• Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    1 month ago

    85% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the American border. And yous claim you don’t want to be part of them.

    *(runs and hides)*

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      If anything, this proves how much Canadians don’t want to be Americans.

      Canadian weather is shitty, you can’t grow crops for most of the year. During the fraction of the year where the climate is suitable for growing crops, the variety of things that grow is small compared to what’s possible in the US. And, as bad as winter can be, summer’s no good either. You don’t want to be outside in the winter because it’s -30, and you don’t want to be outside in the summer because it’s +35. The cost of living in Canada is high because you need to heat your home in the winter and cool it in the summer. Almost everybody drives a car because of that “being outside sucks” thing, but cars are expensive to own and operate in Canada. There’s the cost of winter tires, more expensive winter fuels, antifreeze in the windshield washer, plus the constant freeze/thaw cycle wrecks the road surfaces, which results in potholes, which results in more wear and tear on cars. In addition, to make driving safe they drop a lot of salt and sand, which just rusts your car. Because the country is a thin strip, everything is far away, and everything communications-related is expensive. And, a low population relative to the US means that a lot of companies just don’t offer services in Canada because it isn’t worth it to comply with Canadian laws just to get the same number of customers you could get from a single American state. I could keep going on and on.

      Yet, despite all that, Canadians huddle up as close as possible to the border for warmth, but refuse to go any further south because that would mean entering the US. As bad as Canada’s climate is, putting up with that is an easy decision to make when the alternative is 'Murica.

      • BurntWits@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Canadian here, you summed it up perfectly. Everyone I know would agree with your points exactly. It’s a bit of a shit deal living here sometimes, but it’s infinitely better than being an American. Just look at the amount of disgust a Canadian tourist has when asked if they’re American when visiting overseas.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        1 month ago

        Canada should join the Nordic countries in a new Kalmar Union. Everything you mentioned is in common, unlike USA and EU, which both span different climates, and thus different ways of life.

        Don’t get me wrong, I like both EU and the former USA, but I think there’s just more mutual ground in latitude than longitudes.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          Canada should really just wait until the US collapses and then move south into the wreckage.

          The Nordic countries don’t understand bad climate. Maybe they want to continue existing as they are, but Canadians will want to move south as soon as the US destroys itself.

          Measure Oslo Stockholm Helsinki Ottawa
          Coldest Mean Daily Minimum -4.7 -3.2 -6.3 -14
          Coldest Mean Minimum -15.9 -13.7 -20.6 -27
          Coldest Record Low -26.0 -28.2 -35 -38.9
          Hottest Mean Maximum 29.6 30.6 27.9 32
          Hottest Record High 34.6 35.4 33.2 37.8

          Ottawa is significantly colder than those country’s capitals during the winter, and significantly hotter in the summer. It might be unpleasant at times to live in those European climates, but it’s truly miserable to live in Ottawa for much of the year.

          People in the Nordic countries might want to stay there because it’s the only place where their language is spoken, or because there are thousands of years of tradition in living there. Meanwhile, Canada as a country is barely 150 years old, and speaks the same language (with roughly the same accent) as the neighbour to the south.

          There’s a lot in common in terms of culture too. Sure, Canada plays a bit more hockey than the southerners, but they have the NHL too. The other sports are largely shared: Toronto has NBA and MLB teams. Unlike Europe where “futbol” is big, it’s pretty small in the English-speaking part of North America, but to the extent it exists, Canada is part of the same system, with teams in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. The only split is that Canada plays a superior version of gridiron football with far inferior players, and the US has a mass market hugely popular version of gridiron football with worse rules but much better players.

          Canadians watch the same TV shows and movies, and listen to the same music. Many of the stars of stage and screen in the US are actually Canadian, and many shows that are set in the US and air on US TV are actually filmed in Canada.

          So really, there isn’t a lot that Canada has in common with the Nordic countries. I like the idea of working more with the EU and less with the US, but culturally Canadians are part of the English-speaking North American culture… except when it comes to politics, guns, and healthcare.

          I just hope the US hurries its collapse up so that the remnants of the fractured states can petition to join Canada and the border can be shifted down. Then Canadians can move to a more hospitable climate without having to abandon the parts of their culture that matter.

      • Jamablaya@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Meanwhile they have wheatfields 4 hours north of Edmonton. Posts like this always remind me how much I hate most Canadians and their whiny, weak, entitled, arrogant, half clever bullshit.

  • Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 month ago

    America isn’t any better. Depending on what statistic you are looking at, 40% to 75% of all Americans live within 100 miles of the border

    Not so fun fact: if American border patrol agents stop you within the 100 mile zone, they can ignore parts of the fourth amendment and perform what would normally be illegal search and seizure

    100 Mile Zone

    • Zolidus@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The implication of that map is skewed hard though. It’s only cause of Montreal, Toronto, S & SW ontario and Vancouver. 3 small spots compared to the size of the border, with 90% of the border population.

    • TheSaddestMan@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      Us? You-S-A tarriff’d the world!

      <sincerity> I know you’re joking :P It’s legit a potential weakness actually. Trump could invade with very little resistance beyond the border, our population was too focused on trade by land and now we’ve had to reconsider our priorities. Also, the image neglects Edmonton’s existence. </sincerity>

        • TheSaddestMan@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          Wait, are you implying it can’t be a choke point as an East-West route? Or implying it is a choke point for Edmonton? Or am I missing the point?

          • Cort@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I was just saying that during a hypothetical invasion by Trump it would be a choke point

    • Tuukka R@sopuli.xyz
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      1 month ago

      If I understand correctly based on a map and Wikipedia, the concept of “a lot of people” does not exist in North Dakota, though.

      I had never heard of the city of Bismarck, their state capital of more than 70 thousand inhabitants, a bit over 10% of the state’s population. But, now I do. I also had not thought there can be a state capital with that little population. (And then this made me curious and I learned that in Germany the smallest state capital is Schwerin, in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and it has about 98 000 inhabitants in a state of 1½ million inhabitants.)

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        The subset is a lot of and the set is North Dakotans.

        If you have a room of ten people a lot of them can have things in common.

      • buttnugget@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Speaking of Germany, Bismarck is named after Otto von and when he was still alive! Greater Bismarck includes Mandan too, so it’s a bit more like 100k+ people in the area, but yeah it’s pretty small. Lots of the middle west is like that. They need to be consolidated into a single state for the senate lol

      • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Trenton, NJ, the most densely populated state in America, only has 91k. This represents only 1% of the population, versus 10 in ND. I’m not sure how it is around the country, but of the capitals of NJ, NY, PA, none are amongst the most populated cities in the states. And I don’t really care about the rest of the states (and I like Mass, but it doesn’t fit my example), so that’s that.

        You’ve certainly piqued my interest in regard to populations of capitals v. the states they represent.

        EDIT: And the first search result on the Google is from a Reddit post from seven years ago, listing 17 states in the US where the capitals are the most populated cities. With a map, because who doesn’t like pictures?

        EDIT 2: I’ll just take this opportunity to spout some nonsense I like to spout: NYC (at least Manhattan, but maybe even out to Montauk, but of course excluding garbage ass Staten Island) and Philadelphia should be part of NJ, as they have more in common with NJ than they do their own states. Upstate NY and pretty much the entirety of PA are rural hick people. And sure there’s some exclusions, Pittsburgh, the finger lakes, Rochester, but for the most part, rural hick people.

  • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    We have, it’s called Winnipeg. Also I love how it stops in the before the Quebec border.

      • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        This makes me wonder if NY drivers drive like the crazies on the 401 and gardiner

  • medem@lemmy.wtf
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    1 month ago

    Legitimate question: what may be the actual reason for this concentration? Is it weather? Natural resources? Is it political? On a related note: what is the reason that Canada as a whole has so few people? It is still mindblowing for me that the entire country has less people than each of the world’s top 3 metropolitan areas

    • eatCasserole@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Also this map is kinda misleading. Edmonton and the entire 4 maritime provinces are not here, and the main reason so much of the population is close to the border is that something like 1/3 of the population is clustered around the great lakes/st Laurence, because people came here by boat.

    • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’d argue the weather as the biggest one, at least for BC. Northern BC is absolutely beautiful but it’s cold af in the winter and burny as hell in the summer. If we’re talking far north in the territories, I know another issue is infrastructure because it’s much more difficult to build/get stuff up there. Though this meme misses a big part of the Indigenous/Inuit population that lives up there.

      Also, this country is just fucking huge, like bigger than I think any of us realize. If our population were to spread out, it would be a very thin spread.

      Edit: I kept thinking about this and got help with some math on it. If the population of Canada were to spread out, we’d each have about 64 acres (0.256km) to ourselves. By comparison, the same calculation in the US with the US population would equal approx 0.03 km, or just over 7 acres per person.

    • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      Further south is warmer in winter

      But I think a lot of it is economic. Port cities are where money changes hands, and we’ve effectively smeared them all along the boarder.

  • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    In B.C.'s defense, imo, most of the land to its North is either too mountainous [1][2.1] or has too harsh a climate [2.2] to be realistically inhabitable. I think it’s also worth noting that 15.4% of B.C.'s lands are protected [3].

    References
    1. Type: Document (PDF). Title: “BC Fact Sheet”. Publisher: “Super, Natural British Columbia”. Accessed: 2025-08-09T04:10Z. URI: https://www.hellobc.com/content/uploads/2019/04/TM_BCFactSheet.pdf.
      • Type: Text. Location: [§“The Land”. ¶2]

        Ten mountain ranges push west from the Canadian Rockies in the east to the Coast Mountains and the Vancouver Island Ranges in the west, and ancient temperate rainforests hug the coast. In between are rolling grasslands, lush valleys, tens of thousands of lakes, glacier-fed rivers, and even semi-arid desert. Mountains cover 75% of the province.

    2. Type: Article. Title: “British Columbia”. Publisher: “Wikipedia”. Published: 2025-08-08T03:18Z. Accessed: 2025-08-09T05:48Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia.
      1. Type: Image. Filename: “BC_Elevation.svg”. Author: “Awmcphee”. Published: 2024-04-27. Location: §“Geography”. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BC_Elevation.svg.

        .

      2. Type: Image. Filename: “British_Columbia_Köppen.svg”. Author: “Adam Peterson”. Published: 2016-08-12. Location: [§“Geography”§“Climate”]. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:British_Columbia_Köppen.svg.

    3. Type: Article. Title: “Protected Lands & Waters in B.C.”. Publisher: [“Environmental Reporting BC”. “Ministry of Environment”. “British Columbia”.]. Published: 2016-06. Accessed: 2025-08-09T05:59Z. URI: https://www.env.gov.bc.ca/soe/indicators/land/protected-lands-and-waters.html.
      • Type: Text. Location: ¶1.

        […] Protected lands and waters cover 15.4% of B.C.'s land base and 3.2% of B.C.'s marine areas. […]