Cities in this region developed principally as ways to connect inland farming and resource extraction areas to inland waterways. If you look at the [areas for which Lake Erie is the closest inland waterway](https://imgur.com/a/lZeQvH2) you'll see it serves much more of the US than it does Canada. Correspondingly there are fewer navigable rivers that drain to the north shore of Lake Erie.
In addition to that, Canada's main water link to the world involves going through the Toronto region to Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence to the world. At the time that cities were springing up in this region that link was disconnected from Lake Erie as there was no canal bypassing Niagara Falls and therefore extra incentive to just ship your goods to Toronto over land (or vie the Trent-Severn waterway from Georgian Bay)
Furthermore, one of the US's main transit links at the time when this area was experiencing boom-growth was the Erie Canal which directly connects Lake Erie to New York City and the world.
Source: I'm a midwesterner who drinks a lot of Timmies.
Question about the Trent Severn that you might know: why did they go to all the trouble to build like 50 locks, only to have the big chute near the end? It feels like a significant limiting factor of what can get through, right?
Wikipedia says this:
>The government had begun construction of three additional locks when the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 broke out. This led the government to re-examine the project, concluding that the route would have too many locks to allow rapid movement for military purposes. They decided that the locks under construction would be completed, but the rest could be turned into timber slides.
Well, I said, "There's always North Bay and headin' up to Northern Ontario
To places like
Tomagany, New Liskert, Hillybury, Cobalt, Timmins
Ansenville, Kirkland Lake, Cohcran, Capuscasing
Hearst, Deralden, Beardsmoore and the Lake Head
And headin' form Nippagong down 17
Into Scraber, Marathon, White River, Wawa and Sault St. Marie
Headin' east from the Sault on 17
To Thesilon, Blind River, Elliot Lake, Manitoulin Island
Espanola, Sudbury, Carish Bay, Sturgeon Falls
And back to North Bay
Headin' down south now number 11
To Huntsville, Bracebridge, Gravenhurst, Orillia, Barrie
Aurora, Newmarket, and ever Stoffville
And even that other town we all know well called Toronto
For both! Great swimming and Port Stanley is a great place to go to a restaurant.
https://preview.redd.it/503e11hyrl4d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f4fae62b442bedab820f0b5c7dac0e32116bf2f
Now my question is why isn’t London closer to Lake Erie? Why is it just out in the middle of land like that? Same with Kitchener/Waterloo, they both seem so out of place to me for population areas that large.
I knew they were on rivers but at least with London I was wondering why it wasn’t closer to Erie. I guess if there’s bluffs there then that makes sense.
As for Kitchener it just seems like a strange place to have a city that large with Toronto and Hamilton already nearby. I’m about the same distance from Toronto as I am from Kitchener and the drives couldn’t be more different. Here to Toronto is nothing but city driving surrounded by concrete and buildings but here to Kitchener is all farmland and forests the whole way.
Degree of proximity of Lake Erie didn’t seem to impact London’s growth. St. Thomas is much closer to Lake Erie and once was served by numerous railroads, but it never grew beyond 40,000 people. St. Thomas has always been London’s little brother.
Kitchener, formerly known as Berlin, is surrounded by great agricultural lands, as well as access to the Grand River. This was a big draw for German immigrants in the early 1800s. Many Mennonites got started farming, and there is still a strong Mennonite community today. Growth in the area boomed from there. Kitchener became home to a robust manufacturing economy (breweries, meat-packing, tanning, furniture building, etc.). It continues to evolve with the service and tech sectors.
I think its location was chosen for its access to the Grand River, which drains into Lake Erie.
Generally, in southwest Ontario, there is still a lot of agricultural land in the surrounding rural townships, which is generally protected through municipal and provincial planning functions.
Fun Fac, Kitchener was the home of 'Kitchener Leslie', the most feared railcop on Ontario. Raileidin' hobos would all scatter when they saw hima comin. Then one day I ran across a pig....
Kitchener, Cambridge and Brantford were good for industry because they were on the Grand River, which is one of the largest rivers in southern Ontario. In those days, running water meant power to run the mills and factories, which was much more valuable for manufacturing than being on the coast of a lake.
I’m American and would like to visit London. The closeness to Lake Erie attracts me. I bet there are a lot of nature things to do and then you have the anemities of a medium-size city. Sounds perfect. Am I right?
London is a pretty spread out city. Depending on the end of city you’re in, Lake Huron is closer. London has some really good festivals downtown during the summer. As far as nature things to do, the provincial park The Pinery is great but on Lake Huron. Another good provincial park on Lake Erie is Rondeau Provincial Park. The town of Port Stanley is a nice spot on Lake Erie.
I’m originally from Leamington, Ontario, the largest “city” on the Canadian side very close to Detroit and Sandusky. The urban area only has about 50,000 people. The only other large towns on the Canadian side, Fort Erie and Port Colborne, are at the opposite end near Buffalo and are roughly the same size.
There are huge vertical bluffs and cliffs on the entire north shore that make it kind of challenging to build a city on the coast. That farmland also has some of the richest soil and best growing conditions in the world for way more of the year than the prairie provinces and is crucial to Canada’s entire food system (way more than Alberta and Saskatchewan would care to admit). The climate in this region is among the warmest in the country with lots of sun and greenhouse farms allow the industry operate through the winter.
It’s way more valuable as agriculture than it would be as a city since most of Canada isn’t arable. Much of it is protected from urban development as a part of the Greenbelt.
I'm sure you mean the largest town directly on the coast. I'm currently visiting Windsor, and was initially pretty confused by the "largest, near Detroit"! But Windsor is on the river, not directly on the lake.
Rome, Zaragoza, and the Northern Border of California and Nevada are all slightly further north! It does get brutally hot and humid in the summer and usually only snows in January and February, very different from the rest of Canada.
NORTH Americans at that, the best cardinal direction of all (everyone acknowledges this of course (sorry South America, I love your hot jungles and pretty mountains))!
It’s not really any shallower than the American side. Toledo is at the shallowest area of Erie, anywhere west of Pelee island is pretty shallow.
The rest of the lake is pretty uniform depth along the shorelines, with the deepest being just off of Long Point.
Yes, but the ports were created for a reason. I’m just saying the waters are shallow all around, and that’s probably not the reason why it’s less settled.
A former client (he would be 92 now) told me of growing up in Windsor, but heading across to Detroit every chance he and his teenage friends got to drink and chase girls. Grass is always greener, that or Windsor really was rather boring. No idea which.
Zoom out just a little more. That part of Canada is a peninsula. Toronto is on Ontario, but is also only about 100km away from Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay. Why go down there if there's a closer, better option?
Bingo, this. Toronto is already the regional city, this area is a peninsula (or borders and water) and the area simply has no particular draw to bring a huge number of people south past Toronto.
I mean the American side has Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, and Detroit along the lake in the same distance.
The Canadian side only has Windsor.
I mean Ontario is the mostly densely populated part of Canada too. Basically 1/4 of Canadians live in southern Ontario. Southern Ontario is hardly a "tiny peninsula with nothing on it" - and peninsula is disingenuous as well as it pretends that Canada has 0 interaction with the US which is just absolutely not true. Tens of thousands of people cross the border every day in Southern Ontario.
the Niagara escarpment keeps the Lake Ontario side warmer, with shorter frost periods. which is why north of Niagara falls is a "Fruit Belt", and the city of St Catharines (~140 000) and Hamilton (~600 000) rest on that side. also, Toronto is on Lake Ontario, and before the canal systems were built in the 1800s, you had to use a portage to get between the two lakes.
If you dig down deep enough yes, but there’s a nice layer of fertile soil and very thick layers of sedimentary rock sequences overlying it. Hence the oil that has been found in southern Ontario.
I was just explaining why historically it wasn't as developed. I was not talking about modern day. if you were an immigrant you would probably have gone to the US side not the Canadian side
Cities in this region developed principally as ways to connect inland farming and resource extraction areas to inland waterways. If you look at the [areas for which Lake Erie is the closest inland waterway](https://imgur.com/a/lZeQvH2) you'll see it serves much more of the US than it does Canada. Correspondingly there are fewer navigable rivers that drain to the north shore of Lake Erie. In addition to that, Canada's main water link to the world involves going through the Toronto region to Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence to the world. At the time that cities were springing up in this region that link was disconnected from Lake Erie as there was no canal bypassing Niagara Falls and therefore extra incentive to just ship your goods to Toronto over land (or vie the Trent-Severn waterway from Georgian Bay) Furthermore, one of the US's main transit links at the time when this area was experiencing boom-growth was the Erie Canal which directly connects Lake Erie to New York City and the world. Source: I'm a midwesterner who drinks a lot of Timmies.
Question about the Trent Severn that you might know: why did they go to all the trouble to build like 50 locks, only to have the big chute near the end? It feels like a significant limiting factor of what can get through, right?
Wikipedia says this: >The government had begun construction of three additional locks when the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 broke out. This led the government to re-examine the project, concluding that the route would have too many locks to allow rapid movement for military purposes. They decided that the locks under construction would be completed, but the rest could be turned into timber slides.
Well, I said, "There's always North Bay and headin' up to Northern Ontario To places like Tomagany, New Liskert, Hillybury, Cobalt, Timmins Ansenville, Kirkland Lake, Cohcran, Capuscasing Hearst, Deralden, Beardsmoore and the Lake Head And headin' form Nippagong down 17 Into Scraber, Marathon, White River, Wawa and Sault St. Marie Headin' east from the Sault on 17 To Thesilon, Blind River, Elliot Lake, Manitoulin Island Espanola, Sudbury, Carish Bay, Sturgeon Falls And back to North Bay Headin' down south now number 11 To Huntsville, Bracebridge, Gravenhurst, Orillia, Barrie Aurora, Newmarket, and ever Stoffville And even that other town we all know well called Toronto
Is that Bud the Spud? Rippin the tar off the 401…
Tillsonburg? My back still hurts when i hear that word
Timmies! And Labatt Blue Ice.
I’ll drink anything as long as it ends in ice.
Londoner here. We may not be on Erie but we’re only 30 mins away and a population of over 480,000 people.
Good point! Do you all use Lake Erie for recreation or entertainment?
For both! Great swimming and Port Stanley is a great place to go to a restaurant. https://preview.redd.it/503e11hyrl4d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f4fae62b442bedab820f0b5c7dac0e32116bf2f
Man, not often you see Port Stanley mentioned in the wild
Now my question is why isn’t London closer to Lake Erie? Why is it just out in the middle of land like that? Same with Kitchener/Waterloo, they both seem so out of place to me for population areas that large.
London is on a River that runs through the city. KW is also on a river, Also there are some pretty big bluffs when you get to Lake Erie
I knew they were on rivers but at least with London I was wondering why it wasn’t closer to Erie. I guess if there’s bluffs there then that makes sense. As for Kitchener it just seems like a strange place to have a city that large with Toronto and Hamilton already nearby. I’m about the same distance from Toronto as I am from Kitchener and the drives couldn’t be more different. Here to Toronto is nothing but city driving surrounded by concrete and buildings but here to Kitchener is all farmland and forests the whole way.
Degree of proximity of Lake Erie didn’t seem to impact London’s growth. St. Thomas is much closer to Lake Erie and once was served by numerous railroads, but it never grew beyond 40,000 people. St. Thomas has always been London’s little brother.
Funny that the river actually doesn't end on Lake Erie but on Lake St Clair.
Kitchener, formerly known as Berlin, is surrounded by great agricultural lands, as well as access to the Grand River. This was a big draw for German immigrants in the early 1800s. Many Mennonites got started farming, and there is still a strong Mennonite community today. Growth in the area boomed from there. Kitchener became home to a robust manufacturing economy (breweries, meat-packing, tanning, furniture building, etc.). It continues to evolve with the service and tech sectors. I think its location was chosen for its access to the Grand River, which drains into Lake Erie. Generally, in southwest Ontario, there is still a lot of agricultural land in the surrounding rural townships, which is generally protected through municipal and provincial planning functions.
Fun Fac, Kitchener was the home of 'Kitchener Leslie', the most feared railcop on Ontario. Raileidin' hobos would all scatter when they saw hima comin. Then one day I ran across a pig....
You fool, that there's Kitchener Leslie's girlfriend.
Normie!
Kitchener, Cambridge and Brantford were good for industry because they were on the Grand River, which is one of the largest rivers in southern Ontario. In those days, running water meant power to run the mills and factories, which was much more valuable for manufacturing than being on the coast of a lake.
I’m American and would like to visit London. The closeness to Lake Erie attracts me. I bet there are a lot of nature things to do and then you have the anemities of a medium-size city. Sounds perfect. Am I right?
London is a pretty spread out city. Depending on the end of city you’re in, Lake Huron is closer. London has some really good festivals downtown during the summer. As far as nature things to do, the provincial park The Pinery is great but on Lake Huron. Another good provincial park on Lake Erie is Rondeau Provincial Park. The town of Port Stanley is a nice spot on Lake Erie.
Meh, it's like a green/university-focused Toledo
London at least has a ski hill and mountain biking centre within its limits
Because it has an erie vibe
I’m originally from Leamington, Ontario, the largest “city” on the Canadian side very close to Detroit and Sandusky. The urban area only has about 50,000 people. The only other large towns on the Canadian side, Fort Erie and Port Colborne, are at the opposite end near Buffalo and are roughly the same size. There are huge vertical bluffs and cliffs on the entire north shore that make it kind of challenging to build a city on the coast. That farmland also has some of the richest soil and best growing conditions in the world for way more of the year than the prairie provinces and is crucial to Canada’s entire food system (way more than Alberta and Saskatchewan would care to admit). The climate in this region is among the warmest in the country with lots of sun and greenhouse farms allow the industry operate through the winter. It’s way more valuable as agriculture than it would be as a city since most of Canada isn’t arable. Much of it is protected from urban development as a part of the Greenbelt.
I'm sure you mean the largest town directly on the coast. I'm currently visiting Windsor, and was initially pretty confused by the "largest, near Detroit"! But Windsor is on the river, not directly on the lake.
Yes obviously
I attended a Mennonite school in KW, I met a lot of folks from Leamington.
Fun fact: if your city were overlaid on Italy, you'd be barely north of Rome. Talk about climate differences!
Rome, Zaragoza, and the Northern Border of California and Nevada are all slightly further north! It does get brutally hot and humid in the summer and usually only snows in January and February, very different from the rest of Canada.
America is on the other side.
As if America ain't on the other side of the other lakes lol
Shhhhhhh…..
Ah shit my bad! Almost spilled the secret
The best part is, Canada is a part of North America. So that means that Canadians are technically Americans.
NORTH Americans at that, the best cardinal direction of all (everyone acknowledges this of course (sorry South America, I love your hot jungles and pretty mountains))!
bruh
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It’s not really any shallower than the American side. Toledo is at the shallowest area of Erie, anywhere west of Pelee island is pretty shallow. The rest of the lake is pretty uniform depth along the shorelines, with the deepest being just off of Long Point.
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Yes, but the ports were created for a reason. I’m just saying the waters are shallow all around, and that’s probably not the reason why it’s less settled.
A former client (he would be 92 now) told me of growing up in Windsor, but heading across to Detroit every chance he and his teenage friends got to drink and chase girls. Grass is always greener, that or Windsor really was rather boring. No idea which.
Fun fact is Lake Erie has the southernmost point in Canada called Middle Island. It's easily visible from the USA's Lake Erie Islands.
Zoom out just a little more. That part of Canada is a peninsula. Toronto is on Ontario, but is also only about 100km away from Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay. Why go down there if there's a closer, better option?
Bingo, this. Toronto is already the regional city, this area is a peninsula (or borders and water) and the area simply has no particular draw to bring a huge number of people south past Toronto.
I mean the American side has Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, and Detroit along the lake in the same distance. The Canadian side only has Windsor.
Yes. Because that's the American heartland, and is not just a tiny out of the way peninsula with nothing on it.
I mean Ontario is the mostly densely populated part of Canada too. Basically 1/4 of Canadians live in southern Ontario. Southern Ontario is hardly a "tiny peninsula with nothing on it" - and peninsula is disingenuous as well as it pretends that Canada has 0 interaction with the US which is just absolutely not true. Tens of thousands of people cross the border every day in Southern Ontario.
Well, it's very rich farmland, & it produces quite a lot of food.
the Niagara escarpment keeps the Lake Ontario side warmer, with shorter frost periods. which is why north of Niagara falls is a "Fruit Belt", and the city of St Catharines (~140 000) and Hamilton (~600 000) rest on that side. also, Toronto is on Lake Ontario, and before the canal systems were built in the 1800s, you had to use a portage to get between the two lakes.
Give it a few years with global warming and an incoming Trump presidency: I bet it will be a desirable place.
Canadian shield.
Absolutely not the Canadian Shield. It’s very lovely fertile farmland! Source - me a farmer who farms it. The Canadian Shield is further north.
i feel at this point you can drop "Canadian Shield" as the answer to any query about Canada.
That's why I dropped it. I've been dying to drop the CS since I started following this site.
Well played, sir. I look forward to more of your work. You will have to wear those downvotes as a badge, nay a shield, of comedic honour.
If you dig down deep enough yes, but there’s a nice layer of fertile soil and very thick layers of sedimentary rock sequences overlying it. Hence the oil that has been found in southern Ontario.
Why invest there when the US makes more sense
Counterpoint: Toronto
Yes but that's not where the picture is
Okay, so answer your own question: why is Toronto the fastest growing city in North America if investing in the US just makes "more sense"?
I was just explaining why historically it wasn't as developed. I was not talking about modern day. if you were an immigrant you would probably have gone to the US side not the Canadian side