# Why no big cities on Lake Huron **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 1, 2003, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-big-cities-on-lake-huron/198884 "2003-09-01T00:39:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2003, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-big-cities-on-lake-huron/198884/21 "2003-09-01T20:51:06Z")
No **tom** , **Polycarp** backed off. according to your post > [@](#): > > There were two years in the 1990s when TB had disastrously small grain seasons, and Churchill might have matched TB in those years I find the statement extremely difficult to accept. I quite frankly don’t believe that Churchill’s grain tonnage has approached anything close to 10% of Thunder Bay’s volume prior to 1999 let alone acheiving 100%. Such a statement is a gross distortion of the facts as I understand them and it would behoove you to back it up. Your second cite shows a graph of Thunder Bay’s annual tonnage through the 90’s, and not once during that period has the volume for Thunder Bay dropped below 6.9 million tonnes. Your first cite describes the average tonnage for Churchill for the last 5 years of the nineties at 355,000 tonnes. Take that average over the whole decade, and there is no way that you could possibly concieve of a year at 6.9 million tonnes. You just have to concede that point. Its not even in the ballpark. Also, the rosy future for Churchill has subsquently chilled somewhat. According to [item 9.1 of the minutes of the Churchill North Gateway Committee](http://dev.exg.ca/churchill/minutes_october.asp), Iris Thornton of Omni Trax reports > [@](#): > > there has been a dramatic decrease in the tonnage of grain being shipped through the Port of Churchill. 710,000, 460,000, 279,000 for 2000,2001, and 2002 respectively. Please note that the figure for 2002 is a projection. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2003, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-big-cities-on-lake-huron/198884/22 "2003-09-01T21:56:36Z")
> [@](#): > > I quite frankly don’t believe that Churchill’s grain tonnage has approached anything close to 10% of Thunder Bay’s volume prior to 1999 let alone acheiving 100%. Such a statement is a gross distortion of the facts as I understand them and it would behoove you to back it up. Presented with a claim that Churchill was the largest grain port and a serious lack of comparative statistics regarding each of the Canadian ports over the last 15 years, I threw out the possibility that if Churchill had exceeded Thunder Bay, those would have been the years it might have done so. I have made no claim that Churchill _is_ or _has_ ever exceeded TB’s throughput, only noting that if **Poly** ’s initial statement (from which he has backed away) were true, it would might have occurred on the occasions and in the manner I noted. Since this is so important to you (and you keep misconstruing my statements), please go open a thread in **GD** to debate the relative sizes of Canadian ports. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2003, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-big-cities-on-lake-huron/198884/23 "2003-09-01T21:59:39Z")
BTW, **Poly** ’s backing away occured while I was responding to his post and I did not happen to see his second post simply because I did not preview my post. We’re only talking about crossed posts, here, not some serious effort to defend some vague numbers that are irrelevant to the OP. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-big-cities-on-lake-huron/198884.md?page=1)