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Fantasy Geography/Politics

Oddball

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I think we might have been at risk of totally derailing the brand spanking new Statcan data thread with inane maps, stats and flags. Therefore I give you the Fantasy Geography/Politics Thread! Home to all that is inane maps, stats and flags!

Picking-up where @UrbanWarrior and I left off, topic number 1 is the dissolution of Ontario! Because if there's one thing we Albertan's know it's how other people should keep their affairs! ;):p Therefor it's up to us Albertans to come up with a proposal that destroys Ontario, thereby saving the country and likely the world.

I give you Oddball's 6 Ontarios Proposal!

upload_2018-6-18_17-27-28.png


I would replace the province with 4 new provinces and 2 new territories. The map above is based on the existing Ontario Census Divisions. Each of the four provinces would get 6 of Onatrio's existing 24 senators and a create two new Senators for the territories. Each jurisdiction would get a proportional number of Ontario's 121 seats. I like some of Urban Warrior's names better, but I just wanted to throw up some alternatives for sport.

Province 1: Ontario
2016 Population: 4,109,734
Proposed Capital: London
Major Cities: Hamilton, St. Catherines, Guelph, Windsor, Barrie, Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge
Disputed Territory: Burlington in Toronto Province.

Making up the majority of Ontario's southern peninsula, it encloses most of the CMAs and CAs in the province that are often overshadowed by Toronto.

Province 2: Toronto
2016 Population: 6,417,516
Proposed Capital: Toronto
Major Cities: Other major GTA constituents like Mississauga, Oshawa and Newmarket
Disputed Territory: The southern portions of the Golden Horseshoe and Barrie in Southern Ontario, Cottage Country in Northern Ontario

The Centre of the Universe can now be the centre of it's own universe rather than project it's ideals and desires over a broad geographic area.

Province 3: Upper Canada
2016 Population: 1,128,200
Proposed Capital: Kingston
Major Cities: Peterborough and the suburbs of Ottawa
Disputed Territory: Ottawa, the province is without it's natural population centre thanks to the Capital territory.

A province for the people Eastern Ontario which is more rural than other parts of the south. It also includes a lot of the oldest parts of the province and important military bases like Trenton. It would also likely be home to a large number of federal government related sites due to it's proximity to Ottawa. It might also be open to being a bilingual province thanks to it's proximity to Quebec.

Province 4: Superior
2016 Population: 713,586
Proposed Capital: Sault Ste. Marie
Major Cities: Sudbury, Timmons, Thunder Bay
Disputed Territory: Kenora

The more populous strip of northern Ontario. It's more southern and lake looking. Soo may be smaller than Sudbury and TB, but it is more centrally located. This also has many of French speaking areas of the province, so it would most likely be the 2nd officially bilingual province. I'd probably make Kenora part of it too, but I was working with CD data.

Territory 1: National Capital Territory
2016 Population: 934,243
Disputed Territory: Gatineau

This is only about blowing up Ontario. Quebec was outside the scope, but it would make a tonne of sense to include it too. This territory would be unique in Canada and provide for the close relationship between Ottawa and the federal government.

Territory 2: Wabimaki Territory
Capital: Moosonee
Population: 145,215
Disputed Territory: Islands and water belonging to Nunavut in Hudson's Bay

It probably wouldn't include Kenora, because the point is to give emphasis to the parts of Ontario that aren't as developed and integrated into the rest of the country. A lot of this land was added to Ontario later than the rest and has a predominantly aboriginal population like the further northern territories. It would hopefully give them more political empowerment and open up access to more federal development funds.
 

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Time to re-invent Risk, with a Canada version :cool:

If you wanted to, I'm sure you could devise a really interesting game with Statcan data. You could know the economic and industrial capacity of every region, as well as the population and pretty well every other detail you could imagine. Canada's Civil War, the board game! :D

"In a Dystopic Trumpian Future where the North American Alliance has totally decayed completely and BC keeps the country shut off from the outside world, Canada turns on itself! It's every jurisdiction for itself! Re-unite the country with an Iron Fist if you have to, but do it before the Eagle notices that the Beaver is in distress!" :eek:
 
There was a lot of talk in Toronto about how it should be its own province during the Harris era. I wonder if that will happen again now that Ford's in power (though he is from Toronto, unlike Harris).

Generally the trend is toward more regional political integration rather than less. It would be difficult to plan the transportation infrastructure for the Greater Golden Horseshoe if it was separated into three independent provinces.
 
A pox on Toronto's transit plans! :p

JK! But, in favour of my plan I'd argue that having all the constituents of the GTA in a single province hasn't really resulted in any fantastic results either. I'm sure the Toronto adjacent provinces could agree on a joint transit planning committee. In all truth, limiting Toronto's reach is a feature, not a bug of the plan.
 
Trust me, if Toronto was broken away from Ontario, Toronto wouldn't be on the losing end of that equation. The GTA generates over half of Ontario's GDP. I'm sure they'd love to keep all that tax revenue for themselves rather than spreading it over the rest of the province.
 
I'd argue that having all the constituents of the GTA in a single province hasn't really resulted in any fantastic results either.

That's because transit has traditionally been treated as a municipal affair. It's only recently that the Ontario government finally realized that it needs to get into regional transit planning. They established Metrolinx to play that role and it has been slowly taking over transit planning from the municipalities. There have been some successes and some failures, but I think the big game changer will be the transformation of the GO Train system from a sleepy, one-way commuter service to more of an express metro service that connects a series of Transit-oriented nodes around Southern Ontario (although Ontario and its municipalities still have much to learn about building TOD communities).

Of course, who knows what will happen now that Ford is in power. Last time the Fords had control of transit planning, Toronto ended up with a still unbuilt $4 billion dollar one-stop subway line (for which they scrapped a shovel-ready 5-stop LRT line that would have been a fraction of the cost).
 
That's all well and reasonable and really not to take away from your arguments but here in the fantasy politics/geography thread, reason is only useful as pretext.

Please support your arguments with well drawn battle plans for how the People's Repulic of Toronto plans to take back Hamilton from the guns of the Free Dominion of Southern Ontario. :p

Or don't, but the point isn't really to be rational, it's to draw fun maps for fun.
 
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Here's a map I made of a northern route for the Trans Canada Highway - The Boreal Highway.

I've drawn it from Dawson, Yukon to Rigolet, Labrador. I followed as much existing roads I could see on the map, and used the terrain feature to do a rough follow of where non-existing roads *might* go. In Ontario, I followed a portion of the existing TCH 11 - as there wasn't much to connect to north of it already. This doesn't take into account any possible road improvement plans in any of the regions. The length is approximately 7500 km. I don't particularly see this as having any economic benefits at this point in our history, but would provide better connectivity to many indigenous and other isolated northern communities.

The pins represent communities with direct or improved access to the TCH system, by population.

Yellow: 1K -- 5K
Blue: 5K -- 10K
Green: 10K -- 20K
Peach: 20K -- 40k
Purple: >40K

Untitled.png


https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nDnk2E9f0chzHKsoAccCJPDD1hBS21qM&usp=sharing
 

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Here's a map I made of a northern route for the Trans Canada Highway - The Boreal Highway.

I've drawn it from Dawson, Yukon to Rigolet, Labrador. I followed as much existing roads I could see on the map, and used the terrain feature to do a rough follow of where non-existing roads *might* go. In Ontario, I followed a portion of the existing TCH 11 - as there wasn't much to connect to north of it already. This doesn't take into account any possible road improvement plans in any of the regions. The length is approximately 7500 km. I don't particularly see this as having any economic benefits at this point in our history, but would provide better connectivity to many indigenous and other isolated northern communities.

The pins represent communities with direct or improved access to the TCH system, by population.

Yellow: 1K -- 5K
Blue: 5K -- 10K
Green: 10K -- 20K
Peach: 20K -- 40k
Purple: >40K

View attachment 147589

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nDnk2E9f0chzHKsoAccCJPDD1hBS21qM&usp=sharing

I really like it. I think it would definitely help fill in Canada's "hidden North." It would also add an alternative all-Canadian route in the event that the Trans-Canada is being worked on. The biggest benefit might be that it would help access natural resource projects.
 
That's all well and reasonable and really not to take away from your arguments but here in the fantasy politics/geography thread, reason is only useful as pretext.

Please support your arguments with well drawn battle plans for how the People's Repulic of Toronto plans to take back Hamilton from the guns of the Free Dominion of Southern Ontario. :p

Or don't, but the point isn't really to be rational, it's to draw fun maps for fun.

Sorry to ruin the fun! But it is actually pretty useful to think about how we could change the political geography of the country to better reflect demographic realities. Like, seriously, why does PEI get to be its own province with almost as many senators as Alberta or BC when its population is less than, say, Guelph? Or, like we've been discussing, how to draw boundaries in and around large metro areas that are probably too big to be municipalities, but too small to be effectively governed by the province - or at least provinces are put in the position of being torn between catering to metro areas and to the rural hinterlands.
 
I'd like to see a map how you'd divvy up Ontario, if indeed you would. I could also create a map for you if you told me which counties/subdivisions you'd put where.

The Senate is a silly beast. I'd far rather see the EEE model that was popping up in the 90s, than what we're left with today. It disproportionately empowers the East, just because that's where the population was when they came up with the damn thing. Today we have the craziness that you point with PEI vis-a-vis the west. The senate is also why a federal election vote in PEI is worth 4 times what it's worth in Alberta.

I think amalgamating the Atlantic provinces would be just as sensible as blowing up Ontario. There is way too much government out there for the number of people.
 
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And Easterners wonder why "Western Alienation" is a thing :p
 
I have no strong views about breaking up or amalgamating the provinces. There is just no easy solution to the question of scale in government. The smaller the jurisdictions, the closer the connection between government and the people. But, on the other hand, the more fragmented and chaotic it becomes to address larger regional/societal issues like the environment or the economy. If you go the other way, and expand jurisdictions, the problems flip. And every individual is going to have some issues in which they favor more centralized authority, and other issues in which they would like more local autonomy.
 

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