I guess what I’m wondering is why the Canadian settlers made the decisions they did. They were there in what was then Upper Canada back around 1800 thinking about moving west and finding new lands to live in. And one option was turning south and settling along a lakefront. And the other option was moving to the middle of what would some day become Manitoba.
The answer they chose does not seem like the obvious one. Were there powerful native tribes in the Lake Erie coastal region? Was the government offering free land in the western territories? Were there rumors of gold? Was there fear of Americans attacking coastal settlements?
This might be slightly off-topic, but a few years ago I did a trip to upstate New York. I passed through Rochester, headed towards Buffalo, and thought it would be nice to drive close to the Lake Ontario shoreline. I expected vacation homes, or some degree of civilization. Nope; miles and miles of nothing. According to Wikipedia, that road gets so little traffic that the state considered just abandoning it.
My theory is that it’s a supply-and-demand thing. The Great Lakes are so big that we just haven’t found a use for all of it yet. Everybody who wants a beach house already has one, and there’s still plenty of shoreline left over. Might be the same with Lake Erie in Canada; all the people who need/want to live next to it already do.
The fastest way to drive from New York state to Detroit is to go through Canada. Cuts two hours off the all-American, south of Erie route. But from Niagara Falls to Detroit it’s only a four-hour drive. That’s not long enough to pull people off for more than a rest stop, And the main route, 403, is miles away from the shore, just like I-90 is in New York.
You can find beaches and lakefront property along Lake Ontario and I presume also Lake Erie, but the Great Lakes are not very conducive to the big sandy stretches that are found on the Atlantic coastline. The shores are battered by erosion, wind, and ice. Lots of wind and ice.
They did settle in the Ontario peninsula. It’s prime farmland, once it was cleared, but it was some time after 1800.
Settlement in Upper Canada was originally around Lake Ontario, because of the close connection to the St Lawrence, and because Loyalists were fleeing north from New York and that area, in the 1780s. They settled initially around Lake Ontario, with the capital originally at Niagara-on-the-Lake; got moved to York for military reasons, greater security from the US threat. (Still didn’t help in 1812.)
The Ontario peninsula area was settled later, as the land around Lake Ontario was claimed, and the land cleared for agriculture, which was a back-breaking task. My recollection is that the Ontario peninsula of Upper Canada was the last area settled by farmers (although there had been earlier settlements and trading posts, like Detroit and what is now Windsor).
The Ontario peninsula remains a prime agricultural area, but agriculture doesn’t drive major urban settlements.
It wasn’t until half a century later, in the 1880s, that Canadian settlement of Manitoba was possible. The only all-Canadian land route from Ontario to the prairies was over Superior. Unlike US settlement from the eastern seaboard, there couldn’t be gradual generational settlement, leap-frogging westward. Those fricking stunning vistas mentioned by @Kropotkin could not be used for agricultural settlement. The railway to the Pacific was necessary for Central Canadians to move to the prairies.
Well, almost all of Ontario Outside of the GTA has very little population. You pretty much have Windsor across from Detroit, and London. There’s nothing on Lake Erie’s North Shore to make it an exception.
Well, the fear of an American invasion is part of why Ottawa was chosen as the national capital. Being further away from the easy invasions routes by both land and water put us far behind what we assumed the frontlines would be, while still being relatively central enough to coordinate a national defence.
Yes. Quebec was the first foreign territory which the United States invaded, in 1775. That was followed up by the War of 1812, where capturing Upper and Lower Canada was an avowed American war aim; one leading US politician said that capturing Canada would just be a mere matter of marching. York on the north shore of Lake Ontario, the capital of Upper Canada, was burnt and pillaged. There was a planned attack to capture Montreal, which if successful, could have cut off all of Upper Canada from supply. The Canadian, British, and 1st Nations troops defeated the American attack at the Battle of the Chateauguay, which some say was the most decisive battle in Canada’s history, after the battles of Quebec, because of the huge strategic importance of keeping Montreal and the supply lines to Upper Canada.
The Ontario peninsula, at the end of that very long supply line from Quebec City, wouldn’t have been a good place for major cities. Lt Gov Simcoe originally wanted London, in the peninsula, to be the capital of Upper Canada (hence the name), but was persuaded that York was a better option because it was on the north shore of Lake Ontario and closer to Lower Canada.
ETA: what Horatius said about Ottawa and the Rideau canal as well.
Five of our capitals were located where they were because of concerns about US invasions: Ottawa, Fredricton, Toronto, Regina, and Victoria.
Edit: Ah, . Also Halifax was a city that grew from a large military base (the citadel), but this had to do with the British wars against the French (and natives) well before the US was formed.
And Quebec City owes its location to a military purpose: it’s the last point on the St Lawrence that can be easily crossed, before the St Lawrence widens out into the St Lawrence estuary; good harbour for trans-Atlantic French Navy, plus control of a key choke point.
Just realised that in my posts yesterday, I was referring to the Bruce peninsula, instead of the Ontario peninsula. I really need to check my geography when posting in the evening.
I don’t know about Lake Erie (as already mentioned, pollution there is a problem) but there are certainly nice beaches on some of the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Huron which around here is the one I tend to associate with cottage country. Beaches like the one below are quite typical, frequently public, sometimes private for lucky owners of lakefront cottages. But yes, there are situations where erosion is a problem.
As of course was the military to move First Nations and Métis from the land.
As an aside, I have always been fascinated by the story of Honoré Jaxon, who was the secretary of Métis leader Louis Riel, then involved with the Knights of Labor, Coxey’s Army, the Wobblies, and the anarchist Rudolf Rocker and even communicated with Frank Lloyd Wright about designing a utopian community for the Métis. His life was a documentary of the costs of industrialization and settlement, and the opposition to them.
Well, by that time the population patterns were already set.
There just isn’t any pressing reason why there should be a large city on the Canadian side of Erie. The trade routes in Canada don’t go past them and there is no resource there requiring a large population to exploit; what IS on the Erie side is farmland. The political capitals had long since been set.
Conversely, the American side of Lake Ontario is much less populated than the Canadian side; Rochester is there, but it’s dwarfed by Toronto, and Rochester is basically it. Even smaller cities on the Canadian side like Kingston and Oshawa are much bigger than little towns like Oswego. Same basic reason; the Canadian side is right along a trade route and the American side is a bit of a detour from the lines of commerce between the midwest and New York City.
Or look at Lake Michigan. On the west side you have Chicago, Milwaukee, and all the suburbs in and around them. On the east side you have… Muskegon, I guess? Grand Rapids isn’t really on the coast.
. Also Halifax was a city that grew from a large military base (the citadel), but this had to do with the British wars against the French (and natives) well before the US was formed.
