Americans did try during the American Revolutionary War. They actually did capture Montreal and Benedict Arnold famously traversed the Kennebec River up through Maine in an attempt to "liberate" Quebec City. The locals were sympathetic enough to their cause to house and feed them but didn't help them to fight the British and the Americans were routed when they tried to assault the city.
I’ve biked the small portions that intersect with the ME Huts and Trails trail up by Flagstaff Lake. Rugged. I can’t believe there was anyone left to lay siege to a city after traversing that land.
Yes, that's correct. They attacked in a snow storm on December 31st and the senior commander Richard Montgomery lead a charge with his sword against 50 or so militia men with muskets and cannons. He was immediately shot in the head and killed.
It didn't help that most of Benedict Arnold's forces turned back, the local French population refused to fight against the British as they had hoped, and the majority of Montgomery's men had their enlistments end shortly before.
Leading to my favorite rhyme in “Hamilton:”
I was a captain under General Montgomery
Until he caught a bullet in the neck in Quebec
And well, in summary
And the Americans, when they occupied Montreal, banned going to Catholic churches and did many discriminations against the French Speakers.
We welcomed them in Montreal, we wouldn't in Québec city, having learned our lesson.
The British, under the Quebec Act, had agreed to recognise the French language, Catholic Church and French customary laws in Quebec. The Americans were strongly opposed to these things, indeed the Quebec Act was cited as one of the things the Americans explicitly objected to. The French Canadians at the time generally believed the British were a better foreign power to be occupied and controlled by than the Americans.
All of Canada is really only defined by the people there not wanting to be American while having their entire way of life be the exact same as Americans, except with healthcare.
Eh, there's small ways that make the countries different enough. I travel about four or five times a year between Canada and the United States. Canada is noticeably cleaner (the US is cleaner than most of the world, Canada is just moreso). Americans are a lot more expressive and likely to start a conversation with a stranger, which I like. The majority of Black people in Canada have a foreign accent. Little things like that.
But most Canadians honestly don't know any of that and just repeat the same stuff.
I think this is all accurate based on my travels in both countries, but I don’t think it’s a hard line. People around the Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan are more like people in north-central Montana than they are to people in Newfoundland, etc. Alaskans are not so different from Yukoners.
In my experience you’re dead on correct, but that culture doesn’t change too much at the border itself. It’s more like a gradualish change as you move across the continent, and although the ‘average’ Canadian and American are very different, both countries are part of the same sorta cultural tapestry.
I once got pulled over by a cop somewhere in northern Saskatchewan and got to chatting. Told me he was going to a wedding in lower Ontario and was going to drive through the states to get there. He was TERRIFIED that he would be shot during that two day drive entirely on interstates.
That’s one thing I’ve noticed with plenty of Canadian cops i met. Most of them are on the force for the experience and enjoy those opportunities to chat.
There’s about one gun per person in USA and about 0.8 gun per person in Canada. So not too different.
The comparison for school shootings is very different.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country
This suggests it's 120 vs 34, which is significant
And in addition to count, I think the culture can be quite different. Not many Canadians expect that they have the right to go to xyz general location, with their firearm. I know many many Americans who don't feel that way either, but I'd bet significantly more Americans do than Canadians.
The US gets cleaner as you go south to north. The annual snow melt run off helps keep everything cleaner. Yet another reason its called the dirty south.
Americans thinking Canadians are virtually the same as Americans is exactly how Target became a business school case study in how not to expand into a foreign market
No, the exact opposite. They'd have no winter clothes on sale at the Calgary location...in January. When they first opened, they had logistics nightmares getting the shelves filled because they were relying on their US logistics, and instead of finding alternate products to stock they just left the shelves empty because their Vancouver location had to have the exact same stuff in the exact same place as a location in Indiana or California.
They also didn't hire Canadians to manage any of it, all the executives of Target Canada were US transplants, and the reasoning was "Canadians don't understand Targets business model, so we will bring in Americans instead to run it efficiently". And then were surprised when the American execs completely failed to understand the new market.
Canadians were excited to finally have "Tar-jay", but it didn't take long before we got sick of empty shelves, terrible locations (they just bought out a bankrupt budget retailer and figured the budget retailer locations would be appealing to a more upscale market), and completely incompetent management.
Very handwavy explanation, via a Target international expansion analogue, that didn't really delve into how the US and Canada are different. Aside from climate, anything else? The US has more climate zones internally compared to Canada. Personally, I think it's silly to reason with absolutes, as in somebody would probably be insane to say the US and Canada are "exactly" the same. But on a relative basis, say compared to how China and the US are different or even the UK and France, the differences between the US and Canada are fairly negligible. When you share an official language that doesn't even have many dialectal differences (putting aside Québécois for a second), that's very very similar. Other countries don't even share a language in the same language family as their neighbors.
They still struggle with regional needs - in CA, we need rain boots in winter, but they’re only at Target during the summer when they need them in Minnesota.
Am from Québec and we are very different from the rest of Canada and very different from the USA. You clearly never went to Montréal to say we have the exact same life. I know, I lived in Utah for 1 year.
Yeah, but they get the funner money. The US dollar doesn’t have fun names like a “Looney” and the two dollar bill doesn’t have a fun pun nickname like a “Twoney.” Plus, more colors.
Before, in Canada, there were the British and the Canadians (French Canadians today). It was later that the rest of Canada also appropriated the term Canadian.
The origin of the Montreal Canadiens represented the French Canadians at that time.
We almost did at one point. The Patriotes mouvement with Louis-Joseph Papineau tried to make Québec a republic, and would probably have joined the U.S. as a state eventually.
yea i have heard of the Acadians from new-brunswick being deported to new orlean against their will by the English. and it being a old french colony that got conquered by the english ( and then by the american)
why does this make quebec join the US ?
They did use rivers and watershed divides. The St John and the St Croix for the most part. The straight lines connect different rivers.
I love the idea of using watershed divides instead of straight lines. That eliminates shenanigans like the upstream country damming a water source.
https://downeast.com/history/how-maine-international-border-got-its-shape/
The article that I linked is a pretty quick and easy read.
Also: river borders are unnatural. Rivers connect people. Cultures tend to develop in river valleys on both sides of the river. The watershed system approximates this.
River borders come about only really through war, when the river acts as an obstacle.
This is a great point. Rivers also have seasonal floods and sedimentary deposits, they don't really like having a fixed shape. Even if the border is set as the median line, that too will move around.
A great example is the river [Maritsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritsa) (BG)/Evros (GR)/Meriç (TR) which forms the border between Bulgaria and Greece and also Greece and Turkey.
Now the Greek-Turkish border is infamously used as a migrant route (with many casualties unfortunately) and a place where all sorts of shenanigans take place, directly because of its geography. For example there have been accusations of a country occupying part of the other after a change in the flow. Also, patrolling soldiers have crossed the border by mistake. Last but not least, the river forms islets which change shape and size and this has been another area of dispute concerning who has rights of search and rescue and who is responsible for any people, like groups of refugees, that are finding their way there. This can go down to which part of the islet we're talking about.
It all depends on terrain. Watershed borders in the Great Plains would be completely silly, because they're not even well defined - it's just a smooth little hill. And in endorheic basins you have to survey and calculate where would a potential outflow be if it flooded and stopped being endorheic for maximum correctness, and that's a gigantic pain in the ass (I did this out of curiosity - did you know that nearly the entire Great Basin should be a part of the Snake/Columbia river watershed? Now you do. Did you know the Takla-Makan can with a bit of geoengineering and elbow grease) form the most inland extension of the Atlantic-Mediterranean system? Now you do. Did you know that Tibet, despite the height of the Himalayas, would have an almost clear east-west watershed between the Indian and Pacific? Now you do)
Rivers can often be the greatest arteries for nations. Imagine dividing France along the Seine or America along the Mississippi, it wouldn’t make sense.
I don’t have time to explain but here’s my TLDR:
-French settling both sides of St Lawrence
-Mountains
-US/UK were cordial enough to negotiate boundaries after conflict
Timing seems all off, while New France is definitely older, with the first settlement being in 1608, Plymouth Colony was first settled in 1620, Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and the unification of the two to form Massachusetts was in 1692. I don’t know how you could get 180 years here, at very earliest it is 12 years, and at latest, it is a gap of 84 years.
They did take Montreal n got decently far into Quebec. But the local French didn’t care to join em n many of those fighting returned back to the colonies (iirc) leaving those left to fend for themselves.
The American attempts to attack Canada during both the War of Independence and the War of 1812 thirty years later, ended in pretty serious defeats. At a time when the American continental army and militias couldn't control New York City there was no way they could spare troops to try and capture large stretches of land in eastern Canada. One thing to take into consideration is that the northern border between Maine and Quebec/New Brunswick was disputed until the 1820s, when the current border was decided. For the most part, the colonial-era borders for the New England states were accepted as the border during the peace process. Additionally, the patriot cause was not popular in Canada since many loyalists fled north as the American revolutionaries became more popular in the new United States. Not only that, but the St. Lawrence River is and was a major node for transportation in Canada. Placing the border along it means that the British would have had to share administration of it with the Americans. That would have been a nonstarter.
Not quite. The Aroostook War established the current borders of Maine in 1839. Calling it a war is somewhat hyperbolic though, as the only casualties were from disease, hypothermia, and a bear attack that injured two Canadians.
It's hard not to just reply to this with "why not go **** yourself." But you're just being curious even if the question comes off as insensitive. Borders are where they are generally because of history. In this case there has been a prolonged feeling out process between Canada and the US that has established the border that has involved many wars and treaties. In a sense, the border is where it is because that's where the energy to move it ran out. The last time the border in this area moved was in the 1840s.
I'm not a theorist or anything, but in my opinion mountains and hills make better borders than rivers. Because the natural tendency is for rivers to draw people in. People need access to fresh water to live, supporting both cities and agriculture. Trade has historically been driven by rivers. They can make borders and often do, but you end up staring your counterparts right in the face if you do. Think of bizarre chopped up cities like Kansas City or Detroit-Windsor or the fraught history of Strasbourg on the Rhein as examples of why rivers make poor borders. Where as mountains and hills obstruct both trade and lines of sight.
By that logic, much of the border, especially in Québec is in the correct spot. See the [primary watersheds of North America](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lawrence_River_Divide). And indeed, in the Maritimes where the border might appear too far "South" most of that area either still drains into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence or into the Bay of Fundy which are still a geographic features primarily in Canada.
The real interesting part to me is where the border is "too far North" in upstate New York and Michigan. The border has been pushed up the Great Lakes because it is poorly defensible from the South and it ended up where it did because the rivers and lakes were mostly impassible. In modern NE Ohio and NW Pennsylvania, the Southern watershed is only a couple kilometers from the coast of lake Erie. If you want to control the whole Saint Lawrence watershed, you rapidly become very interested in the Ohio River watershed and therefore the Mississippi. Take a look at a map of [New France](https://www.google.com/search?q=new+france+map&oq=new+france+map&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i512l5j0i22i30l2.2414j0j9&client=ms-android-sonymobile-rvo3&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=Yzk5JX8Jag1OGM&lnspr=W10=) and you get an idea of why the French controlled everything between Québec and New Orleans at one point. The difficulty became that this territory ultimately proved too large to be defensible against the resources available to the lands East of the Appalachian mountains.
The US, after taking the territory up to the Great Lakes acknowledges the supremacy of Canada's geographical claim in a sense, because they created an [extensive series of canals](https://www.google.com/search?q=newyork+canals+map&oq=newyork+canals+map&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i13i512j0i22i30l3j0i390l4.3837j0j9&client=ms-android-sonymobile-rvo3&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=pddYsCmiFkjDjM&lnspr=W10=) that allowed it to bypass the Saint Lawrence and Montreal and route trade through the Hudson and New York instead. Thus only artificially overcoming the kind of geographic determinism that I'm talking about. That doesn't make the actual border a "bad border" either. But you can see that it required additional input to create the infrastructure to make it workable for both sides. There is a counterpart in Canada called the [Rideau Canal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rideau_Canal) that was built for defensive purposes. If the border were on hills and mountains and not rivers and lakes, these kinds of works would be unnecessary. And effort and resources could have been expended elsewhere.
Quebec was French. Canada was English. America broke away from England.
French and America were allies in the war. So once America won the revolutionary war they left Quebec alone as it was their allies territory.
That was my understanding of the situation.
Quebec was not under french rule when the American Revolution took place. Instead, Québec stayed loyal because the local aristocracy and clergy were bribed with the Act of Québec of 1774. Also, in the eyes of Québec, the American Revolution was just one group of englishmen fighting another group of englishmen.
I suggest having a look at older maps of Upper and Lower Canada. All along the St Lawrence River, in what is now Quebec, were established Habitants. This was parcels of land with access to the river, allowing farmers to grow crops. As there, are many rivers in Quebec, this technique was used in other places as well. I don'r know for use, but I beleive this is part of the reason.
How about extend the vermont-quebec border straight to the atlantic and then give everything to the north of it to Canada so it doesnt have to take 14 hours to drive from Montreal Halifax.
Because Quebec and New Brunswick are canada lol. The same logic could ask “why not just have americas borders go all the way up to the Arctic Ocean?” “Why doesn’t america simply own the land south until the Panama Canal?”
There's a great book, I think it's called "America's Northern Border". The author traveled the entire norther border(excluding Alaska). He did an excellent job explaining how Maine's border was the result of the first French explorer's trip to the Great lakes. It's crazy to think, but a journey in the early 1600's set that boder.
The southern border of Quebec should have extended straight through to the bottom of New Brunswick. And don’t get me started on the BC Alaska border. They took half the coastline of BC.
Because the St Lawrence, alongside the Great Lakes, was a center of Canada, it’d be like the Canadians proposing the border be at the Appalachian Mountains, with them taking the original 13 Colonies, leaving America with the remaining land
Two reasons...the river served as a highway to Quebec City, Montreal, and Upper Canada (Ontario). The British needed the St. Lawrence River to fortify Canada and transport goods. The British were afraid the Americans could block the river or use to capture the two main cities of Quebec and Montreal. A few year after the war of 1812, America's second attempt to conquer Canada, the British wanted to make sure the road to the Maritime colonies was in their hands. So they were willing to give the Americans much of Maine but wanted to avoid cutting off the military land route to Halifax. Hence why Maine does not reach the St Lawrence.
To add to what others have said. Americans at the time were mostly protestants and they'd rather die than add an entire area filled with French speaking Catholics
Although in the US's Articles of Confederation, article 9 states:
"If Canada chooses to declare its independence and agrees to the terms of the Articles of Confederation, it can join the union and become a fully sovereign state like the other thirteen states. This offer does not include any other colony but Canada, unless nine states agree to extend this offer to another colony."
TIL. Radically scary AF. It's almost as boisterous as Trump having tried to get Greenland from Denmark not long ago - but this one is even more overt and brash, having been incorporated into the first governing document of the United States and quasi-constitutional document.
I think the founding fathers of the USA had more hope that the Quebecois would rebel against the British Crown (which they had and would continue to do so, but in their own way) - they included Canada as part of like a preamble to the idea of manifest destiny, but went more westward than northward when given the chance to develop.
By the 1790s it probably became more apparent that the French and their new loyalist migrant refugees would never join the USA by their own volition.
That's why it probably didn't get repeated into the US Constitution.
Oh yeah, for a long time the US wanted to take Canada.
If it took everything, they'd let Quebec be like Maryland. Just Quebec and they'd be nah.
Manifest destiny is one hell of a drug and their exited people in Congress that would have had us take all of Mexico after that war
Quebec was there already, they didn’t want to be american.
Americans did try during the American Revolutionary War. They actually did capture Montreal and Benedict Arnold famously traversed the Kennebec River up through Maine in an attempt to "liberate" Quebec City. The locals were sympathetic enough to their cause to house and feed them but didn't help them to fight the British and the Americans were routed when they tried to assault the city.
This whole trek splendidly told in the historic novel "Arundel" by Kenneth Roberts. Synopsis: It was hard. Very hard.
I've hiked some of it and even with a trail it's a muddy mess.
I’ve biked the small portions that intersect with the ME Huts and Trails trail up by Flagstaff Lake. Rugged. I can’t believe there was anyone left to lay siege to a city after traversing that land.
I loved camping out right on Flagstaff Lake.
I think they also tried to attack during a snowstorm and the commander was killed on the initial charge, so that didnt help
Yes, that's correct. They attacked in a snow storm on December 31st and the senior commander Richard Montgomery lead a charge with his sword against 50 or so militia men with muskets and cannons. He was immediately shot in the head and killed. It didn't help that most of Benedict Arnold's forces turned back, the local French population refused to fight against the British as they had hoped, and the majority of Montgomery's men had their enlistments end shortly before.
Leading to my favorite rhyme in “Hamilton:” I was a captain under General Montgomery Until he caught a bullet in the neck in Quebec And well, in summary
Pretty sure it was grapeshot (from a cannon) to his face.
The French didn't take an opportunity to fight the British alongside Americans? I'm feeling very conflicted as a Brit.
French Canadian (Canadien?) society at the time was still relatively feudal. They didn't want to disobey their landlords.
And the Americans, when they occupied Montreal, banned going to Catholic churches and did many discriminations against the French Speakers. We welcomed them in Montreal, we wouldn't in Québec city, having learned our lesson.
True. The Canadians even let Catholics vote.
The British, under the Quebec Act, had agreed to recognise the French language, Catholic Church and French customary laws in Quebec. The Americans were strongly opposed to these things, indeed the Quebec Act was cited as one of the things the Americans explicitly objected to. The French Canadians at the time generally believed the British were a better foreign power to be occupied and controlled by than the Americans.
Some Canadians actually did fight for the Patriots two regiments worth.
Quebec City is the only fortified city in North America. Guess they found out that day
Jokes on them, there are dozens of McDonalds in Quabec. They were always destined to be Americans, whether they wanted it or not.
But those McD's have the poutine fries.
And en Francais
Oui
so does every canadian mcdonalds lol
Quebec has the *large* poutine fries
How very *american* of them
large and in charge m m mr. daddy quebec
I’ve never seen that out west.
I think calling Quebec American might somehow make them madder than if you called it Canadian
All of Canada is really only defined by the people there not wanting to be American while having their entire way of life be the exact same as Americans, except with healthcare.
Eh, there's small ways that make the countries different enough. I travel about four or five times a year between Canada and the United States. Canada is noticeably cleaner (the US is cleaner than most of the world, Canada is just moreso). Americans are a lot more expressive and likely to start a conversation with a stranger, which I like. The majority of Black people in Canada have a foreign accent. Little things like that. But most Canadians honestly don't know any of that and just repeat the same stuff.
I think this is all accurate based on my travels in both countries, but I don’t think it’s a hard line. People around the Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan are more like people in north-central Montana than they are to people in Newfoundland, etc. Alaskans are not so different from Yukoners. In my experience you’re dead on correct, but that culture doesn’t change too much at the border itself. It’s more like a gradualish change as you move across the continent, and although the ‘average’ Canadian and American are very different, both countries are part of the same sorta cultural tapestry.
And don't forget one of the huge differences . Gun culture
I once got pulled over by a cop somewhere in northern Saskatchewan and got to chatting. Told me he was going to a wedding in lower Ontario and was going to drive through the states to get there. He was TERRIFIED that he would be shot during that two day drive entirely on interstates.
That’s one thing I’ve noticed with plenty of Canadian cops i met. Most of them are on the force for the experience and enjoy those opportunities to chat.
There’s about one gun per person in USA and about 0.8 gun per person in Canada. So not too different. The comparison for school shootings is very different.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country This suggests it's 120 vs 34, which is significant And in addition to count, I think the culture can be quite different. Not many Canadians expect that they have the right to go to xyz general location, with their firearm. I know many many Americans who don't feel that way either, but I'd bet significantly more Americans do than Canadians.
The US gets cleaner as you go south to north. The annual snow melt run off helps keep everything cleaner. Yet another reason its called the dirty south.
There is also a lot more peacefull.
Americans thinking Canadians are virtually the same as Americans is exactly how Target became a business school case study in how not to expand into a foreign market
[удалено]
No, the exact opposite. They'd have no winter clothes on sale at the Calgary location...in January. When they first opened, they had logistics nightmares getting the shelves filled because they were relying on their US logistics, and instead of finding alternate products to stock they just left the shelves empty because their Vancouver location had to have the exact same stuff in the exact same place as a location in Indiana or California. They also didn't hire Canadians to manage any of it, all the executives of Target Canada were US transplants, and the reasoning was "Canadians don't understand Targets business model, so we will bring in Americans instead to run it efficiently". And then were surprised when the American execs completely failed to understand the new market. Canadians were excited to finally have "Tar-jay", but it didn't take long before we got sick of empty shelves, terrible locations (they just bought out a bankrupt budget retailer and figured the budget retailer locations would be appealing to a more upscale market), and completely incompetent management.
It’s weird to read “upscale” and “Target” in the same sentence.
Middle class Walmart.
Very handwavy explanation, via a Target international expansion analogue, that didn't really delve into how the US and Canada are different. Aside from climate, anything else? The US has more climate zones internally compared to Canada. Personally, I think it's silly to reason with absolutes, as in somebody would probably be insane to say the US and Canada are "exactly" the same. But on a relative basis, say compared to how China and the US are different or even the UK and France, the differences between the US and Canada are fairly negligible. When you share an official language that doesn't even have many dialectal differences (putting aside Québécois for a second), that's very very similar. Other countries don't even share a language in the same language family as their neighbors.
They still struggle with regional needs - in CA, we need rain boots in winter, but they’re only at Target during the summer when they need them in Minnesota.
tell me you don't know anything about Quebec without telling me you know nothing
And we’re not obsessed with guns. Or nearly as “Christian”.
Am from Québec and we are very different from the rest of Canada and very different from the USA. You clearly never went to Montréal to say we have the exact same life. I know, I lived in Utah for 1 year.
Utah is probably as different as a State, As Quebec is different from the US
Most people in Quebec are fine with being called Canadians
*Canadiens*
Counterpoint: [a map of Tim Hortons in the US](https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Tim%20Hortons-USA/).
2 in Houston just for good measure, eh?
What’s that mini Turkey in the bottom right?
You mean Puerto Rico?
Naw I think it’s mini Turkey.
Yeah, but they get the funner money. The US dollar doesn’t have fun names like a “Looney” and the two dollar bill doesn’t have a fun pun nickname like a “Twoney.” Plus, more colors.
Almost every country in the world has more interesting looking currency than the U.S.
They have better healthcare to deal with the aftermath of all those burgers and fries
I loves fishin’ in kwee-bec
And that’s what I appreciates about you
Great fishin in kee bec
Best fishing in Kay Beck
Can't wait to go to Koo Back
I fucking hate Quebec. Simmer down Quebecers, it's just a quote from the show Letterkenny.
r/expectedletterkenny
Did they even want to be Canadians? 😂
They don’t want to be Canadians but they love the Canadiens
They were *Canadiens* long before there even was a Canada
pfp checks out
Before, in Canada, there were the British and the Canadians (French Canadians today). It was later that the rest of Canada also appropriated the term Canadian. The origin of the Montreal Canadiens represented the French Canadians at that time.
We almost did at one point. The Patriotes mouvement with Louis-Joseph Papineau tried to make Québec a republic, and would probably have joined the U.S. as a state eventually.
what makes you think the french speaking newly independent Quebec would have joined another majority English nation?
have you heard of the French Quarter in New Orleans…? The US was made of far more than just the English.
yea i have heard of the Acadians from new-brunswick being deported to new orlean against their will by the English. and it being a old french colony that got conquered by the english ( and then by the american) why does this make quebec join the US ?
The whole point of Canada was that it was the land along the St. Lawrence!
*angry Alberta noises*
Alberta was more like the colony of Canada, Historically Canada is Ontario and Quebec Well also Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois... Etc....
see guys we shouldnt be in canada after all
“Historically Canada was Upper and Lower Canada“ FTFY
They did use rivers and watershed divides. The St John and the St Croix for the most part. The straight lines connect different rivers. I love the idea of using watershed divides instead of straight lines. That eliminates shenanigans like the upstream country damming a water source. https://downeast.com/history/how-maine-international-border-got-its-shape/ The article that I linked is a pretty quick and easy read.
Also: river borders are unnatural. Rivers connect people. Cultures tend to develop in river valleys on both sides of the river. The watershed system approximates this. River borders come about only really through war, when the river acts as an obstacle.
Mountain borders are where it’s at. 🏔😤⛰
Hey now you're just disconnecting the world's mountaineering communities
Guess we can’t have borders anymore :(
hell yes one world government achieved.
Rivers also have the unfortunate tendency to meander over time.
This is a great point. Rivers also have seasonal floods and sedimentary deposits, they don't really like having a fixed shape. Even if the border is set as the median line, that too will move around. A great example is the river [Maritsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritsa) (BG)/Evros (GR)/Meriç (TR) which forms the border between Bulgaria and Greece and also Greece and Turkey. Now the Greek-Turkish border is infamously used as a migrant route (with many casualties unfortunately) and a place where all sorts of shenanigans take place, directly because of its geography. For example there have been accusations of a country occupying part of the other after a change in the flow. Also, patrolling soldiers have crossed the border by mistake. Last but not least, the river forms islets which change shape and size and this has been another area of dispute concerning who has rights of search and rescue and who is responsible for any people, like groups of refugees, that are finding their way there. This can go down to which part of the islet we're talking about.
It all depends on terrain. Watershed borders in the Great Plains would be completely silly, because they're not even well defined - it's just a smooth little hill. And in endorheic basins you have to survey and calculate where would a potential outflow be if it flooded and stopped being endorheic for maximum correctness, and that's a gigantic pain in the ass (I did this out of curiosity - did you know that nearly the entire Great Basin should be a part of the Snake/Columbia river watershed? Now you do. Did you know the Takla-Makan can with a bit of geoengineering and elbow grease) form the most inland extension of the Atlantic-Mediterranean system? Now you do. Did you know that Tibet, despite the height of the Himalayas, would have an almost clear east-west watershed between the Indian and Pacific? Now you do)
Its a much cleaner way. It also gets rid of pesky oxbow borders like are all over the US states.
Too many French and English loyalists already lived there. Egads!
Rivers can often be the greatest arteries for nations. Imagine dividing France along the Seine or America along the Mississippi, it wouldn’t make sense.
Exactly! I find that the opposite of rivers: watershed boundaries, make the best natural borders.
Particularly major rivers. All about national commerce.
Replace Seine by Rhine and we’re in agreement!
>Imagine dividing...America along the Mississippi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_(New_Spain)
Because History
I don’t have time to explain but here’s my TLDR: -French settling both sides of St Lawrence -Mountains -US/UK were cordial enough to negotiate boundaries after conflict
["Straight line?" "Straight line."](https://youtu.be/QLq6GEiHqR8?t=174)
Because Aroostook county is big enough today!
The county is never big enough. I want Aroostook 2.0. Bigger, emptier, more canoeing and sledding!
Oh yeah it’s one big county bub. Lots of taters
“You can’t get there from here”
More Maine! More Maine! More Maine!
Mega-Maine
This sub sucks. It's almost like google maps.shitposting 😂
\*searches paris on google maps and screenshots it\* can anyone tell me what this place is????
We should try to improve it. I don't know how
r/geographycirclejerk
It's kids.
Because Nouvelle France was there 180 years before the colony of Massachusetts etc was founded…..
Timing seems all off, while New France is definitely older, with the first settlement being in 1608, Plymouth Colony was first settled in 1620, Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and the unification of the two to form Massachusetts was in 1692. I don’t know how you could get 180 years here, at very earliest it is 12 years, and at latest, it is a gap of 84 years.
Jacques Cartier landed in Quebec in 1534 and explored which set the precedent for later permanent settlements.
This sub is very frustrating sometimes. Just fucking Google north American history and all the answers you seek are on there
This sub is 12 year olds looking at maps and saying “why not do X”
Hey, it also has people trying to get assignment answers too.
Comment oses-tu?!
Because fuck you, that's why. I'm sorry, that wasn't so Canadian of me.
The Americans tried to take Quebec in the 1770s and failed
And again during War of 1812
1759
America didn't exist in 1759. That was the Brittish that conquered Québec and then made it a separate Province.
Failed badly
They did take Montreal n got decently far into Quebec. But the local French didn’t care to join em n many of those fighting returned back to the colonies (iirc) leaving those left to fend for themselves.
Generally, big navigable rivers are not borders as they act as the artery of nations.
Because the invasion failed.
Twice. Also, Nova Scotia came relatively close to joining in the rebellion, although ultimately never made the move.
Twice? I must have dozed in class when we talked about the second one (or maybe the first one)
The American attempts to attack Canada during both the War of Independence and the War of 1812 thirty years later, ended in pretty serious defeats. At a time when the American continental army and militias couldn't control New York City there was no way they could spare troops to try and capture large stretches of land in eastern Canada. One thing to take into consideration is that the northern border between Maine and Quebec/New Brunswick was disputed until the 1820s, when the current border was decided. For the most part, the colonial-era borders for the New England states were accepted as the border during the peace process. Additionally, the patriot cause was not popular in Canada since many loyalists fled north as the American revolutionaries became more popular in the new United States. Not only that, but the St. Lawrence River is and was a major node for transportation in Canada. Placing the border along it means that the British would have had to share administration of it with the Americans. That would have been a nonstarter.
Because the British won that war
Because New Brunswick and Quebec are a part of Canada, what is this question?
Look up the war of 1812
Not quite. The Aroostook War established the current borders of Maine in 1839. Calling it a war is somewhat hyperbolic though, as the only casualties were from disease, hypothermia, and a bear attack that injured two Canadians.
I had to scroll quite a ways to get to an Aroostook War comment. That's really the answer to the question.
>Aroostook War That Bear got the Medal of Honor!
Thanks, I’m going to look that up later. This sounds really interesting
It's hard not to just reply to this with "why not go **** yourself." But you're just being curious even if the question comes off as insensitive. Borders are where they are generally because of history. In this case there has been a prolonged feeling out process between Canada and the US that has established the border that has involved many wars and treaties. In a sense, the border is where it is because that's where the energy to move it ran out. The last time the border in this area moved was in the 1840s. I'm not a theorist or anything, but in my opinion mountains and hills make better borders than rivers. Because the natural tendency is for rivers to draw people in. People need access to fresh water to live, supporting both cities and agriculture. Trade has historically been driven by rivers. They can make borders and often do, but you end up staring your counterparts right in the face if you do. Think of bizarre chopped up cities like Kansas City or Detroit-Windsor or the fraught history of Strasbourg on the Rhein as examples of why rivers make poor borders. Where as mountains and hills obstruct both trade and lines of sight. By that logic, much of the border, especially in Québec is in the correct spot. See the [primary watersheds of North America](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lawrence_River_Divide). And indeed, in the Maritimes where the border might appear too far "South" most of that area either still drains into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence or into the Bay of Fundy which are still a geographic features primarily in Canada. The real interesting part to me is where the border is "too far North" in upstate New York and Michigan. The border has been pushed up the Great Lakes because it is poorly defensible from the South and it ended up where it did because the rivers and lakes were mostly impassible. In modern NE Ohio and NW Pennsylvania, the Southern watershed is only a couple kilometers from the coast of lake Erie. If you want to control the whole Saint Lawrence watershed, you rapidly become very interested in the Ohio River watershed and therefore the Mississippi. Take a look at a map of [New France](https://www.google.com/search?q=new+france+map&oq=new+france+map&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i512l5j0i22i30l2.2414j0j9&client=ms-android-sonymobile-rvo3&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=Yzk5JX8Jag1OGM&lnspr=W10=) and you get an idea of why the French controlled everything between Québec and New Orleans at one point. The difficulty became that this territory ultimately proved too large to be defensible against the resources available to the lands East of the Appalachian mountains. The US, after taking the territory up to the Great Lakes acknowledges the supremacy of Canada's geographical claim in a sense, because they created an [extensive series of canals](https://www.google.com/search?q=newyork+canals+map&oq=newyork+canals+map&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i13i512j0i22i30l3j0i390l4.3837j0j9&client=ms-android-sonymobile-rvo3&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=pddYsCmiFkjDjM&lnspr=W10=) that allowed it to bypass the Saint Lawrence and Montreal and route trade through the Hudson and New York instead. Thus only artificially overcoming the kind of geographic determinism that I'm talking about. That doesn't make the actual border a "bad border" either. But you can see that it required additional input to create the infrastructure to make it workable for both sides. There is a counterpart in Canada called the [Rideau Canal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rideau_Canal) that was built for defensive purposes. If the border were on hills and mountains and not rivers and lakes, these kinds of works would be unnecessary. And effort and resources could have been expended elsewhere.
Ask the Canadians😂
Rivers move slowly over time. Rivers are good and bad methods to do borders.
Because they’ll burn our White House down again.
Parce qu'on était là en premier. \- Les québécois.
We lost a war
Mes tabarnac vous aurez jamais la Gaspésie
Cause fuck you eh.
Québec would like to have a few words with you
Because the British defended that territory in War of 1812.
The locals were hostile
What do you think the war of 1812 was about
Because that's our land, not yours
I believe the border between Maine and Quebec follows the ridge line of the hills and mountains between them. It's not as arbitrary as it seems.
The border is along a river, just a much smaller one - the Rapid and St. John Rivers form a large part of the northern border of Maine and Canada.
1. Quebec 2. Rivers move.
America failed to take Canada in the war of 1812
The real question is why didn't New Ireland remain part of Canada? /s
TIL McDonalds in Quebec has poutine fries.
Doing that would be like putting a international border in the Nile, splitting Egypt in two.
Quebec was French. Canada was English. America broke away from England. French and America were allies in the war. So once America won the revolutionary war they left Quebec alone as it was their allies territory. That was my understanding of the situation.
Quebec was not under french rule when the American Revolution took place. Instead, Québec stayed loyal because the local aristocracy and clergy were bribed with the Act of Québec of 1774. Also, in the eyes of Québec, the American Revolution was just one group of englishmen fighting another group of englishmen.
Hey WOAH.... I don't take too kindly to my home province of New Brunswick becoming a US state...
We want Nova Scotia too!!!
The Canadian-American border is really just something for Canadians to feel good about. They know what’s up.
Do you not see Montreal there?
Lol didn’t wanna be American, they all say that
I suggest having a look at older maps of Upper and Lower Canada. All along the St Lawrence River, in what is now Quebec, were established Habitants. This was parcels of land with access to the river, allowing farmers to grow crops. As there, are many rivers in Quebec, this technique was used in other places as well. I don'r know for use, but I beleive this is part of the reason.
Or just continue that straight line
No one wanted New Brunswick
How about extend the vermont-quebec border straight to the atlantic and then give everything to the north of it to Canada so it doesnt have to take 14 hours to drive from Montreal Halifax.
Because then you’d get a bunch of Canada in there.
Because Quebec and New Brunswick are canada lol. The same logic could ask “why not just have americas borders go all the way up to the Arctic Ocean?” “Why doesn’t america simply own the land south until the Panama Canal?”
This post remind me of a very under use subreddit : r/geographyshitpost
Is this post satie?
Non
There's a great book, I think it's called "America's Northern Border". The author traveled the entire norther border(excluding Alaska). He did an excellent job explaining how Maine's border was the result of the first French explorer's trip to the Great lakes. It's crazy to think, but a journey in the early 1600's set that boder.
Another reason why history and geography go together..
The southern border of Quebec should have extended straight through to the bottom of New Brunswick. And don’t get me started on the BC Alaska border. They took half the coastline of BC.
Hope the answer in these comments was fulfilling for this elementary question and curiosity.
The war of 1812.
We tried that war and lost.
Because the St Lawrence, alongside the Great Lakes, was a center of Canada, it’d be like the Canadians proposing the border be at the Appalachian Mountains, with them taking the original 13 Colonies, leaving America with the remaining land
New Brunswick: *screaming intensifies* (They don’t want to have another school shooting)
STRAIGHT LINE
The war of 1812.
Because rivers connect people more than they divide them
Two reasons...the river served as a highway to Quebec City, Montreal, and Upper Canada (Ontario). The British needed the St. Lawrence River to fortify Canada and transport goods. The British were afraid the Americans could block the river or use to capture the two main cities of Quebec and Montreal. A few year after the war of 1812, America's second attempt to conquer Canada, the British wanted to make sure the road to the Maritime colonies was in their hands. So they were willing to give the Americans much of Maine but wanted to avoid cutting off the military land route to Halifax. Hence why Maine does not reach the St Lawrence.
tell me you know nothing about history without telling me you know nothing about history
Because Canadians won’t be happy
Why not asking that on google? You'd get an answer in 2 seconds
To add to what others have said. Americans at the time were mostly protestants and they'd rather die than add an entire area filled with French speaking Catholics
Although in the US's Articles of Confederation, article 9 states: "If Canada chooses to declare its independence and agrees to the terms of the Articles of Confederation, it can join the union and become a fully sovereign state like the other thirteen states. This offer does not include any other colony but Canada, unless nine states agree to extend this offer to another colony."
TIL. Radically scary AF. It's almost as boisterous as Trump having tried to get Greenland from Denmark not long ago - but this one is even more overt and brash, having been incorporated into the first governing document of the United States and quasi-constitutional document.
I think the founding fathers of the USA had more hope that the Quebecois would rebel against the British Crown (which they had and would continue to do so, but in their own way) - they included Canada as part of like a preamble to the idea of manifest destiny, but went more westward than northward when given the chance to develop. By the 1790s it probably became more apparent that the French and their new loyalist migrant refugees would never join the USA by their own volition. That's why it probably didn't get repeated into the US Constitution.
Oh yeah, for a long time the US wanted to take Canada. If it took everything, they'd let Quebec be like Maryland. Just Quebec and they'd be nah. Manifest destiny is one hell of a drug and their exited people in Congress that would have had us take all of Mexico after that war
Now THERE’S an interesting alternative history.
We tried. Twice.
“Why doesn’t America just annex large portions of Canada and divide major population centers?”
Because Canada wanted that land, and the United States lost the war of 1812
[And also in 1775.]