There was also Primeval New World, a spinoff of the British series Primeval which was produced and set in Canada.
Oh, Canada (in canon)!
- Thread starter Laura Cynthia Chambers
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So I don't understand quebec?, therefore I don't understand how quebec is different enough that it's literally more foreign than the US?
The part you're talking about decades of history is a relevant point. Canada started to degrade when tv was no longer our main unifier.
This makes no sense
You don't see the debate because the debate is over. Quebec is a country within a country.
In reality the politics in Quebec has just gotten turbocharged, Quebec is no longer threatening to leave but instead acting in ways where we might ask them to leave(half joking, too early to tell).
BC is too strange to put into words. What amazes me is my inlaws have been there 30-60 years, and they are clueless about the people who live a mile down the road. Like my first time there, I'm imaging a bunch of BC bud lovin hippies, my inlaws are super duper tree huggers, but you pull out a joint and they act as if you have a crack pipe. Never met a group of literally 30-40 people where zero smoke, drink or like weed, while also being super left wing. My brain still can't process it. I'm use to family gatherings where you can't find a person who isn't doing 1 of the 3 aside from my mother.
People move to get away from the people they dislike in the east and prairies, only problem is if everyone does the same thing, they basically have to pretend to not see each other and are very good at it. It's part of the irony of the "real Vancouver" never actually being on screen.
But what your describing is exactly why I think the country has some serious problems on its hand. People increasingly want nothing to do with each other. Not politics/religion/languages, it basic things like do you guys even drink beer?
It's already destroying the rest of the country. Nova Scotia was bought and sold over the last year. My brother's inlaws are all losing their minds over it. You can drive 3 hours from Toronto and you're basically paying what was just a few years ago an average price in Surrey.
Yeah well and this is why I think Canada is in such immediate trouble. We have nothing bonding us together anymore. Like the internet liberated us from geography, and the housing market means we have zero attachment to local communities.
I see it in my own family/inlaws. Even when we live in the same part of the country we don't as we tend to choose to live in our little world.
Like I get Americans have a similar idea going on, but it's a different thing due to the geography and population scale.
Name one thing? Name one thing I'd miss if I went to the US? It's not an idle thing, we're on the verge of a rather massive brain drain. I ain't going anywhere, me and my wife are committing to fighting for staying, ensuring our kids speak french and all that.
The federation has starfleet keeping it together.I think I just wrote a better draft of that Federation Charter speech from ENT These Are The Voyages...
Canada was a relatively united country because we lived a shared experienced, went to the same schools, worked the same jobs, watched the same television/news etc. We also had real economic concerns like a common dollar etc. People were tuned into their local environment because they planned to live there etc.
The internet has meant we really have nothing to do with each other, you could say that's generally true about anywhere in the world, but the border is increasingly becoming an imaginary line, which means you have a ton of problems when you're north of it.
The French response to this has been focus on their language, the rest of the country has just been drifting apart.
I've long since given up on reading pretty much anything he says. It's all long winded gibberish designed to suck all the oxygen from the thread and leave it a cold, lifeless void.
Most stable industrialized countries in the world have their borders defined by significant geographical features, language, shared economic interest, if they don't they tend to be very small like belgium etc.
Why would someone in Vancouver go to Toronto over Portland? currently it's because the two countries are kept separate by current border control, if we ever ended up in an EU like situation there'd be no reason for the country to exist.
Canada is famously defined as a country that defines itself as not American. And that only means something as long as cross border issues are difficult soon as they are not it's pretty much the end.
No. You don’t. Your discussion of Quebec mirrors that of many outsiders who have no direct experience of living in it. I’ve spent nearly 40 years of my 56 living in Quebec. My parents are both from Quebec (somewhat ironically, I’ve lived here longer than they did, though they were born here and I wasn’t). My extended family is from Quebec on both sides (my dad’s side dates back to when de Maisonneuve founded Montréal). My wife and her family are multigenerational québécois. I’ve taught more Quebec and Canadian history than most people have had hot meals.
Your Maclean’s/Globe and Mail style commentary on Quebec politics reveals the superficiality of your understanding. Moreover, your observations conflate nation with country in so many ways it’s painful.
Canada has never been a monolithic, uni-cultural “nation”. Nor have most parts of the globe for most of recorded history. And. There’s. Nothing. Wrong. With. That. That Canada has defied the corrosive Wilsonian concept of singular “nation-states” is a feature, not a bug, of the country. Canada works, however imperfectly (as is true of all sovereign states), precisely because it has maintained a balance among multiple “nations” rather than simply subsume them all into one monolithic entity. The tension between them can be tedious to observe, but it has kept the country from flying apart via violent ethnic conflict by finding creative, if unglamorous, compromises rather than adopting a “my way or the highway” attitude. It’s not flashy, but it generally works (though there is certainly room for improvement, especially regarding relations with Indigenous peoples). What Canada should NOT do is seek a simplistic, sloganeering mindset that looks to impose a singular set of values and exclude the rest. Quite enough of that going around.
And, to bring it back to Trek, Canada, at its best, is very much like the aspirational version of the Federation—a body that works together in the important moments while allowing each region to exercise its diversity of cultures, and a sufficiently flexible country to allow oppositional views a wide latitude of expression in ways that would tear apart other polities.
Now I’m off to enjoy a Jos. Louis and a glass of milk before bedtime. À la prochaine fois.
I'd venture that TV in the traditional sense hasn't been a unifying force anywhere across the world for the last 10+ years. Even my "local" news is always plugging their apps, streaming services, YouTube channels. Not so much their socials ever since C-18 passed, but that's evolving quickly.
As a former Albertan, reformed Ontarian, fully-entrenched BCer who lives in the lower mainland with strong ties to the interior and the island...I'd have to 100% agree with you about the place being too weird for words. Still can't imagine living anywhere else, but you're certainly right. I guess I'm a weirdo too? Re: the sense of community thing, there's an expression here about "Vanyorkers" - basically, people are kind but not nice, pleasant but not friendly, polite but not welcoming. It's a bizarre mish-mash that seems to have worked for us since the 1800s so I guess we'll keep it up?
I think it's a bit of a red herring to say the countries are somehow apart because Vancouver "feels" closer to Portland than to Toronto...well, yeah. It is. It's hard to explain, but the greater PNW is definitely a phenomenon out here. Per everyone's favourite non-scientific source, Wikipedia: "The idea of Cascadia as an economic cross-border region has been embraced by a wide diversity of civic leaders and organizations. The "Main Street Cascadia" transportation corridor concept was formed by former mayor of Seattle Paul Schell during 1991 and 1992.[42] Schell later defended his cross-border efforts during the 1999 American Planning Association convention, saying "that Cascadia represents better than states, countries and cities the cultural and geographical realities of the corridor from Eugene to Vancouver, B.C."[43] Schell also formed the Cascadia Mayors Council, bringing together mayors from cities along the corridor from Whistler, British Columbia, to Medford, Oregon. The last meeting was held in May 2004.[44] Other cross-border groups were set up in the 1990s, such as the Cascadia Economic Council and the Cascadia Corridor Commission.[45]
The region is served by several cooperative organizations and interstate or international agencies, especially since 2008 with the signing of the Pacific Coast Collaborative which places new emphasis on bio-regionally coordinated policies on the environmental, forestry and fishery management, emergency preparedness and critical infrastructure, regional high-speed rail and road transportation as well as tourism.[46]
The area from Vancouver, B.C. down to Portland[47] has been termed an emerging megaregion by the National Committee for America 2050, a coalition of regional planners, scholars, and policy-makers. This group defines a megaregion as an area where "boundaries [between metropolitan regions] begin to blur, creating a new scale of geography".[48] These areas have interlocking economic systems, shared natural resources and ecosystems, and common transportation systems link these population centers together. This area contains 17% of Cascadian land mass, but more than 80% of the Cascadian population. Programs such as the enhanced driver's license program can be used to more easily cross the border between Washington and British Columbia.[49]"
About imaginary lines being borders...I mean, the 49th parallel on the globe and the Great Lakes do a pretty good job of geographical separation between the two. I'd posit Canada isn't "not the USA" as much as it's a case of "we're sort of like the USA, but with a lot more sprinkles of the UK, EU, and ANZ mixed in" so not quite a direct comparison about what side of the border it's subjectively better to live on. After all, look at the four counties of Northern Ireland, not to mention Scotland, who all got "Brexited" - now there's a case of some imaginary lines causing real friction.
Amen. Long live the understanding and flexibility of multilingual, multifaithful, multicultural pluralism all working together. Not always agreeing on details, mind you, but going for the same big picture. We've got different ways of getting there, but somehow, we get there, wherever "there" is. That's the Trekkified beauty of the place: it is the UFP (United Federation of Provinces) and I don't think it's as fragile as it's made out to be.
Amusez-vous bien avec votre Jos. Louis...le p'tit déjeuner des gagnants! Joyeuse fête du travail cette fin de semaine!
As a former Albertan, reformed Ontarian, fully-entrenched BCer who lives in the lower mainland with strong ties to the interior and the island...I'd have to 100% agree with you about the place being too weird for words. Still can't imagine living anywhere else, but you're certainly right. I guess I'm a weirdo too? Re: the sense of community thing, there's an expression here about "Vanyorkers" - basically, people are kind but not nice, pleasant but not friendly, polite but not welcoming. It's a bizarre mish-mash that seems to have worked for us since the 1800s so I guess we'll keep it up?
I think it's a bit of a red herring to say the countries are somehow apart because Vancouver "feels" closer to Portland than to Toronto...well, yeah. It is. It's hard to explain, but the greater PNW is definitely a phenomenon out here. Per everyone's favourite non-scientific source, Wikipedia: "The idea of Cascadia as an economic cross-border region has been embraced by a wide diversity of civic leaders and organizations. The "Main Street Cascadia" transportation corridor concept was formed by former mayor of Seattle Paul Schell during 1991 and 1992.[42] Schell later defended his cross-border efforts during the 1999 American Planning Association convention, saying "that Cascadia represents better than states, countries and cities the cultural and geographical realities of the corridor from Eugene to Vancouver, B.C."[43] Schell also formed the Cascadia Mayors Council, bringing together mayors from cities along the corridor from Whistler, British Columbia, to Medford, Oregon. The last meeting was held in May 2004.[44] Other cross-border groups were set up in the 1990s, such as the Cascadia Economic Council and the Cascadia Corridor Commission.[45]
The region is served by several cooperative organizations and interstate or international agencies, especially since 2008 with the signing of the Pacific Coast Collaborative which places new emphasis on bio-regionally coordinated policies on the environmental, forestry and fishery management, emergency preparedness and critical infrastructure, regional high-speed rail and road transportation as well as tourism.[46]
The area from Vancouver, B.C. down to Portland[47] has been termed an emerging megaregion by the National Committee for America 2050, a coalition of regional planners, scholars, and policy-makers. This group defines a megaregion as an area where "boundaries [between metropolitan regions] begin to blur, creating a new scale of geography".[48] These areas have interlocking economic systems, shared natural resources and ecosystems, and common transportation systems link these population centers together. This area contains 17% of Cascadian land mass, but more than 80% of the Cascadian population. Programs such as the enhanced driver's license program can be used to more easily cross the border between Washington and British Columbia.[49]"
About imaginary lines being borders...I mean, the 49th parallel on the globe and the Great Lakes do a pretty good job of geographical separation between the two. I'd posit Canada isn't "not the USA" as much as it's a case of "we're sort of like the USA, but with a lot more sprinkles of the UK, EU, and ANZ mixed in" so not quite a direct comparison about what side of the border it's subjectively better to live on. After all, look at the four counties of Northern Ireland, not to mention Scotland, who all got "Brexited" - now there's a case of some imaginary lines causing real friction.
Amen. Long live the understanding and flexibility of multilingual, multifaithful, multicultural pluralism all working together. Not always agreeing on details, mind you, but going for the same big picture. We've got different ways of getting there, but somehow, we get there, wherever "there" is. That's the Trekkified beauty of the place: it is the UFP (United Federation of Provinces
) and I don't think it's as fragile as it's made out to be. Amusez-vous bien avec votre Jos. Louis...le p'tit déjeuner des gagnants! Joyeuse fête du travail cette fin de semaine!
Mostly accurate. Ontario should somehow be conveyed to be tbe center of the universe.
I thought that was strictly Toronto.
Nah, Toronto is just "Downtown Canada."
I thought that was strictly Toronto.
That big blob is Toronto and it's satelite cities/suburbs. It's all just sort of blending into one blob of people.
This is only the sourthern tip of the province. The rest of the province is isolated from Toronoto, but the population is spreading out very quickly.
Toronto can mean just the downtown parts, but it's increasingly become a unified area where people move back and fourth between closer to downtown and the satelites especially in the south/southwest direction.
In some ways it's a lot like Los Angeles/Sandiego, difference is the entire country only has 6 majorish metropolitan areas, while the US has 40ish.
So imagine an America where there's no flyover country. Just Boston/Seattle/LA/Dallas. There's no Phoenix/Vegas/Chicago/Atlanta, to moderate the societal differences. Nothing in-between to glue the country together. While a quarter of your population wants to speak french.
We're a country because our passports say so. If you were have an open border, most people would rather move north south than east west.
And a massive number of people who actually have the option are moving south in increasing numbers.
A Vancouverite in Montreal is far far more homesick than they'd be if they moved to Portland Oregon.
If you think the Midwest "moderates" social differences of the the United States or "glues it together," you are profoundly mistaken about how the basic cleavages of American society work.
Anyway, you're not wrong that Canada is interesting in the way it encompasses major competing national identities in English Canadians, French Canadians, and First Nations peoples, but you're overstating your case. Canada is not unique by encompassing multiple national identities -- and there are multi-national are frankly a lot more dysfunctional and likely to break up as a result of tensions between competing national identities, including the United Kingdom and Belgium.
Except in your example the US is the federation and you're arguing we shouldn't join the federation, because our federation is too unique and different to be compatible with their federation.
This is why your argument holds no water, we're a country because we haven't yet joined the US, there's no reason not to that isn't a direct product of our current economic situation. If we're in a federation world there's no reason to be different from the US.
I don't understand Quebec enough? So when I say to me it's effectively a different country, I can't possibly be right on how I or many other experience it?
They're a vocal minority who possess a majority opinion. Most people just don't care enough to talk about quebec, it's so far over there somewhere's. That's sort of the paradox of how successful partition has been. People just don't care enough to even argue about it.
Long story short, most people are just procrastinating on the issue. To my parents Florida is basically just normal. BC is like some weird alaska-hawaii hybrid and Quebec is a foreign country altogether. It's the technicality of a border.
Multi linguistic states have always always been on politically shaky ground. I'm not arguing for a nation state, it's the keep the americans out part of it that holds no water.
Meanwhile the Soviets effectively turned all of eastern europe in to a collection of nations states sans yugoslavia and soviet union itself. We saw how yugoslavia played out in the bulkans. And we're seeing ongoing war at the moment.
Working for you, the housing market issues along with other issues related to that, are making millions look for an exist plan.
If you're only talking about the french-english tension sure. But I think you are disconnected from the real estate market etc.
Never suggested they should.
If your major issue is political, by Canadian standards the US is a very unified as a country.
US has been and will always been a melting power. Things blend together. It's not just the midwest, it's the fact that everywhere blends into the next place. The midwest becomes texas, texas becomes arizona, arizona becomes california etc.
It's a lot lot different in smaller countries. It's one thing to have fighting parents, it's another when your parents haven't lived in the same state for 15 years. They can claim to have a perfect marriage but when they don't interact with each other there's a problem.
Sure, if Canada is a federation of planets, why on earth is it separate from the federation of planets 100 miles to our south?
I don't mean in the current era, but 150 years from now, in a post scarcity utopian future?
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