Connecticut. I often send letters to whomever is in the governor’s mansion proposing we annex Rhode island for the chowder and beaches.
(Do you know that the more times you type “beaches” the wronger it looks each time?)
You think? I would think southern Ontario would be more like Lower Michigan, whereas the Northern areas of Ontario, especially the bits that surround Lake Superior, would have more in common with the UP. I’ve only been over there a few times, but from Sault Ste. Marie east it seemed very UP-ish.
Hm. Yes, similar climate, economy, and such. I was worried that the political traditions might be a bit too divergent, but never mind. Carry on, then.
Not the same thing.
This is pretty much how I feel. Every time the idea comes up of splitting the state, I think: we could just as well be our own country.
The communities that surround Lake Superior fit well together – mining, forestry, shipping, tourism; there are a great many more communities on the American side, but the economies and nordic traditions are not that different. Every so slightly south of Superior and across the north shore of Huron’s North Chanel and through to North Bay, there is a greater population and more agriculture added to the mix. All in all, the Superior basin could work well as a single entity. As far as points north go, I can see why Ontario would want to keep the far north of the province, due to its mineral potential, but culturally it is compsed of remote Indian reserves, so it would fit more comfortably if it were returned to the Northwest Territories.
Urban southern Ontario and urban southern Michigan (especially Toronto/Hamilton/London/Windsor/Detroit/Chicago Il. corridor) and the surrounding farmlands could work well together. The rail and road transportation corridor is very highly developed from Toronto to Chicago, and of course the lower Great Lakes shipping connects most of the major cities down that way. The cross-border automotive industry has been somewhat seamless. There has been a good degree of cross-border agriculture (e.g. Canadian apples being stored in Michigan and then sold in both countries, and Heinz ketchup being produced in Ontario but distributed through the USA, making use of the Chicago rail hub). Up until Michigan came to its senses, the cross-border garbage industry was booming, with Michigan taking much of Toronto’s garbage (that sure stank up the drive between Toronto and Windsor).
I wouldn’t mind seeing California split up into a few states.
First you would have Southern California (which would need a better name). This would be everything east and south of Los Angeles County.
Next you take what’s left over and take everything from the coast to the 5 freeway and make that its own state. Everything from the 5 on to the east becomes the third state.
As I see it there is also the option of letting San Francisco be its own state. It’s already a coterminus city and county. Why not just go all the way?
(mostly) Joking…
Once you start, you’ll just get screaming for more subdivision.
Divide Ontario into north and south? Pretty soon people in eastern Ontario will be howling for separation from southern Ontario, or Toronto will want to be its own province. Pretty soon Timmins would be complaining that the eggheads in the capital of Thunder Bay don’t understand their needs.
It’d never end. Nobody will ever think they’re getting a fair shake.
Nah, Timmins, Sudbury, the Soo, and TBay are pretty darn similar, and already are highly integrated as a result of such similarities. What southern Ontario would want to do is another thing entirely – Toronto v. the World, south eastern Ontario v. south central Ontario v. south western Ontario, etc.
Just so I understand, what does “versus” in your examples mean?
I think the same thing. We could take Rhode Island. I’m fairly sure of it!
Just because you could split a state, what would be the benefits? Would life be any better with two Californias or Michigans than one?
(And those are the only ones I can see have enough of an internal difference to bother. California for climate & distance, Michigan for geography. Missouri? Not even close, unless you want to separate it into those who call it Missour-uh and Missour-ee.)
YES. The liberal voting power of California needs to be diluted and a SoCal state will be a swing state.
I don’t think that would work. I don’t know what percentage of Californian voters you consider liberal but if you divided them up into several states, they’d end up with the same number of Representatives in the House and more Senators.
The current states of Oregon and Washington make no sense. Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon should be split off and joined to form a new state of Western Idaho.
He means in the electoral college, I think.
So long as we’re fantasizing about changing things, why wouldn’t we just get rid of the electoral college?
In contrast to, and perhaps in opposition to. For example, the long standing proposal for the Province of Toronto, which has grown out of the contrast and occasional opposition between Toronto and the rest of Ontario.
Just wait until they don’t have southern Ontario to blame anymore. Thunder Bay is already similar to Windsor, too. Sudbury’s similar to Sarnia.
People have an inherent need to differentiate themselves and to fight over the differences. As the old saying goes, the reason campus politics are so vicious is that the stakes are so low. There is no division you can create which will not immediately result in further perception of division.
Toronto is one city, and yet people downtown think people in Etobicoke or North York are suburban scum (they are not actually suburbs, they’re part of the city.) You can forget any feeling of admiration between Toronto and its actual suburbs; to Torontonians, the suburban cities are packed with hideous redneck hillbillies, and to the suburban cities, Toronto is a cesspool of homeless criminals. If you made the GTA a province they’d hate each other even more.
If you made eastern Ontario a province, within a year, people in Cornwall would say the big city jerks in Kingston (which would be the capital, I’d assume) didn’t understand their needs. That may seem absurd to you, from northern Ontario, because Kingston and Cornwall have no reason to not work together… and you’d be right, it is absurd. But it is inevitable.
Hell, when I lived in Kingston there was a distinct feeling of difference and contempt between the old city proper, on the east side of the Little Cataraqui River, and the old township sector, on the west side. Make Kingston a province and pretty soon people would be howling for division.
- The largest city will always be reviled by the small towns and rural areas, and vice versa.
- People will latch onto any geographic divide they can, even highways if nothing else will do.
- People will always find someone within their province (or state) to blame the province’s (or state’s) problems on that is located somewhere other than where they are.
I really don’t see how TBay is similar to Windsor, or how Sudbury is simiar to Sarnia. Both TBay and Sudbury are regional centres for mining and forestry, whereas Windsor is focused on automotive and Sarnia is pretty much limited to petrochemicals, and both are surrounded by agricultural land as opposed to bush. Aside from a small salt mine, there isn’t mining down that way, and the forestry in south west Ontario is wood lot based as opposed to being on a massive scale up here.
I have not come across anyone in northern Ontario proposing that any one city separate from the province, but I have come across a lot of ties between northern communities, ranging from the workforce in which it is common for people to move from one northern community to another (for example, I have lived in both Sudbury and Thunder Bay), to the focus on regional industries by manufacturers and service providers, to the developing of nothern institutions such as the single Northern School of Medicine at Thunder Bay and Sudbury.
Forming a province would require economic self-sufficiency, which up here would require us to continue to work with each other throughout the region. Now take that concept and apply it to the situation as it now stands – we work with each other in the region because it benefits us.