Quote:
Originally Posted by Metro-One
On the flip side what would have happened if the US followed through with 54.40?
Then The entire southern half of BC would be the US and Canada would only have a tiny sliver of Pacific access near Prince Rupert.
PS, really like that border above
|
Then Canada would have been an Atlantic country. Anything north of 54 is unarable boreal forest all the way until Alberta. Halifax and the Maritimes would have more power (although they got the shaft almost immediately after Confederation, and before there was any useful Pacific port to speak of).
Prince Rupert would be one of those super remote cities of about 150,000 people that is a country’s only presence on a coast, kind of like Darwin, Australia (but with a way worse climate). Building a rail line there would not have been a 19th century priority, and we’d either ship things to Asia via the Panama Canal, or just let the Americans handle it for us.
We might have developed the oil sands, but since most of the easy southern Alberta reserves that were historically developed first would be in the States, we wouldn’t have had much of a homegrown energy industry to develop it.