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Originally Posted by Saul Goode
Should be an interesting rivalry to watch as it evolves.
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It is interesting but I have seen these stories for decades, not much major stuff has happened, and in the end I wonder how much economic significance the container shipping really has. There's often a sort of subtext that Halifax is a "port city" and if Saint John can win the port stuff it'll steal some sort of crown. But there's a lot of port activity (e.g. military, which is different from shipping and perhaps the larger driver historically) and there's a lot of other economic activity.
The backdrop is that Saint John has been losing out a bit to Moncton for many years and is now #2 in NB. That is the real rivalry IMO, but it is sexier to talk about gaining ground on Halifax than to talk about Moncton pulling ahead. The Saint John/Halifax ratio is now a bit larger than the size ratio between Halifax and Calgary, Edmonton, or Ottawa. This is not to say that Saint John is a bad city. I think it has lots of potential and could grow into a great city. But it's a different scale of place these days.
It's noticeable how in parts of SSP people are obsessed with population as a determinant of urban greatness but in Atlantic Canada people will often take it too far in the other direction, and ignore scale differences of sometimes 4-5x or more.
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