Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45
Maybe to you, because you're so familiar with southern Ontario that the slight differences leap to your eyes, but having traveled through both countless times, they actually don't feel completely different at all. Your opinion on it is, IMO, to be taken with a huge grain of salt, the same way we should for, say, a German's opinion that (German) Switzerland and Upper Bavaria "feel completely different". To say things like that, one must not have traveled much (which is why I find it a bit weird, from you).
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Yes, of course, to people from other continents (I did it again) New York and Ontario seem very similar.
But I have to challenge you on the appearance thing. Go to Google Maps and take any street in central and inner suburban Buffalo or Detroit, literally
any one, and you cannot replicate it in Toronto.
Seriously, you can't. Throw a dart on the map in Buffalo: you'll find large sidewalks, grass between the sidewalks and the curb, large houses with wood siding, and an overwhelming sense of deteriorating grandiosity. Now go to Toronto: you get brick, small lots, millions of semi-detached houses, narrow Victorian shopfronts, etc.
Alpine villages in Austria, Switzerland and Italy are far more alike to each other than Hamilton and Buffalo are. Just look at them from the sky, and you can see how the different national myths helped shape them:
Buffalo
Hamilton
Which one of these two is the product of grand gestures and boundless optimism? It's ironic, isn't it? Americans bang on endlessly about individual freedom and opportunity, but the landscape gives the game away. It has always been shaped by the powerful and very non-organic forces of great wealth and government, always hand-in-hand with each other. It's the same everywhere, but it runs contrary to the American myth. And in Canada our milder temperament and lack of social disruption have allowed things to proceed comparatively differently.
Do you only drive on the highways? I can understand how southern Ontario and New York/Michigan look quite similar at the very superficial level of a car speeding along the interstates, but when you actually get onto the surface streets? No way. I've literally had Europeans grab my arms and explain, with wide eyes, how shocked they were at how different they found Buffalo to be from Hamilton.
Even better: do a Googlemaps streetview tour of the two Niagara Falls, Ontario and New York. Away from the tourist stuff. The residential vernacular is just totally different. You'd never mistake the one for the other.