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Then the regional economy quickly shifted toward forestry and mining. |
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Do the residents of Rouyn or Val d'Or ever feel slighted by the Province of Quebec in the same way that residents of Northern Ontario do sometimes? It is quite isolated from the rest of the province - the only link between the north and south is Quebec Route 117 and it's a pretty remote drive. I'd imagine that Montreal and Quebec City would feel very far away, like how someone in Timmins might feel Toronto is very far away, both in distance and politically speaking. Or is it just not a thing? |
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Although some of the francophone settlement in the area is earlier. IIRC, L'Orignal was actually settled by the French when it was still New France, and I think Embrun was settled in the mid-19th century by francophones from Quebec. |
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But you definitely feel like you're in a different place as compared to the South, when you're in Northern Ontario. It is moreso the further north you go and how reflective the local economy is of 'the North'. |
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I work with someone from Geraldton who is francophone. She speaks French very well and much better than the average Franco-Ontarian. |
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Quebec is all about its regions whereas in Ontario the North is just one big place on its own. A place like Rouyn-Noranda is visited by the QC Premier at least 2-3 times every year. But Timmins which has the same population as Rouyn might gets a visit by the ON Premier once every 5 years on average. Once example I remember is former Premier Dalton McGuinty was Premier from 2003 to 2013 (a decade) and NEVER visited Timmins as Premier! The Quebec government is much more supportive of resourced based industries compared to Ontario. More money is given for arts, culture and recreation. And Rouyn has a university but Timmins doesn't. The Ontario government will often makes decisions that harm Northern Ontario for example in forestry but you won't see that happen in Quebec. Southern Ontario often doesn't make us feel as part of the province. But in Quebec people in more isolated regions are treated much better by their government and political leaders. |
i would add that alienation vs the south of the province is less intense in Abitibi due to almost everyone having roots there if you go back about a century.
In Timmins and northern Ontario it is much more common for people to have no prior family relationship with Toronto or southern Ontario. Many early Timmins residents came directly from Quebec the Maritimes the UK or continental Europe. The population is not descended from that of the south of the province like it is in Abitibi. |
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But most of the francophone towns in that area were originally anglo. Even ones with names that suggest otherwise like Plantagenet and Alfred. |
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If you count a few small towns and villages it also goes a bit further west than Sudbury on the southern corridor. Places like Blind River, Dubreuilville and Elliott Lake. |
I've given it some thought, and "Mother Country" is too strong a term. To me, it implies a level of subservience, aspiration, and conscious imitation that simply doesn't exist between Canada as a whole and the United States.
That said, an individual country music artist from rural Saskatchewan, a hip hop artist from Guelph, or a military brat from St. John's probably is looking to the United States as a "Mother Country". But that level of devotion or even awareness doesn't seem to exist as a whole. For example, if you read newspaper articles and the like from the early 1950s when St. John's was adjusting to Confederation (which, as I've noted many times, voted overwhelmingly against), you'll see lots of sad laments to the loss of various British things, lots of complaints about the, as Mary Walsh put it, "dour and shoddy" goods of this "soulless federation". "She's a bit chilly", back then, meant you couldn't get past Canada's cold, polite facade. That level of displeasure and rejection I think shows Newfoundland saw the United Kingdom as its "Mother Country" at the time. We didn't just want to be like them, we thought we were them. There's no significant segment of Canada as a whole that has that type of devotion to the United States. Parts of it used to have, toward the United Kingdom. But none of us do anymore. Even the sentiment that existed here is foreign to me. That local level of devotion to the United Kingdom, instead of Ireland, feels like it couldn't possibly have existed here - but it clearly did. ***** One aside regarding the OP - Someone123 already mentioned many settlers to the Maritimes came directly from Europe. I'd like to add a clarification from the other direction that some Newfoundland settlers did not. Many, many families - including portions of my mother's - arrived via Boston, or even settled there for years, before coming to Newfoundland. |
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Back in the time before railways and steamships however people stayed put a lot more. The towns in the 1700's tended to be populated by families that came on specific ships and that was it. The price of travel was so high that some people agreed to become indentured servants for years in exchange for passage across the Atlantic. Most towns in Nova Scotia have specific founding ships or events. For example, Pictou was settled by Highland Scots who came on the ship Hector in 1773 and you can visit the replica ship there. Truro was founded by a group of Ulster Scots in 1761. Dartmouth settlers came on the Alderney and that's why there's an Alderney Landing there. It's very common for people doing genealogy research in NS to look up the ship their ancestors came on. The New England Planters are interesting too. They moved to Nova Scotia in the 1750's, mostly settling the Annapolis Valley after the expulsion of the Acadians. They didn't turn into revolutionaries a couple of decades later and they weren't big fans of the Loyalists. In the 1700's at least there doesn't seem to have been much sense of American solidarity. I suspect that if you spoke to them about the 13 colonies being a "mother country" the whole idea would have made no sense to them whatsoever. They merely moved from one isolated coastal town to another, and some of them were already recent settlers from Britain. There wasn't even much sense of nation states back then. The main identities were Catholic and Protestant. Like I've pointed out before, Britain appointed a Francophone governor to Nova Scotia in 1740. He was considered a good choice because he was bilingual and a Huguenot. |
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(Unless of course you go even further into remoteness, into areas where most people are aboriginal.) |
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I already knew about Nova Scotia, Boston, and Montreal. But had NO idea anyone related to me ended up in Michigan. These were my ancestors by 1875: https://i.postimg.cc/DZ562KgQ/Capture2.png |
Regarding Canadians thinking of the US as their mother country, obviously none of them do. That is the point of this thread: to put forth an idea that is outside the box and provocative.
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