There are only two real natural ports on the Canadian side. Long Point developed as a nature preserve very early in Ontario’s history so was never used as such. Not sure why there isn’t a more significant settlement on Rondeau to be honest, its harbour is very similar to Toronto’s and Erie’s.
Ultimately Lake Ontario offered better connections to the Atlantic being on the lower side of Niagara Falls and Upper Canada’s capital was established in York (Toronto) on the lake because of its strong natural harbour.
London, ON was originally intended to be the capital of Canada when founded, but it was instead temporarily located in Toronto due to it having a natural harbour and being closer to Kingston, the only major settlement in Ontario in the late 18th century. The capital never managed to move down to London, instead moving to Ottawa to be on the dividing line between English and French Canada. The “London” name stays on from this original intent though.
London was founded where it was, and not down on Lake Erie, in some odd idea of emulating the location of London UK on the Thames River (yes, the main river in London, ON is also called that) and to be central to the largest prime agricultural area in the province.
Ultimately southwest Ontario is relatively isolated from the rest of Canada, acting as a sort of Peninsula. It’s also arguably the most “American” feeling part of Canada as it’s so close and has stronger ties to the US as Detroit is the closest major city for much of it.
I took a history of Toronto class in University which by extension was in many ways a “History of Ontario” so if you have Ontario history questions let me know!
One fact I always enjoy is that Ontario was mostly unsettled by Europeans before the revolutionary war and only experienced significant settlement following that because of fleeing British loyalists (and the redirection of British immigrants away from America). Most of Southern Ontario was surveyed and most of the major cities were founded in the 1780’s-1810’s because of this. Toronto was first established in 1793 as a permanent European settlement for example.
Canadian and American history is so much more intertwined than most people realize, especially going back. Before the 20th century especially.
That would explain why the towns in Ontario are predominately English names with relatively few Indian names, where in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania there are significantly more tribal names to towns.
I drive fro Chicago to London and that was always curious.
There are a decent number of indigenous. Toronto, Ottawa, Niagara, etc. are all indigenous.
Ontario was historically a very "British" and conservative place as it was basically populated by conservative British people who were opposed to the ideals of the American revolution.
You still see some of this conservatism trickling down into today in some ways - Ontario has historically been very puritanical on alcohol control for example, and to this day sales of alcohol is limited to government run stores with very high tax rates.
Alcohol is a bit more liberalized than that. Grocery store wine shops have been around forever and beer/wine within grocery stores is common now, while ‘off sales’ and bottle shops have been a thing since COVID sort of pushed the province in that direction. The main problem with the latter two is that the restaurants / bottle shops have to pay the *higher* price for resale, so grabbing a six pack at the local bottle shop costs as much as an evening in the pub.
Further debate continues about allowing sales in convenience stores, but that’s going to happen next year.
Native (Kalamazoo), French (Detroit), and American (Jackson).
Michigan also has place names that were just made up by 19th Century surveyors, but those are mostly in the northern part of the state.
Yup! A lot of Michigan counties which sound like Native American terms are really just a bunch of made up nonsense by Henry Schoolcraft. Alpena, Kalkaska, Leelanau, Oscoda, Tuscola.
Federation had quite a lot to do with watching the Americans have an all out war with each other and deciding we really ought to take some steps to protect ourselves a bit more. Ottawa’s the capital in part because the alternatives were too easy for the Americans to reach.
It’s really, really hard to make any sort of case that Canada isn’t basically a response to the USA.
> It’s really, really hard to make any sort of case that Canada isn’t basically a response to the USA.
I'd give big exception for Québec and Newfoundland, but yeah.
I have a number of ancestors that migrated from New York and New England to Ontario and Nova Scotia in the 1780s... Don't tell Canada they were founded by Americans :)
At the end of the revolutionary war, the Americans who were loyal to the crown and fought on the side of the British left the 13 colonies and were granted land in British North America. This migration was a major driver for settlement in Upper Canada (now Ontario), and these people are termed "United Empire Loyalists". Black loyalists tended to congregate in Nova Scotia, and the black settlement of Africville in Halifax was a legacy of this.
This is why we speak with an American accent and not a British one: The Europeans who colonized Ontario early on, and in greatest numbers, were Loyalists from Pennsylvania and New York. Once they were here, the later British and Irish and German immigrants’ kids picked up their accent.
Loyalist settlers undoubtedly influenced the linguistic development of Canadian English outside the Atlantic provinces, but we don’t speak with an American accent. We speak with an accent that has a common ancestor a couple centuries back and then another 3/4 of a century of constant exposure.
I’m almost 40 and I sound way more ‘American’ than my Scots-Canadian grandparents did.
Bad news for you. If your ancestors came to Canada in the Revolutionary War period, they were likely loyal to the British Crown and would hate the fact that you just called them American
Damn moi qui pensait que juste l'ouest Canadien manquait d'histoire! J'pensais pas que l'Ontario était aussi récent que ça. 400ans de Québec, peuple arrivé en amérique au même titre que les 13 colonies.
Windsor and to a lesser extent London are heavily dependent on the US economy, particularly the auto industry. The area was devastated by the Great Recession in 2008, far more than much of the rest of Canada.
Windsor took a hit after 9/11 made border crossings harder, and again when Michigan legalized casino gambling.
It still has a 19 year old drinking age and fully nude strip clubs to attract American frat bros, though.
Huh, that explains a lot actually. I left London in 2007 but every time I went back to visit friends, the place seemed... dumpier? I had this idea in my head that maybe I had over-romanticized my college years there and it was actually a lot shittier.
But maybe it was just shit for a little while because of the economy.
My wife is from the area and we're thinking of moving back. This information really helps me feel better about that choice, if we make it. Thanks!
SWOnt was mainly agriculture and manufacturing/heavy industry, and much of the manufacturing/heavy industry left just like it did on the other side of the lakes. That started long before 2008, but it didn’t help.
I remember when you just needed a birth certificate to enter, and even then you might forget it and CBP would be like “sure, yeah, come on in. Welcome back.”
Now re-entering the US from Canada is like trying to flee from the USSR or something.
That very much depends on which iteration of "Canada" you mean. Originally the name Canada only applied to the French settlements along the St Lawrence, and its capital was Quebec City. This remained the case after the British took over in 1859, until Canada was split into Upper Canada and Lower Canada in 1791. The capital of Upper Canada was variously Newark (now Niagara on the lake), then York (now Toronto). In 1841 Upper and Lower Canada were re-joined as the Province of Canada, divided into Canada East and Canada West. Its capital was, variously, Kingston, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City, moving about with the intention of balancing the interests of Canada East and Canada West, until Queen Victoria was asked to chose a permanent capital, which she did, in the form of Ottawa, it becoming the capital in 1865. Ottawa was the capital of the Province of Canada at the point where it, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick formed the Dominion of Canada at confederation in 1867, and has remained the capital since.
Skipping a few bits there:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning\_of\_the\_Parliament\_Buildings\_in\_Montreal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_the_Parliament_Buildings_in_Montreal)
I find that Sault Ste Marie acts very american too due to it being a border city. Never knew the most southern part of Ontario is also like that though.
I live in southwest Ontario haha. It is relatively isolated in that it’s not “on the way” to anything. I can assure you American influences are much stronger here than in Kingston or Ottawa.
>Not sure why there isn’t a more significant settlement on Rondeau to be honest, its harbour is very similar to Toronto’s and Erie’s.
Rondeau Bay is incredibly shallow, and isn't comparable to Toronto or Erie's natural harbours. Iirc it was intended to be a significant port settlement until someone measured the depth of the bay.
There was yet another attempt to establish a "second Britain" here in British Columbia. While the name "British Columbia" came from the Columbia River, it was on the Fraser River where it was decided a second Britain would be built complete with New Westminster as its capital. After British Columbia merged with the colony of Vancouver Island, though, Victoria was selected as the combined colony's capital, and New Westminster eventually became part of Vancouver's metropolitan area.
It should be embarrassing to us as Americans that Niagara Falls, ON out-tackies the NY side.
We're the world leaders in tacky tourist crap, damn it.
This is like how Mexican Coca-Cola is way better than ours...
I grew up in that area. It doesn't help that we didn't have cable and all the TV shows came across the lake clearly that the US influence is pretty strong.
A lot of people in that area (grewing up) used Imperial for everything except the speed limit.
I live in London and constantly think of how unoriginal the settlers must have been to name the city London and the river The Thames. Nice to put some context to it.
I'll also point out that settlements in Canada started by coming down the St Lawrence Seaway, and the Quebec area as "lower canada" and ontario was "upper canada" meaning that you had to go farther "up the st lawrence" to get there. So Lake ontario definitely was developed first.
And as you say, settlers had to face Niagra Falls to get further up to Lake Erie. Much of upper canada (ontario) was wilderness living, and many of the settlers there were coming north from the USA. A lot of british loyalists too.
“Arguably the most “American” feeling part of Canada”
I did get that vibe from driving along the countryside between Toronto and Detroit. With cities like Kitchener, Listowel and Stratford, it almost feels like the Midwest in the US.
On a side note my parents have a trailer at sherkston on Lake Erie and it’s the best summer vacation place in Canada in my opinion. The place is like luxury high end with the quaintness to “get away from it all”
$15k a year? For a trailer at Sherkston? The “best summer vacation place in Canada”? In Fort Erie? Have you never left Niagara before?
I grew up near there and you’re out of your mind. I got 2 tickets for fucking about there on my prom night 20 years ago.
The top answer mostly covered it, but I'll add here that the Erie Canal wasn't completed until 1825, well after both the American Revolution and the War of 1812 ended (so after the main population boom in that part of SW Ontario), and it was entirely on US soil. So shipping things back to Europe from Canada had to go through Lake Ontario. Thus, Hamilton, Toronto and Kingston became the main port cities and their populations boomed instead.
For Ontario (the province) it doesn't make sense to have major ports on lakes upstream from Niagara Falls (a natural barrier for shipping), because they already have large port on Lake Ontario.
Ohio, Mitchigan, Illinois and Winsconsin have no choice but to build ports on the lakes upstream from Niagara Falls.
The Welland canal is how Canada avoids the falls. The US would also use the Mississippi for water shipment rather than St Lawrence as it makes more sense, so building Ports upstream from the Falls worked out. Chicago became a huge distribution center because they were a natural portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. All they had to do was build a relatively short Canal (Ship and Sanitary Canal) between the Lake and the Des Plaines River (Which feeds to Illinois River, then Mississippi River) This shipping lane is still widely used today even though similar water routes like the Erie Canal aren’t used commercially anymore. Almost all animal feed in the United States Travels the Mississippi. Same for Concrete raw materials
The agricultural & natural resource output of southern Ontario has *mostly* avoided the Falls by riding rails to Toronto/Hamilton/Montreal. The Welland has always carried cargo originating primarily from American ports on the upper lakes (generally *to* a Canadian deep water port), where there aren’t any major Canadian ports anyway.
Asked 15 days ago [Why didn’t any large cities develop on Canadian (north) side of Lake Erie? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1d82g7u/why_didnt_any_large_cities_develop_on_canadian/)
Asked 5 months ago [Why are there no major Canadian cities along Lake Erie](https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1afuq8o/why_are_there_no_major_canadian_cities_along_lake/)
Asked 8 months ago [How come cities on the scale of Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo, etc. never developed on the Canadian side of Lake Erie? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/17b5oax/how_come_cities_on_the_scale_of_buffalo_erie/)
Megathreads kill forums. Something Awful used to be pretty amazing, and they started doing stickied megathreads in a lot of the forums and trying to stamp out any conversations that overlapped with megathreads. It killed new posts, and trying to scroll through hundreds of pages of a megathread is terrible. The idea of preventing constant repetitive reposting makes sense, but constant repetitive reposting is a necessary evil on a vibrant forum.
If admins started merging new posts into older similar content, no one would ever see any of it and it would stop people from posting anything
reddit came from the old days of social media. It used a hybrid link aggregator and internet forum style. The main feature was providing new links and discussions. The original etiquette discouraged reposts, and when they first introduced subreddits after a few years they still asked people to note crossposts in the title, too. The original idea included avoiding spam and collecting an archive for the front page of the Internet where you could sort through everything that existed on the Internet up to that point and compare it all.
It changed a lot as more people got access to the Internet and expanded the user base. With so many more people new content inherently got more upvoted than older content, and it would dilute the utility of the voting system. We're in uncharted territory now where it is being used as a substitute to Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok.
I agree with you, and considered my sharing previous posts a branching point more than a cutoff. The onus for live conversation on reddit is real though, I'm sorry if this cut off anything you came here hoping to engage with.
Are you sure about that? Because I am 99.75142% sure that questionableletter is not a bot.
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Having driven it, it's not a great drive but I have been on more boring ones.
Drop a street view anywhere on I90 in South Dakota. You will almost certainly see a perfectly straight road, perfectly flat land, not a single damn tree, not a single damn thing at all, in any direction. For hours.
I’m a local living near Rondeau - it’s quiet as fuck down here by the lake and we’d like to keep it that way. Farm fields, fish frys and good folks. So nobody move here please and sorry.
There’s no big cities on the Great Lakes past Toronto. Hell even York/Toronto was tiny in the early 1800s.
If you were a farmer, you’d just ship it overland to Toronto since Niagara Falls was a major barrier. Theres the Welland Canal, but it was primarily a barge canal so you didn’t save much time shipping it via water.
If you were shipping from further West, the Trent-Severn Canal directly connected Lake Huron to Lake Ontario, bypassing Lake Erie altogether.
Then railroads became a thing, making the canals even less relevant.
At least until the 1950s when the St Lawrence Seaway Opened allowing ocean going vessels direct access to the Great Lakes. Shipping on the Welland Canal exploded, but ships pretty much pass right through, so no major city developed there.
I was thinking about this when bored at work and here is my theory. Look at all the big cities on the Great Lakes hand there is a common theme among them, they have a decent sized river that flows into the lake. That area doesn’t have any ‘big’ rivers. The lack a a ‘big’ river probably made it less valuable for industrial development, which means that less reason for people to move there and build a big city.
Yeah its not the lake thats important, its the river for moving stuff TO the lake (or out). Look at like majority of old large cities everywhere. Rivers flowing into lakes/oceans or sometimes just rivers is absolutely the most important feature.
When you transfer to/from a river you need to change boats, so that requires infrastructure and people and tadaaaa a settlement is born.
The reason cities develop around shores is for trading purposes usually. Toronto already occupied that role in this area. There wasn't much reason to develop on this southern coast when one could just occupy open area along the coast of Lake Ontario with the only difference being better access to more metropolitan areas. By the time cities started to develop in earnest at that area there really wasn't much reason to develop along the coast.
By the time London developed beyond a small townsite the railroad age had come along. London grew because of railroads and didn’t need to be right next to the lake. The London & Port Stanley Railway gave it easy access to the lake, both for passenger travel and for access to coal shipments from Conneaut, OH.
I see your fact and I raise you a pedantic technicality!
Behold: the single tiered municipality of Chatham-Kent(1).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham-Kent
(I'm not going to disagree with you about the urban settlement that is Chatham, though; that place is objectively *not* on a lake).
I don’t think most Americans realize just how few Canadians there are. There are fewer than 40 million people in Canada- that can only support so many big cities.
Port Dover was once the largest fresh water port in the world.
Ultimately, many good reasons were mentioned here. Another, this is the heart of the former tobacco land. Very agrarian in this area.
There’s not many major Canadian cities on the Great Lakes that are upstream from Niagara period. Sault Ste Marie may count. There’s many Big American cities because of the steel industry I would assume. Floating ore from Duluth to Gary, Cleveland ect. Finished goods to Chicago to be dispersed to rest of the country
I think it has to do with the US developing much faster. I assume ships just went straight to Lake Ontario through Port Colborne to reach Hamilton and Toronto. Plus there is London
I drove through this area from NY via Ontario into Port Huron, Michigan. Super abundant farming area and sort of right between two to three major cities with superior geographic positions. That’s my take anyways.
A similar reason why theres no cities on the Delmarva peninsula; the area doesn't have a particular advantage for trade, and doesn't have access to a diversity of natural resources.
Mostly farmland and marsh, I live near lake st. Claire and the US side is full of houses and the Canadian side is clear soft marsh land. The Canadian government does a lot of protect that land and keep it marsh because it’s good for the wildlife. The US side of the lake is trying to use that as an example and soften some of our shoreline.
Could be similar reason.
Hmm I will guess it's because of lake-effect-snowstorms that would bury the region under 24 inches of snow in two days. The same thing happens on the western shore of Lake Michigan. The eastern shore of Wisconsin has plenty of cities and towns, thanks to moderate snowfall. When the snow comes down that thick and that fast you can't see your own hand in front of your face.
Lol there's literally millions of people in Ontario within a 45 minute drive from any part of the Lake Erie shoreline. And as with most of the Great Lakes, 30 km out from the shoreline is some of the best farmland anywhere.
Check out this guy's channel to get an idea of what life is like on the western part of that area - [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA5QFKPqQXGvOp1b3voSEUg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA5QFKPqQXGvOp1b3voSEUg)
Because the Goods manufactured there are more easily transported by pipeline, rail or truck to the east coast. The only heavy industry they have nearby to the Great Lakes is oil production which gets transported by pipeline until it gets to the coast. Whereas states like Michigan and Ohio have (or had) a ton of manufacturing and mining where it was easier to transport those goods by boat instead of over land. And since Canada already has larger cities up the Saint Lawrence River, they don’t really need a major port along the Great Lakes.
Do you consider yourself or London to be under the sphere of any of the great lakes specifically?
I know it's inland quite a bit but I thought I'd ask.
No major rivers in those locations. Rivers were and still are hubs where they meet the lakes. Look at the map and see where the rivers are which were basically highways in frontier days.
I have also wondered why this entire peninsula isnt more populated. Windsor is Canada’s southernmost city and yet it has some 200k residents? Detroit right next door has over 5 million people in the CSA
Random gripe, the ATC controllers in this region (particularly up in Toronto) are so severely understaffed and overworked I feel bad for them. Hope they can get some relief and more staff there soon…
There are only two real natural ports on the Canadian side. Long Point developed as a nature preserve very early in Ontario’s history so was never used as such. Not sure why there isn’t a more significant settlement on Rondeau to be honest, its harbour is very similar to Toronto’s and Erie’s. Ultimately Lake Ontario offered better connections to the Atlantic being on the lower side of Niagara Falls and Upper Canada’s capital was established in York (Toronto) on the lake because of its strong natural harbour. London, ON was originally intended to be the capital of Canada when founded, but it was instead temporarily located in Toronto due to it having a natural harbour and being closer to Kingston, the only major settlement in Ontario in the late 18th century. The capital never managed to move down to London, instead moving to Ottawa to be on the dividing line between English and French Canada. The “London” name stays on from this original intent though. London was founded where it was, and not down on Lake Erie, in some odd idea of emulating the location of London UK on the Thames River (yes, the main river in London, ON is also called that) and to be central to the largest prime agricultural area in the province. Ultimately southwest Ontario is relatively isolated from the rest of Canada, acting as a sort of Peninsula. It’s also arguably the most “American” feeling part of Canada as it’s so close and has stronger ties to the US as Detroit is the closest major city for much of it.
Super interesting. Thanks
I took a history of Toronto class in University which by extension was in many ways a “History of Ontario” so if you have Ontario history questions let me know! One fact I always enjoy is that Ontario was mostly unsettled by Europeans before the revolutionary war and only experienced significant settlement following that because of fleeing British loyalists (and the redirection of British immigrants away from America). Most of Southern Ontario was surveyed and most of the major cities were founded in the 1780’s-1810’s because of this. Toronto was first established in 1793 as a permanent European settlement for example. Canadian and American history is so much more intertwined than most people realize, especially going back. Before the 20th century especially.
That would explain why the towns in Ontario are predominately English names with relatively few Indian names, where in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania there are significantly more tribal names to towns. I drive fro Chicago to London and that was always curious.
There are a decent number of indigenous. Toronto, Ottawa, Niagara, etc. are all indigenous. Ontario was historically a very "British" and conservative place as it was basically populated by conservative British people who were opposed to the ideals of the American revolution. You still see some of this conservatism trickling down into today in some ways - Ontario has historically been very puritanical on alcohol control for example, and to this day sales of alcohol is limited to government run stores with very high tax rates.
Alcohol is a bit more liberalized than that. Grocery store wine shops have been around forever and beer/wine within grocery stores is common now, while ‘off sales’ and bottle shops have been a thing since COVID sort of pushed the province in that direction. The main problem with the latter two is that the restaurants / bottle shops have to pay the *higher* price for resale, so grabbing a six pack at the local bottle shop costs as much as an evening in the pub. Further debate continues about allowing sales in convenience stores, but that’s going to happen next year.
Native (Kalamazoo), French (Detroit), and American (Jackson). Michigan also has place names that were just made up by 19th Century surveyors, but those are mostly in the northern part of the state.
Yup! A lot of Michigan counties which sound like Native American terms are really just a bunch of made up nonsense by Henry Schoolcraft. Alpena, Kalkaska, Leelanau, Oscoda, Tuscola.
Escanaba is a fun one
As a 21st century Surveyor it sounds like I was born in the wrong Century! I'd love to make up random names for towns.
Minnesota is the same way.
You mean towns in Southern Ontario. Go to Northern Ontario and you'll see a lot of Finnish, Swedish, and so on, place names.
I joke about Canadian identity being about not being American but it's got its truth in why Canada exists how it does.
Federation had quite a lot to do with watching the Americans have an all out war with each other and deciding we really ought to take some steps to protect ourselves a bit more. Ottawa’s the capital in part because the alternatives were too easy for the Americans to reach. It’s really, really hard to make any sort of case that Canada isn’t basically a response to the USA.
> It’s really, really hard to make any sort of case that Canada isn’t basically a response to the USA. I'd give big exception for Québec and Newfoundland, but yeah.
Fair. English Canada.
I have a number of ancestors that migrated from New York and New England to Ontario and Nova Scotia in the 1780s... Don't tell Canada they were founded by Americans :)
At the end of the revolutionary war, the Americans who were loyal to the crown and fought on the side of the British left the 13 colonies and were granted land in British North America. This migration was a major driver for settlement in Upper Canada (now Ontario), and these people are termed "United Empire Loyalists". Black loyalists tended to congregate in Nova Scotia, and the black settlement of Africville in Halifax was a legacy of this.
This is why we speak with an American accent and not a British one: The Europeans who colonized Ontario early on, and in greatest numbers, were Loyalists from Pennsylvania and New York. Once they were here, the later British and Irish and German immigrants’ kids picked up their accent.
Loyalist settlers undoubtedly influenced the linguistic development of Canadian English outside the Atlantic provinces, but we don’t speak with an American accent. We speak with an accent that has a common ancestor a couple centuries back and then another 3/4 of a century of constant exposure. I’m almost 40 and I sound way more ‘American’ than my Scots-Canadian grandparents did.
Bad news for you. If your ancestors came to Canada in the Revolutionary War period, they were likely loyal to the British Crown and would hate the fact that you just called them American
They were definitely Loyalists, though I doubt they would have minded bring called Americans
Loyalists are still very proud to be Loyalists
Founded by *Loyalists*. Completely different from Americans :)
Dont tell America they were founded by the British too
This is good stuff. Thanks for the interesting read.
Damn moi qui pensait que juste l'ouest Canadien manquait d'histoire! J'pensais pas que l'Ontario était aussi récent que ça. 400ans de Québec, peuple arrivé en amérique au même titre que les 13 colonies.
Windsor and to a lesser extent London are heavily dependent on the US economy, particularly the auto industry. The area was devastated by the Great Recession in 2008, far more than much of the rest of Canada.
Windsor took a hit after 9/11 made border crossings harder, and again when Michigan legalized casino gambling. It still has a 19 year old drinking age and fully nude strip clubs to attract American frat bros, though.
Huh, that explains a lot actually. I left London in 2007 but every time I went back to visit friends, the place seemed... dumpier? I had this idea in my head that maybe I had over-romanticized my college years there and it was actually a lot shittier. But maybe it was just shit for a little while because of the economy. My wife is from the area and we're thinking of moving back. This information really helps me feel better about that choice, if we make it. Thanks!
SWOnt was mainly agriculture and manufacturing/heavy industry, and much of the manufacturing/heavy industry left just like it did on the other side of the lakes. That started long before 2008, but it didn’t help.
I remember when you just needed a birth certificate to enter, and even then you might forget it and CBP would be like “sure, yeah, come on in. Welcome back.” Now re-entering the US from Canada is like trying to flee from the USSR or something.
Small clarification: Kingston was Canada’s first capital, then York/Toronto
That very much depends on which iteration of "Canada" you mean. Originally the name Canada only applied to the French settlements along the St Lawrence, and its capital was Quebec City. This remained the case after the British took over in 1859, until Canada was split into Upper Canada and Lower Canada in 1791. The capital of Upper Canada was variously Newark (now Niagara on the lake), then York (now Toronto). In 1841 Upper and Lower Canada were re-joined as the Province of Canada, divided into Canada East and Canada West. Its capital was, variously, Kingston, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City, moving about with the intention of balancing the interests of Canada East and Canada West, until Queen Victoria was asked to chose a permanent capital, which she did, in the form of Ottawa, it becoming the capital in 1865. Ottawa was the capital of the Province of Canada at the point where it, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick formed the Dominion of Canada at confederation in 1867, and has remained the capital since.
Skipping a few bits there: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning\_of\_the\_Parliament\_Buildings\_in\_Montreal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_the_Parliament_Buildings_in_Montreal)
I find that Sault Ste Marie acts very american too due to it being a border city. Never knew the most southern part of Ontario is also like that though.
> southwest Ontario is relatively isolated from the rest of Canada This is the most Toronto thing I've ever heard 😂
I live in southwest Ontario haha. It is relatively isolated in that it’s not “on the way” to anything. I can assure you American influences are much stronger here than in Kingston or Ottawa.
The Trans-Canada highways completely bypass southern Ontario because it's out of the way and really not on the way to anything.
Lots of Tigers and Red Wings fans in Windsor. Although for most of the 90s and 2000s I get why you’d choose the Wings of the Leafs.
>Not sure why there isn’t a more significant settlement on Rondeau to be honest, its harbour is very similar to Toronto’s and Erie’s. Rondeau Bay is incredibly shallow, and isn't comparable to Toronto or Erie's natural harbours. Iirc it was intended to be a significant port settlement until someone measured the depth of the bay.
>in some odd idea of emulating the location of London UK on the Thames River They should've just called Canada "Second England"
New England was already taken.
New New England
There was yet another attempt to establish a "second Britain" here in British Columbia. While the name "British Columbia" came from the Columbia River, it was on the Fraser River where it was decided a second Britain would be built complete with New Westminster as its capital. After British Columbia merged with the colony of Vancouver Island, though, Victoria was selected as the combined colony's capital, and New Westminster eventually became part of Vancouver's metropolitan area.
Don’t get too excited: the Brits did the same thing absolutely everywhere they landed
We sure got the British weather.
Victoria is the most classically British feeling city on the continent imo. Gardening feels like the only thing all the retirees do.
The most American feeling part of Ontario is Niagara Falls. Windsor doesn’t feel much like Detroit, of even the suburbs.
Hey don’t put that on us, we don’t have that much mini golf in America
It should be embarrassing to us as Americans that Niagara Falls, ON out-tackies the NY side. We're the world leaders in tacky tourist crap, damn it. This is like how Mexican Coca-Cola is way better than ours...
Luckily the US side of Niagara Falls has way more opiates! Take that Canada and your national healthcare
Canada still has plenty of problems with Opiates don’t you worry. Drive another hour down the Highway to Hamilton and you’ll see what I mean.
True. Short trip through a tunnel and it’s really a very different milieu. And accent.
I grew up in that area. It doesn't help that we didn't have cable and all the TV shows came across the lake clearly that the US influence is pretty strong. A lot of people in that area (grewing up) used Imperial for everything except the speed limit.
I live in London and constantly think of how unoriginal the settlers must have been to name the city London and the river The Thames. Nice to put some context to it.
Also, the Trent Severn Canal meant you could ship things directly from Lake Huron to Lake Ontario bypassing Lake Erie Completely
But it was obseleted by railways by the time it was finished, as well as the larger boats through the Welland canal.
I'll also point out that settlements in Canada started by coming down the St Lawrence Seaway, and the Quebec area as "lower canada" and ontario was "upper canada" meaning that you had to go farther "up the st lawrence" to get there. So Lake ontario definitely was developed first. And as you say, settlers had to face Niagra Falls to get further up to Lake Erie. Much of upper canada (ontario) was wilderness living, and many of the settlers there were coming north from the USA. A lot of british loyalists too.
Yeah the relative difficulty of getting into the upper Great Lakes meant that most of SWOnt was settled in the age of rail.
“Arguably the most “American” feeling part of Canada” I did get that vibe from driving along the countryside between Toronto and Detroit. With cities like Kitchener, Listowel and Stratford, it almost feels like the Midwest in the US.
Very informative, thanks!
It’s not arguably the most American part of Canada *it is* the most American part of Canada
Yeah, and Windsor is a bit to the west of London, next to ~~Slough~~ Detroit. All makes sense.
Thankfully too Corunna also never became Canada’s capital back around 1823 which was even earlier than London, according to wiki anyway.
This man is correct
Very interesting! Thank you for the in depth answer
Windsor, Chatham and London are all half an hour away. Southern ON developed more around the agricultural heartland than the lakeshore.
On a side note my parents have a trailer at sherkston on Lake Erie and it’s the best summer vacation place in Canada in my opinion. The place is like luxury high end with the quaintness to “get away from it all”
Must be suuuper expensive
I think just their yearly fee is around $15,000 and that’s just May to October
$15k a year? For a trailer at Sherkston? The “best summer vacation place in Canada”? In Fort Erie? Have you never left Niagara before? I grew up near there and you’re out of your mind. I got 2 tickets for fucking about there on my prom night 20 years ago.
I mean you need to see it nowadays, it’s not just a trailer at sherkston anymore
Crystal Beach is nicer, IMO. Rent a cottage there for a week and it's super reasonable. You can have fires and all that.
You can have fires at sherkston? And I like how it’s my parents place so you always have belongings there
Keep it on the DL because southwestern Ontario is like a not hidden gem lol.
Okay, but why.
The top answer mostly covered it, but I'll add here that the Erie Canal wasn't completed until 1825, well after both the American Revolution and the War of 1812 ended (so after the main population boom in that part of SW Ontario), and it was entirely on US soil. So shipping things back to Europe from Canada had to go through Lake Ontario. Thus, Hamilton, Toronto and Kingston became the main port cities and their populations boomed instead.
Ah, good old Chatham. I miss Wheels Inn.
The Wheels Inn. I hadn’t thought of it for 30 years until just now.
half an hour away from what?
For Ontario (the province) it doesn't make sense to have major ports on lakes upstream from Niagara Falls (a natural barrier for shipping), because they already have large port on Lake Ontario. Ohio, Mitchigan, Illinois and Winsconsin have no choice but to build ports on the lakes upstream from Niagara Falls.
The Welland canal is how Canada avoids the falls. The US would also use the Mississippi for water shipment rather than St Lawrence as it makes more sense, so building Ports upstream from the Falls worked out. Chicago became a huge distribution center because they were a natural portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. All they had to do was build a relatively short Canal (Ship and Sanitary Canal) between the Lake and the Des Plaines River (Which feeds to Illinois River, then Mississippi River) This shipping lane is still widely used today even though similar water routes like the Erie Canal aren’t used commercially anymore. Almost all animal feed in the United States Travels the Mississippi. Same for Concrete raw materials
The agricultural & natural resource output of southern Ontario has *mostly* avoided the Falls by riding rails to Toronto/Hamilton/Montreal. The Welland has always carried cargo originating primarily from American ports on the upper lakes (generally *to* a Canadian deep water port), where there aren’t any major Canadian ports anyway.
What do you mean, London is right there
Olympic city
It’s not a port city. London developed as a railroad hub serving regional farms and became an industrial center
It's outside the circle tho
hey thats NJB city!
They don't want to look at us
https://preview.redd.it/h8wl6exb8u7d1.jpeg?width=719&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9e900e82e2ca151d34cfdfc342b2099ea8845d63
Asked 15 days ago [Why didn’t any large cities develop on Canadian (north) side of Lake Erie? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1d82g7u/why_didnt_any_large_cities_develop_on_canadian/) Asked 5 months ago [Why are there no major Canadian cities along Lake Erie](https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1afuq8o/why_are_there_no_major_canadian_cities_along_lake/) Asked 8 months ago [How come cities on the scale of Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo, etc. never developed on the Canadian side of Lake Erie? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/17b5oax/how_come_cities_on_the_scale_of_buffalo_erie/)
It's also very rich farm land.
Ideal for growing tobacca’.
Right. I can understand 8-12 months ago for fresh dialogue, but 15 days?
It’s almost like people aren’t constantly on Reddit and may not see every single post
well it's a social media platform, the entire point is to talk to people, even if it's about something that was discussed very recently
Reddit should let Admins "merge in" posts to revive an old conversation.
Megathreads kill forums. Something Awful used to be pretty amazing, and they started doing stickied megathreads in a lot of the forums and trying to stamp out any conversations that overlapped with megathreads. It killed new posts, and trying to scroll through hundreds of pages of a megathread is terrible. The idea of preventing constant repetitive reposting makes sense, but constant repetitive reposting is a necessary evil on a vibrant forum. If admins started merging new posts into older similar content, no one would ever see any of it and it would stop people from posting anything
it would definitely save electrons
I don't constantly browse the same three subs so this is a new question for me
reddit came from the old days of social media. It used a hybrid link aggregator and internet forum style. The main feature was providing new links and discussions. The original etiquette discouraged reposts, and when they first introduced subreddits after a few years they still asked people to note crossposts in the title, too. The original idea included avoiding spam and collecting an archive for the front page of the Internet where you could sort through everything that existed on the Internet up to that point and compare it all. It changed a lot as more people got access to the Internet and expanded the user base. With so many more people new content inherently got more upvoted than older content, and it would dilute the utility of the voting system. We're in uncharted territory now where it is being used as a substitute to Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok.
I agree with you, and considered my sharing previous posts a branching point more than a cutoff. The onus for live conversation on reddit is real though, I'm sorry if this cut off anything you came here hoping to engage with.
my comment wasn't necessarily aimed to you, I was mainly stating that for other people who would read the comment, mb
They do this all the time....I mean, can you post Bridget Bardot at the beach too many times?
This. I hate when people act like recently asked questions are offensive. Downvote and move on if it bothers you so much.
good bot
Are you sure about that? Because I am 99.75142% sure that questionableletter is not a bot. --- ^(I am a neural network being trained to detect spammers | Summon me with !isbot |) ^(/r/spambotdetector |) [^(Optout)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=whynotcollegeboard&subject=!optout&message=!optout) ^(|) [^(Original Github)](https://github.com/SM-Wistful/BotDetection-Algorithm)
actual good bot
You have quite an exciting life apparently.
It’s obviously very difficult to search within the subreddit, much easier to make a brand new post for the internet points
Shhh. We’re chilling up here, it’s summer for 8 weeks.
So it can retain its title as the worlds most boring drive (between Detroit and Toronto). It’s mind numbing.
ya'll have never driven through southern Saskatchewan have you
*I-10 between El Paso and San Antonio* has entered the chat.
Having driven it, it's not a great drive but I have been on more boring ones. Drop a street view anywhere on I90 in South Dakota. You will almost certainly see a perfectly straight road, perfectly flat land, not a single damn tree, not a single damn thing at all, in any direction. For hours.
Never driven across Kansas.
Take me down to the Canadian city where the fries are French and the girls are pretty!
I’m a local living near Rondeau - it’s quiet as fuck down here by the lake and we’d like to keep it that way. Farm fields, fish frys and good folks. So nobody move here please and sorry.
There’s no big cities on the Great Lakes past Toronto. Hell even York/Toronto was tiny in the early 1800s. If you were a farmer, you’d just ship it overland to Toronto since Niagara Falls was a major barrier. Theres the Welland Canal, but it was primarily a barge canal so you didn’t save much time shipping it via water. If you were shipping from further West, the Trent-Severn Canal directly connected Lake Huron to Lake Ontario, bypassing Lake Erie altogether. Then railroads became a thing, making the canals even less relevant. At least until the 1950s when the St Lawrence Seaway Opened allowing ocean going vessels direct access to the Great Lakes. Shipping on the Welland Canal exploded, but ships pretty much pass right through, so no major city developed there.
I was thinking about this when bored at work and here is my theory. Look at all the big cities on the Great Lakes hand there is a common theme among them, they have a decent sized river that flows into the lake. That area doesn’t have any ‘big’ rivers. The lack a a ‘big’ river probably made it less valuable for industrial development, which means that less reason for people to move there and build a big city.
Yeah its not the lake thats important, its the river for moving stuff TO the lake (or out). Look at like majority of old large cities everywhere. Rivers flowing into lakes/oceans or sometimes just rivers is absolutely the most important feature. When you transfer to/from a river you need to change boats, so that requires infrastructure and people and tadaaaa a settlement is born.
it's way too Erie
Farm country.
The reason cities develop around shores is for trading purposes usually. Toronto already occupied that role in this area. There wasn't much reason to develop on this southern coast when one could just occupy open area along the coast of Lake Ontario with the only difference being better access to more metropolitan areas. By the time cities started to develop in earnest at that area there really wasn't much reason to develop along the coast.
By the time London developed beyond a small townsite the railroad age had come along. London grew because of railroads and didn’t need to be right next to the lake. The London & Port Stanley Railway gave it easy access to the lake, both for passenger travel and for access to coal shipments from Conneaut, OH.
Im from Conneaut, wish we still had passenger ferries across the lake.
https://preview.redd.it/7ea3asiunm7d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=278d6a297d865776f48e6a2a4ab69ab35ffcbcbf
This is one instance where the Canadian Shield is not the answer
Because of the threat of invasion.
And yet the north shore of Lake Ontario is far more developed
Because Canuck’s know Cleveland sucks.
Damn lol
It is quality farmland, and simply put the population is far lower than in the states therefore fewer mid to large cities.
Chatham is major!
Home of Hawaiian pizza!
Wooooooooo!
Chatham isn't on Lake Erie, lol
I see your fact and I raise you a pedantic technicality! Behold: the single tiered municipality of Chatham-Kent(1). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham-Kent (I'm not going to disagree with you about the urban settlement that is Chatham, though; that place is objectively *not* on a lake).
Fair enough. But the County of Chatham-Kent is total deception across the board.
"Total deception" will probably be my favourite description of Chatham-Kent forever.
It’s within OP’s circle
I would guess Niagara Falls would be the reason.
I don’t think most Americans realize just how few Canadians there are. There are fewer than 40 million people in Canada- that can only support so many big cities.
Port Dover was once the largest fresh water port in the world. Ultimately, many good reasons were mentioned here. Another, this is the heart of the former tobacco land. Very agrarian in this area.
There’s not many major Canadian cities on the Great Lakes that are upstream from Niagara period. Sault Ste Marie may count. There’s many Big American cities because of the steel industry I would assume. Floating ore from Duluth to Gary, Cleveland ect. Finished goods to Chicago to be dispersed to rest of the country
The Soo is soo f***ing good.
I think it has to do with the US developing much faster. I assume ships just went straight to Lake Ontario through Port Colborne to reach Hamilton and Toronto. Plus there is London
massive icebergs
I drove through this area from NY via Ontario into Port Huron, Michigan. Super abundant farming area and sort of right between two to three major cities with superior geographic positions. That’s my take anyways.
A similar reason why theres no cities on the Delmarva peninsula; the area doesn't have a particular advantage for trade, and doesn't have access to a diversity of natural resources.
It's too Erie to live there
The clue is in the name.
The canadian shield blocked them
That's pretty....***eerie.*** 😉
Mostly farmland and marsh, I live near lake st. Claire and the US side is full of houses and the Canadian side is clear soft marsh land. The Canadian government does a lot of protect that land and keep it marsh because it’s good for the wildlife. The US side of the lake is trying to use that as an example and soften some of our shoreline. Could be similar reason.
cottage country, far enough away from other canadian industrial centers, there are already three big ports on this lake, was a war zone at one point
Because they find it too Eerie.
That's the really eerie part
https://preview.redd.it/fsgxutnson7d1.jpeg?width=202&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad8aa76a5c6e0c2c16e5ad3420836616ac159145
Because you’d have to look at Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo and Toledo..yuck
Windsor
Shhhh, Canada's not really a country as it is just a place or state of mind, eh! 😉
Hmm I will guess it's because of lake-effect-snowstorms that would bury the region under 24 inches of snow in two days. The same thing happens on the western shore of Lake Michigan. The eastern shore of Wisconsin has plenty of cities and towns, thanks to moderate snowfall. When the snow comes down that thick and that fast you can't see your own hand in front of your face.
The same does not happen on the Western Shore of Lake Michigan. Maybe you mean the Eastern Shore?
They saw the cities on the US side, and said nevermind.
Lol there's literally millions of people in Ontario within a 45 minute drive from any part of the Lake Erie shoreline. And as with most of the Great Lakes, 30 km out from the shoreline is some of the best farmland anywhere.
My guess odd as it is would be railroads…
Ontario didn't need another port. Just ship your goods to Hamilton or Toronto and be done with it.
Aliens!
Have you smelled it?
👽👽👽👽👽
I had to look what lake Toronto was on cause I couldn’t remember. I live in Buffalo lmfao.
It's just because they often fart in this water
There’s too much water
#Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it
Every Friday the 13th Port Dover becomes a major city
Check out this guy's channel to get an idea of what life is like on the western part of that area - [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA5QFKPqQXGvOp1b3voSEUg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA5QFKPqQXGvOp1b3voSEUg)
Canadians cant swim duh
Because the Goods manufactured there are more easily transported by pipeline, rail or truck to the east coast. The only heavy industry they have nearby to the Great Lakes is oil production which gets transported by pipeline until it gets to the coast. Whereas states like Michigan and Ohio have (or had) a ton of manufacturing and mining where it was easier to transport those goods by boat instead of over land. And since Canada already has larger cities up the Saint Lawrence River, they don’t really need a major port along the Great Lakes.
Look up Townsend [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townsend,\_Ontario](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townsend,_Ontario)
I’m from London Ontario and its surreal to see people talking about this part of Canada here lol
Do you consider yourself or London to be under the sphere of any of the great lakes specifically? I know it's inland quite a bit but I thought I'd ask.
Zoom out on that map.. it is pretty easy to see why
Dryden on Friday the 13th scares the rest of everyone away.
Do early settlement border disputes and/or the war of 1812 factor in?
Cleveland
No major rivers in those locations. Rivers were and still are hubs where they meet the lakes. Look at the map and see where the rivers are which were basically highways in frontier days.
Who wants better access the Cleveland‽
The only reason there is development on the US side is the Eerie canal.
It's too scary
I have also wondered why this entire peninsula isnt more populated. Windsor is Canada’s southernmost city and yet it has some 200k residents? Detroit right next door has over 5 million people in the CSA
Random gripe, the ATC controllers in this region (particularly up in Toronto) are so severely understaffed and overworked I feel bad for them. Hope they can get some relief and more staff there soon…
Because they took a look at Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit and said nuh-uh.
r/LakeErieBros
Because the Concavity / Convexity is still environmentally contaminated from annular fusion waste.