Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
The big problem in the Maritimes around 1900 was not the total amount of resources, it was how they were geographically distributed and how transportation worked at the time. A lot of people tend to argue that the Maritimes were somehow a harsher place to live or are barren but that's not true. I wouldn't be surprised if the number of people earning a living off of natural resources or primary industries there is bigger than it is in BC.
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IMO, another big factor that held the Maritimes back, was the formation of Canada. Historically, the Maritime provinces were closely tied with the New England states. Most of their trade was North-South, and Upper and Lower Canada were just places on the map barely noticable.
When they got smashed into Confederation, and the new Government of Canada decided to focus on the Great Lakes/St Lawrence corridor, the Maritimes were basically cut off; their only connection to Ontario and Quebec had to follow a dogleg route over Aroostock County in the US and had no direct water routes.
The Quebec Barrier that developed in the mid-20th certainly didn't help things either. Businesses often never seemed to want to put the effort to expand into Quebec from Ontario, and they especially didn't want to reach across Quebec to reach the Maritimes. It did lead to a number of Maritime chains developing in isolation, some of them still strong today; but it also means many rest of Canada chains barely have any presence past Montreal (if they even make it to Montreal).
While it's a non-starter now of course; I do wonder if the Maritimes would have been better if they had jumped with the 13 colonies and joined the States way back in the day. Northern NB would probably still be foobared (similar to Aroostock County in Maine, though with more large towns), but the Bay of Fundy and Halifax loop would have been fed by the Maritime trade to Boston and New York without interruption.
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