there were to Canada. If you went to a big city from the Maritimes you went to Boston, New York, or London, not Montreal. It was very economically harmful to the Maritimes when trade to the US and even UK was eventually cut off in order to promote trade within Canada. Halifax was in a great place in the 19th century to trade with other Atlantic cities (more or less on the shortest path between New York and London). It was not in a great place to trade with Montreal or Toronto. During Halifax's "golden age" of the mid-19th century the most successful enterprises were those like Cunard Line which were focused on Atlantic and Caribbean trade.
A similar hypothetical situation: imagine if Russia took over Denmark in 1900. How would it have turned out differently? All of the Scandinavian countries are highly successful on their own. The parts of Finland that Russia conquered are now backwaters.
In any case Halifax was obviously never going to be Canada's East Coast Vancouver or New York or whatever.
But then if you look at something like the urban/rural split in the Maritimes it's obvious there's something weird going on. Here in BC we have 690,000 people living in rural areas. The Maritimes have half the population of BC but over 800,000 people living in rural areas. The cities there are very underdeveloped relative to the rest of Canada and relative to the resources of the region. In an alternate universe with better economic development within Canada I think the balance easily could have been different and maybe Halifax would have been a Calgary-sized city instead of the size it is today. Saint John also could have been much larger.
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Alternate history scenarios are always interesting to contemplate.
Confederation was bad for Halifax and Saint John, no question
but I would argue that it was even worse for SJ than Haligon.
Just look at a map. SJ is on the Bay of Fundy, which is oriented on a northeast/southwest axis. When you head out of the bay, you are heading straight for Boston, which really should be the regional metropole for both New England and the Maritimes.
Confederation (and the subsequent National Policy) suddenly meant that commerce from SJ to Boston was discouraged, and that commerce to Montreal was preferred. To get to Montreal however, a ship would have to circumnavigate all of NS and then travel through the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and then up the Saint Lawrence River to reach it's destination. This made no geographic sense.
To make things worse for SJ, confederation made the development of new rail communications connecting the colonies imperative. It was important to have a rail line between Montreal and Halifax
but Saint John is not directly along the route. Moncton however is. Moncton took advantage of this, firstly by becoming the headquarters of the Intercolonial Railway (ICR), subsequently also being declared the eastern terminus of the National Transcontinental Railway (NTR) and finally being declared the regional HQ for CNR when these two railways were combined in the 1910s.
Moncton is also on the Trans Canada Highway (but SJ is not). The regional road and railway infrastructure continues to pass through Moncton today. It could actually be argued that although confederation was bad for SJ and Halifax, that it has actually been good for Moncton.......
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