When did Toronto pass Montreal?

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Acajack

With almost 40 million passengers a year I am sure Pearson airport contributes way more overnighters connecting to flights the next day for Toronto, than conventioneers do for Montreal.

Plus it has a song dedicated to it:

• Video Link

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JManc

Plus it has a song dedicated to it:

• Video Link

Ultimate proof!

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by softee

The last time that was even sort of true was a good 70 years ago, by the 1950s the city was rapidly shedding all those old hangups. Loads of other cities in the first half of the 20th century were just as reserved, conservative and dull as Toronto at the time.

I wouldn’t say that. I’d argue aspects of Toronto’s conservatism still permeate today, though less so as each year passes. I mean Sunday shopping was illegal until the 90’s! Even until a few years ago alcohol sales were limited to government outlets that mostly closed at 10pm and had limited locations.. even today, you can’t buy alcohol in corner stores, or late at night, even if grocery stores largely sell it now. Bars still close at 2am almost uniformly, even if there are select 4am closes for special events (again, quite a new thing). I think the difference is even illustrated in. Quebec’s lower drinking age of 18, though 19 being the drinking age in Ontario would still be quite aggressive by American standards.

[jmecklenborg]

We have seen a number of shifts within U.S. states in recent years. For example, Nashville is now the clear leader in Tennessee, well ahead of Memphis, which had been the state's leading city for 200 years. Columbus, which ranked a distant third for 200 yeasr, is poised to soon overtake both Cleveland and Cincinnati as the difinitive largest metro in Ohio. Kansas City is still a distant #2 behind St. Louis but it's not inconcievable, given KC's momentum and STL's continued Cleveland-like decline, that it might become Missouri's leading city in 20 years.

[ThePhun1]

Lest you forget Los Angeles and San Francisco.

[Shawn]

One thing I think we can universally agree on: the Leafs are now and will forevermore be a joke, and that the Habs are Canada’s first team.

No one is getting excited for a Leafs-B’s game. But, Montreal is in town? Nice, let’s do this!

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by JManc

Same with northern NYS as well. I lived only 60 miles south of downtown Montreal as a kid and wish I went more often. That's only double the distance from my house to downtown Houston.

Montreal had / still has just as big a cultural impact on northern New England as Boston does. I don’t think people outside the region understand just how connected Montreal / Quebec and Boston / New England really are. For most of Canada’s history, Boston was the primary American connector to Canada’s biggest city and chief center of commerce.

Lio and his extended family own half of coastal Maine, for Christ’s sake! (It’s a good thing, we love French Canadians)

[softee]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

I wouldn’t say that. I’d argue aspects of Toronto’s conservatism still permeate today, though less so as each year passes. I mean Sunday shopping was illegal until the 90’s! Even until a few years ago alcohol sales were limited to government outlets that mostly closed at 10pm and had limited locations.. even today, you can’t buy alcohol in corner stores, or late at night, even if grocery stores largely sell it now. Bars still close at 2am almost uniformly, even if there are select 4am closes for special events (again, quite a new thing). I think the difference is even illustrated in. Quebec’s lower drinking age of 18, though 19 being the drinking age in Ontario would still be quite aggressive by American standards.

Those are old Provincial laws that Toronto was stuck with long after the city became a liberal stronghold. Do you really think most people in Toronto agree with all that stuff?

By the 1960s Toronto was right up there with San Francisco as a hotbed of counterculture with the whole Yorkville scene and places like Rochdale College. Of course the old guard at City Hall hated the hippies, but that was true in San Francisco at the time, too. American draft dodgers flocked to the city in the Vietnam era and other progressives (such as Jane Jacobs) came to Toronto from all over to enjoy the open and tolerant atmosphere in the core neighbourhoods.

A Toronto Star article from 2015 about Chrissie Hyndes autobiography, Reckless: My Life as a Pretender

https://www.thestar.com/entertainmen...m-toronto.html

Chrissie Hynde’s forthcoming autobiography, Reckless: My Life as a Pretender, is brimming with insider yarns to endlessly delight Pretenders acolytes and students of rock ’n’ roll lore in general, but there are also a few passages that will prove of extra interest to readers in Toronto.

As it turns out, our fair city appeared something of a cosmopolitan wonderland to the young, flower-child-era Chrissie.

At 19, after witnessing the National Guard shootings that left four anti-Vietnam protesters dead at Kent State in May 1970, the Akron, Ohio, native hitchhiked around Ontario for a spell and rented “a little apartment” here with a male friend. She contemplated going to the Ontario College of Art and Design, found a job waitressing at an Indian restaurant and was “all ready to start my new life in Toronto” until her pal got cold feet about being labelled a “draft dodger” and they grudgingly skulked back home. It was, the rock-chick luminary writes, “the only time in my life that a guy would make a decision for me.”

“My guys from Kent used to go up there because it was, y’know, ‘closer to England,’” laughs Hynde, still funny and unpretentious and cool at 63, over the phone from her long-adopted home base of London. “It was a thing I’d hear around: ‘Just got back from T.O.’ Only the coolest of the cool could make such a claim. And, of course, when I went up there I’d never seen anything like it. It was the first really big city I’d ever been in – it was a functioning, real city and it was beautiful and I wanted to move there. I made a few attempts to get up there. Obviously I wasn’t that driven or I would have.”

Hynde did make it back to Yorkville-era Toronto for one more memorable trip documented in Reckless, a visit that concluded with an overnight stay at the infamous Rochdale College tower on Bloor St.

Details of her evening amongst the LSD-loving “independent population of freaks” at Rochdale are scant in the book, but she encourages anyone versed in local counterculture history to let his or her imagination run wild.

“These are all the clean versions of the stories,” says Hynde, who admits she couldn’t even contemplate writing a frank memoir about her dalliances with sex, drugs (sooo many drugs) and rock ’n’ roll while her parents were alive because “too many things would have gone down badly.”

“I tried to keep it light. Anyone who spent a night in Rochdale doesn’t really want it documented. That’s all you need to know: I was there, that’s it. There was a can of Right Guard involved, that’s all I’ll say.”

From another article: https://www.citynews1130.com/2015/09...g-at-rochdale/

Rochdale was mind-blowing,” she said. “I’d never seen anything like it. It was a big community and it was taken over by the people and they had their own police system and radio station and drug dealers and everything.

“For me, it was this paradise I stumbled upon,” she added. “It was much more experimental than anything you’d ever find in the States. I thought it was the brave new world.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Montreal had / still has just as big a cultural impact on northern New England as Boston does. I don’t think people outside the region understand just how connected Montreal / Quebec and Boston / New England really are. For most of Canada’s history, Boston was the primary American connector to Canada’s biggest city and chief center of commerce.

Lio and his extended family own half of coastal Maine, for Christ’s sake! (It’s a good thing, we love French Canadians)

Huge family connections as well. My step-mother is half French Canadian and true for a lot of people in Upstate and New England..that aren't Italian/ Irish/ Polish. I hope at some point the border is more relaxed because there are a lot of communities that were very integrated up there.

And yes, as a Rangers fan, the Habs are the bane of my existence...but just remember as bad as the Leafs are, they still aren't the Senators.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by JManc

Huge family connections as well. My step-mother is half French Canadian and true for a lot of people in Upstate and New England..that aren't Italian/ Irish/ Polish. I hope at some point the border is more relaxed because there are a lot of communities that were very integrated up there.

I still get people who switch to French all the time in northern VT/NH when they realize I'm Québécois. Yes, in 2019/2020. They're 100% American but grew up in expat families from over the border.

There's a new lady cashier at the Big Apple in Colebrook who speaks French as well as anyone - surprised me last time.

That said, I expect this to stop being the case in the younger generations, as I would guess none of the people currently fluent in French in Northern VT/NH are likely to be able to pass this trait to their kids (their significant other is also likely unilingual Anglo).

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

We have seen a number of shifts within U.S. states in recent years. For example, Nashville is now the clear leader in Tennessee, well ahead of Memphis, which had been the state's leading city for 200 years. Columbus, which ranked a distant third for 200 yeasr, is poised to soon overtake both Cleveland and Cincinnati as the difinitive largest metro in Ohio. Kansas City is still a distant #2 behind St. Louis but it's not inconcievable, given KC's momentum and STL's continued Cleveland-like decline, that it might become Missouri's leading city in 20 years.

It'll take a lot more than 20 years, if it happens at all. Metro St. Louis is slow growing these days, but it hasn't been stagnate/shrinking for decades like Cleveland's metro has. KCMO definitely has higher population growth at the moment, but it's also important to mention how much of that growth has also been in Kansas and not just Missouri.

On the MSA level, St. Louis has about 650,000 to 700,000 more people than Kansas City, but it has about a million more Missouri residents in its metro than Kansas City due to KC having a more equal split between Missouri and Kansas vs metro St. Louis having about 3/4 of its population in Missouri rather than Illinois.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

I still get people who switch to French all the time in northern VT/NH when they realize I'm Québécois. Yes, in 2019/2020. They're 100% American but grew up in expat families from over the border.

There's a new lady cashier at the Big Apple in Colebrook who speaks French as well as anyone - surprised me last time.

That said, I expect this to stop being the case in the younger generations, as I would guess none of the people currently fluent in French in Northern VT/NH are likely to be able to pass this trait to their kids (their significant other is also likely unilingual Anglo).

I do expect this will die out eventually, but I too am surprised at how long it has persisted. 20-25 years ago this is not what I would have expected for 2020. Demolinguistics have a mind of their own I guess.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

I wouldn’t say that. I’d argue aspects of Toronto’s conservatism still permeate today, though less so as each year passes. I mean Sunday shopping was illegal until the 90’s!

Sunday shopping is still illegal in Bergen County, NJ, just across the river from Manhattan.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

I wouldn’t say that. I’d argue aspects of Toronto’s conservatism still permeate today, though less so as each year passes. I mean Sunday shopping was illegal until the 90’s! Even until a few years ago alcohol sales were limited to government outlets that mostly closed at 10pm and had limited locations.. even today, you can’t buy alcohol in corner stores, or late at night, even if grocery stores largely sell it now. Bars still close at 2am almost uniformly, even if there are select 4am closes for special events (again, quite a new thing). I think the difference is even illustrated in. Quebec’s lower drinking age of 18, though 19 being the drinking age in Ontario would still be quite aggressive by American standards.

In spite of what's been said by others, I don't think it's entirely true that the whole story is that of freewheeling Toronto being held back by the teetotalling rest of Ontario. Only very small parts of Ontario would have very prohibitionist views on alcohol and Toronto has by far the largest population and the most seats in the legislature, and even moreso when you count the GTA and Golden Horseshoe. Attitudes towards alcohol aren't significantly different in Ottawa (certainly not, being right next to Quebec), London or Windsor, or even Kingston, than they are in Toronto.

Plus the City of Toronto has some authority itself when it comes to regulating alcohol use, and hasn't really loosened things up that much itself.

Generally speaking, Toronto can best be described as a "sensible" city. For a lot of people, that's actually a good thing.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Sunday shopping is still illegal in Bergen County, NJ, just across the river from Manhattan.

Sunday clothes shopping is not allowed in Bergen County.

But it isn't related to conservatism, it's because Bergen has the biggest suburban retail mecca in North America- Paramus, with three major malls, plus IKEA and a bajillion big box stores. And Jersey has no tax on clothes, so lots of cross-state shoppers.

So Bergen keeps its blue laws so its residents get a one-day break from traffic madness.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Sunday clothes shopping is not allowed in Bergen County.

But it isn't related to conservatism, it's because Bergen has the biggest suburban retail mecca in North America- Paramus, with three major malls, plus IKEA and a bajillion big box stores. And Jersey has no tax on clothes, so lots of cross-state shoppers.

So Bergen keeps its blue laws so its residents get a one-day break from traffic madness.

The reason why they haven't repealed the law is to give residents a traffic reprieve, but the law was originally just a regular ol' blue law like any other. It was about religion.

Also, I think it bans anything except food and grocery establishments from operating on Sundays.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The reason why they haven't repealed the law is to give residents a traffic reprieve, but the law was originally just a regular ol' blue law like any other. It was about religion.

Of course. But traffic is why the rule stays in place.

Paramus is very Jewish and South and East Asian, and not likely to have much of an strictly observant Christian demographic, BTW.

[JManc]

No amount of blue laws will alleviate the absolute hell that is the traffic in NJ. Might as well buy a pair of Levi's on Sunday...

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Of course. But traffic is why the rule stays in place.

Paramus is very Jewish and South and East Asian, and not likely to have much of an strictly observant Christian demographic, BTW.

My point in bringing up Bergen County was to demonstrate that shopping on Sunday in Toronto was probably still illegal in the 90s for reasons other than it being a conservative stronghold.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by JManc

No amount of blue laws will alleviate the absolute hell that is the traffic in NJ. Might as well buy a pair of Levi's on Sunday...

It probably makes traffic worse on Saturday than it otherwise would be. Also the Meadowlands, where the Giants and Jets play, is located in Bergen County, so the concern about Sunday traffic seems a little flimsy.