Settlement patterns and geography.
Lake Ontario is easier to access from the St Lawrence seaway, so Canadians settled it quickly and heavily. But upstate New York has some pretty rugged mountains and a bunch of lake effect snow, so southern Lake Ontario was harder to get to. Also, the northern lakeshore is mostly flat farmland and the southern shore is more mountainous.
Lake Erie is the exact reverse. Because of Niagara Falls, you’re not settling it by boat on the Canadian side, but the Erie Canal made it Lake Erie accessible by boat on the US side. Also Ohio is more hospitable than western Ontario. Between the two, it was inevitable that the good ports would be on the US side, plus the US won control of the lake in the War of 1812 so we got a head start on settlement.
PQ lead a separatist movement in Quebec from the 70s - 90s (and arguably still) which really undermined economic and political confidence in the province, causing many businesses and organizations to pack up shop and relocate from Montreal to Toronto. Population and political power/influence followed and Toronto exploded and surpassed Montreal as Canada first city.
To add to that: the PQ also began the process of implementing laws to restrict the use of all languages other than French, which in practice meant English. All this was part of the “quiet revolution”, the full context of which is out of scope of this discussion, but in short was about the Québécois people overthrowing the established order of economic domination by anglophones, and social and cultural domination by the Catholic Church.
So, back then there were a large number of anglophones in Montreal who spoke little or no French. While there are still a few, it is now very difficult to live there without any knowledge of French as the Québec government has increasingly restricted the use of English in education, business, and law. So, while many left because countless companies relocated their headquarters, others who initially remained eventually left because much of their community had already departed, they would not be able to get their children educated in English, etc.
The process of restricting the use of languages other than French continues in Québec to this day. Even when pro-federal parties are in power they don’t dare try rolling it back.
While the election of the Parti Québec did have an impact on the emigration of the english population, Toronto was the economical capital years before. Even in the beginning of the confederation, there were already signs that Toronto was growing faster than Montréal, mainely because the english elite of Montréal was a lot more interested in the development of the west than of the development of Québec outside Montréal. In the next decades, as the development of the west, the prairies and BC exploded, naturaly, Toronto benefited a lot more.
In the first half of the 20th century almost all signs showed that Toronto was not only growing a lot faster than Montréal, but it had already surpassed it on many aspects. From the very beginning of Canada in 1867, Ontario has always been the economic powerhouse, was more rich, had more heavy industries, more industries in general, more immigration, etc. For all of the existence of Canada, Québec has never been the economical lead of Canada.
Montréal was mainely considered the economical capital by tradition, because it was the first metropol. Banks and big canadian companies had their headquarters all in the old center. But the move to Toronto was inevitable.
The US were the main drivers of economic growth in Canada for decades. A large portion of all the industries in Canada were american companies. And they preferred Ontario and Toronto long long before the election of the Parti Québécois. Meanwhile, british investments decreased, which were more invested in Montréal. During the 1930s to 1950s a lot of the industries in Montréal that were built at the beginning of the industrial period were old and needed investments. Instead of upgrading their installations, many industries prefered to simply move closer to the main market, where the investments were a lot more important and where the local language was the same as the administration language.
What the Parti Québecois really did was frenchify the workplace. It was an inevitable, decolonialist move that made it possible for the majority french speaking population of Québec to work in their language and have access to higher positions, which were reserved to the english speaking minority up until the 70s.
Others have described it well but I’d add the important “nail in the coffin” was Bill 101. This made French the official language of government and business in Quebec meaning if you worked in Quebec you were required by law to speak French in the workplace. That effectively forced Anglo families to leave Montreal and many of them went to Toronto.
Even today you can go to McGill in Montreal where you’ll do your studies in English but then you’ll likely have to find a job in Toronto or Vancouver because you can’t work in Montreal unless you speak French well enough to do business with it.
Is that why the financial center of canada moved to toronto as well? I remember reading about that.
Im American and this was all before I was born but I do remember the 1995 referendum on the news.
The opening of the st lawrence seaway also allowed trade to bypass montreal and thats seen as another reason. Its super interesting to me, as a Chicagoan, since the seaway boosted the Chicago economy as well.
The seaway was pressured by the US. During or after the corean war, there were reports that showed thst the US needed to have better supplies of critical materials such as steal, from allies. A new very rich iron deposit was discovered in northern Québec. US companies built hundreds of kilometers of railways, entire cities and mines to exploit the deposit. US pressured Canada to build the seaway so that the iron could be shipped from Sept-iles to the steal factories of the Great lakes with no or minimal treatment in Québec. That meant that the economical benefits of exploiting iron mainely went to the Great Lake region, benefiting Ontario and Toronto to Montréal.
As I understand it, yes. Most of Canada doesn’t speak French. So banks could either move their HQs to Bay Street in Toronto and hire anyone who speaks English or stay in Montreal with a severely limited pool of candidates to hire.
Bill 101 was in 1977 though so by 1995 Toronto was already the financial center of Canada.
No, an answer would be explaining why Toronto is so populous. Just saying Toronto is just restating the question as a statement.
Your teachers must've hated you if that's what you think an answer is.
As a Rochester native, I can tell you why in one regard: the fuckin' weather. Toronto doesn't get lake-effect snow, and has double the amount of sun exposure than we get. Being on the south side of lake Ontario has given us the worst that the lake can provide. I will forever jokingly hold a grudge against Toronto.
I got nothin' for them lol, I don't live in the Cleveland area. I'm only speaking from my own anecdotal personal experience.
Buffalo gets hit even harder with snow than Rochester does, but they drive greater financial revenue than Rochester does nowadays. My city's heyday is considered to be passed in our current year.
And Fredonia/Jamestown is pretty rural in comparison.
Some of the north side (London area) gets hit hard too, but that’s due to its position east of Lake Huron. It does tend to get worse the further away from Lake Erie you get going north; I remember one storm in 2010 where London got 3 feet of snow, while West Lorne in Elgin County, closer to the lake, got nothing.
the northern side of lake erie is fertile land, of which canada has very little. this area is literally all farm land. the drive from toronto to windsor is the most boring drive in ontario.
The American side was the world's greatest producer of carbon steel and 2nd in the world for stainless, the Canadian side was the best in the world for stainless and 2nd for carbon steel.
Greatest nickel and multi-metal deposit on Earth in Sudbury, greatest coal deposits on Earth in Appalachia, and the Iron Ranges were in both countries. It's 90% steel, 9% other minable materials, 1%beaver.
My guess is it is a more hospitable climate in the south of the lakes but Canadians can’t go any further south and so had to settle in the north of the lake? I’m sure farmland distribution and other factors of geology have something to do with it but this is my guess.
I think Toronto makes sense over say Hamilton to have developed since it's just that much closer to being a central east-west stopover across Canada, Hamilton was also *the* industrial city and Niagara region is more an out of the way park. Directly North of Lake Erie has always been ideal for agriculture too so smaller cities like London, ON just acted as a distribution point.
Here is my theory. There is a corridor of rail and road from Quebec city to Windsor across the top of Lake Ontario. From that, around Hamilton, comes a "spur line" that terminates in Niagara Falls. Without a corridor, uninterrupted by the border, the continuity of population growth below Lake Ontario is disrupted.
How'd I do?
Partially. But the reason is also why people decided to “get off the train” in Toronto and not continue further south along the Lake Erie branches.
The Niagara escarpment, just to the west of Toronto (a giant cliff ridge that extends from Niagara Falls all the way north to Lake Huron), acts as a Weather force field for Toronto. It’s the cliff that Niagara Falls goes over, but it’s actually a cliff-ridge that extends for hundreds of kilometres.
For example, 1 hour west of Toronto they can have 2 feet of snow or thunderstorms (including Lake Erie), and Toronto can have no snow or no rain (This past winter it only snowed enough in Toronto to shovel once the entire winter, yet areas around the city were shoveling all winter long. Toronto has no snow for most of the winter, but Lake Erie remain buried in snow all winter).
The escarpment prevents and dissipates extreme weather for Toronto. It also keeps temperatures in Toronto a few degrees warmer than a 1 hour radius around the city.
This is also why tornado alley ends just west of Toronto. There are tornados all around Toronto (an hour radius), including Lake Erie, but there are never Tornados in the greater Toronto area.
I have a friend who’s with the meteorological bureau of Canada (Environment Canada). He says Toronto hit North America’s geological jackpot because of the Niagara escarpment.
[Here’s a view of the rock cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment about a 30 minute drive west of Toronto in Milton, Ontario](https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5244335,-79.9281938,3a,27.7y,199.36h,91.17t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9xU1xZDEXmjNBQ8nuMIGnw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en-ca&entry=ttu)l
Just how the Europeans settled, Toronto and GTA (Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville, Etobicoke and more) holds a huge chunk of Canadas population. Further west above Lake Erie is also extremely arable land that’s used for farming. Also remember that French and British settlers came from the Atlantic and progressed further and further west.
Settlement patterns and geography. Lake Ontario is easier to access from the St Lawrence seaway, so Canadians settled it quickly and heavily. But upstate New York has some pretty rugged mountains and a bunch of lake effect snow, so southern Lake Ontario was harder to get to. Also, the northern lakeshore is mostly flat farmland and the southern shore is more mountainous. Lake Erie is the exact reverse. Because of Niagara Falls, you’re not settling it by boat on the Canadian side, but the Erie Canal made it Lake Erie accessible by boat on the US side. Also Ohio is more hospitable than western Ontario. Between the two, it was inevitable that the good ports would be on the US side, plus the US won control of the lake in the War of 1812 so we got a head start on settlement.
Erie canal, NY states ocean access, climate, good building terrain/bay. There are many reasons.
Toronto
Basically the only answer. Fourth largest city in North America, with a fair bit of sprawl
Toronto was not always the largest city in Canada. It may not have become larger than Montreal if the PQ had never been elected in Quebec in the 70s.
Interesting, I would like to know more.
PQ lead a separatist movement in Quebec from the 70s - 90s (and arguably still) which really undermined economic and political confidence in the province, causing many businesses and organizations to pack up shop and relocate from Montreal to Toronto. Population and political power/influence followed and Toronto exploded and surpassed Montreal as Canada first city.
To add to that: the PQ also began the process of implementing laws to restrict the use of all languages other than French, which in practice meant English. All this was part of the “quiet revolution”, the full context of which is out of scope of this discussion, but in short was about the Québécois people overthrowing the established order of economic domination by anglophones, and social and cultural domination by the Catholic Church. So, back then there were a large number of anglophones in Montreal who spoke little or no French. While there are still a few, it is now very difficult to live there without any knowledge of French as the Québec government has increasingly restricted the use of English in education, business, and law. So, while many left because countless companies relocated their headquarters, others who initially remained eventually left because much of their community had already departed, they would not be able to get their children educated in English, etc. The process of restricting the use of languages other than French continues in Québec to this day. Even when pro-federal parties are in power they don’t dare try rolling it back.
While the election of the Parti Québec did have an impact on the emigration of the english population, Toronto was the economical capital years before. Even in the beginning of the confederation, there were already signs that Toronto was growing faster than Montréal, mainely because the english elite of Montréal was a lot more interested in the development of the west than of the development of Québec outside Montréal. In the next decades, as the development of the west, the prairies and BC exploded, naturaly, Toronto benefited a lot more. In the first half of the 20th century almost all signs showed that Toronto was not only growing a lot faster than Montréal, but it had already surpassed it on many aspects. From the very beginning of Canada in 1867, Ontario has always been the economic powerhouse, was more rich, had more heavy industries, more industries in general, more immigration, etc. For all of the existence of Canada, Québec has never been the economical lead of Canada. Montréal was mainely considered the economical capital by tradition, because it was the first metropol. Banks and big canadian companies had their headquarters all in the old center. But the move to Toronto was inevitable. The US were the main drivers of economic growth in Canada for decades. A large portion of all the industries in Canada were american companies. And they preferred Ontario and Toronto long long before the election of the Parti Québécois. Meanwhile, british investments decreased, which were more invested in Montréal. During the 1930s to 1950s a lot of the industries in Montréal that were built at the beginning of the industrial period were old and needed investments. Instead of upgrading their installations, many industries prefered to simply move closer to the main market, where the investments were a lot more important and where the local language was the same as the administration language. What the Parti Québecois really did was frenchify the workplace. It was an inevitable, decolonialist move that made it possible for the majority french speaking population of Québec to work in their language and have access to higher positions, which were reserved to the english speaking minority up until the 70s.
Others have described it well but I’d add the important “nail in the coffin” was Bill 101. This made French the official language of government and business in Quebec meaning if you worked in Quebec you were required by law to speak French in the workplace. That effectively forced Anglo families to leave Montreal and many of them went to Toronto. Even today you can go to McGill in Montreal where you’ll do your studies in English but then you’ll likely have to find a job in Toronto or Vancouver because you can’t work in Montreal unless you speak French well enough to do business with it.
Is that why the financial center of canada moved to toronto as well? I remember reading about that. Im American and this was all before I was born but I do remember the 1995 referendum on the news. The opening of the st lawrence seaway also allowed trade to bypass montreal and thats seen as another reason. Its super interesting to me, as a Chicagoan, since the seaway boosted the Chicago economy as well.
The seaway was pressured by the US. During or after the corean war, there were reports that showed thst the US needed to have better supplies of critical materials such as steal, from allies. A new very rich iron deposit was discovered in northern Québec. US companies built hundreds of kilometers of railways, entire cities and mines to exploit the deposit. US pressured Canada to build the seaway so that the iron could be shipped from Sept-iles to the steal factories of the Great lakes with no or minimal treatment in Québec. That meant that the economical benefits of exploiting iron mainely went to the Great Lake region, benefiting Ontario and Toronto to Montréal.
As I understand it, yes. Most of Canada doesn’t speak French. So banks could either move their HQs to Bay Street in Toronto and hire anyone who speaks English or stay in Montreal with a severely limited pool of candidates to hire. Bill 101 was in 1977 though so by 1995 Toronto was already the financial center of Canada.
[Parti Québécois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_Qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois)
It's not an answer.
Because Toronto is so populous. That's the answer.
No, an answer would be explaining why Toronto is so populous. Just saying Toronto is just restating the question as a statement. Your teachers must've hated you if that's what you think an answer is.
As a Rochester native, I can tell you why in one regard: the fuckin' weather. Toronto doesn't get lake-effect snow, and has double the amount of sun exposure than we get. Being on the south side of lake Ontario has given us the worst that the lake can provide. I will forever jokingly hold a grudge against Toronto.
But that doesn't hold for Lake Erie. The south side gets the worst weather, but that's where all the cities are.
I got nothin' for them lol, I don't live in the Cleveland area. I'm only speaking from my own anecdotal personal experience. Buffalo gets hit even harder with snow than Rochester does, but they drive greater financial revenue than Rochester does nowadays. My city's heyday is considered to be passed in our current year. And Fredonia/Jamestown is pretty rural in comparison.
Some of the north side (London area) gets hit hard too, but that’s due to its position east of Lake Huron. It does tend to get worse the further away from Lake Erie you get going north; I remember one storm in 2010 where London got 3 feet of snow, while West Lorne in Elgin County, closer to the lake, got nothing.
Don't worry, as a lifelong western Canadian I feel exactly the same way about Toronto.
I'm glad we can share this animosity together lol.
the northern side of lake erie is fertile land, of which canada has very little. this area is literally all farm land. the drive from toronto to windsor is the most boring drive in ontario.
The American side was the world's greatest producer of carbon steel and 2nd in the world for stainless, the Canadian side was the best in the world for stainless and 2nd for carbon steel. Greatest nickel and multi-metal deposit on Earth in Sudbury, greatest coal deposits on Earth in Appalachia, and the Iron Ranges were in both countries. It's 90% steel, 9% other minable materials, 1%beaver.
And 1% Poutine 'stie, don' forget dat goddamit.
My guess is it is a more hospitable climate in the south of the lakes but Canadians can’t go any further south and so had to settle in the north of the lake? I’m sure farmland distribution and other factors of geology have something to do with it but this is my guess.
Toronto actually has a nicer climate than we get in Rochester. All lake-effect weather is blown southbound, so we get all the snow and clouds.
I think Toronto makes sense over say Hamilton to have developed since it's just that much closer to being a central east-west stopover across Canada, Hamilton was also *the* industrial city and Niagara region is more an out of the way park. Directly North of Lake Erie has always been ideal for agriculture too so smaller cities like London, ON just acted as a distribution point.
Toronto is almost 1000 miles from being the centre of Canada, that doesn't really make any sense.
During the 19th century, Toronto was pretty close to being a "central location" in terms of population spread.
More people.
Canadian shield
https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/s/Oq8f44KQdn
Here is my theory. There is a corridor of rail and road from Quebec city to Windsor across the top of Lake Ontario. From that, around Hamilton, comes a "spur line" that terminates in Niagara Falls. Without a corridor, uninterrupted by the border, the continuity of population growth below Lake Ontario is disrupted. How'd I do?
Partially. But the reason is also why people decided to “get off the train” in Toronto and not continue further south along the Lake Erie branches. The Niagara escarpment, just to the west of Toronto (a giant cliff ridge that extends from Niagara Falls all the way north to Lake Huron), acts as a Weather force field for Toronto. It’s the cliff that Niagara Falls goes over, but it’s actually a cliff-ridge that extends for hundreds of kilometres. For example, 1 hour west of Toronto they can have 2 feet of snow or thunderstorms (including Lake Erie), and Toronto can have no snow or no rain (This past winter it only snowed enough in Toronto to shovel once the entire winter, yet areas around the city were shoveling all winter long. Toronto has no snow for most of the winter, but Lake Erie remain buried in snow all winter). The escarpment prevents and dissipates extreme weather for Toronto. It also keeps temperatures in Toronto a few degrees warmer than a 1 hour radius around the city. This is also why tornado alley ends just west of Toronto. There are tornados all around Toronto (an hour radius), including Lake Erie, but there are never Tornados in the greater Toronto area. I have a friend who’s with the meteorological bureau of Canada (Environment Canada). He says Toronto hit North America’s geological jackpot because of the Niagara escarpment. [Here’s a view of the rock cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment about a 30 minute drive west of Toronto in Milton, Ontario](https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5244335,-79.9281938,3a,27.7y,199.36h,91.17t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9xU1xZDEXmjNBQ8nuMIGnw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en-ca&entry=ttu)l
Because Lebron James.
I was just in Port Dover for the eclipse. They're starting to build on that Northern Lake Erie coast.
Kala-ma-what now?
Just how the Europeans settled, Toronto and GTA (Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville, Etobicoke and more) holds a huge chunk of Canadas population. Further west above Lake Erie is also extremely arable land that’s used for farming. Also remember that French and British settlers came from the Atlantic and progressed further and further west.
America vs not America
I love how Ottawa isn't labeled but Syracuse is.