Great Lakes Cities

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by edale

Portsmouth....nice?! Maybe there's some decent urban form, but it's pretty run down and depressed. I worked on a public health project years ago, and Portsmouth is where I learned about the phenomenon of 'Mountain Dew Mouth'. It's when people have their teeth rotted out due to meth and Mt. Dew consumption. Apparently meth makes people crave Mt. Dew, and it creates a terrible cycle for oral health. The public health officials there said it was a huge problem in the Portsmouth area. That's my lasting memory of Portsmouth. That, and the people there talk like they're deep in the hollers of West Virginia. It's a very strange part of Ohio.

I guess 'nice' is a relative term. I don't know either of the places well, nor their demographics. Just passed through them in the summer while on 52 from Huntington to Cincinnati. Drove around a bit in their downtowns and immediate surrounding neighborhoods, and they both seemed to be in pretty decent shape overall (with nice new suspension bridges! ).

Admittedly, the bar by which I'm judging these Ohio River Valley towns is pretty low though... since I'm thinking of Mon Valley towns and some Ohio Valley towns in SW PA, OH, WV... some of which are damn near post-apocalyptic.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

As an aside, I love that there is a place on the great lakes with "Sound" in the name. I normally only associate them with the ocean, and I can't think of any place on the US side of the lakes with "sound" in the name.

There is also a Parry Sound a bit further north in Ontario, on the Toronto-Sudbury corridor.

Not really much more charming than Owen Sound, I gather.

[MolsonExport]

Parry Sound is very nice. it contains the world's deepest freshwater port.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Parry Sound is very nice. it contains the world's deepest freshwater port.

I stand corrected. It's a decent outer cottage country town in a pretty setting.

[Docere]

This author sees Toronto as a Canadian Chicago

By the 1840s Toronto was the major commercial center for Ontario. Like Chicago, it became a center for grain milling, meatpacking, and machinery manufacturing based on the agricultural economy of its hinterland. Also like Chicago, Toronto expanded in a grid-pattern city form along the lakeshore, on a level site that offered no impediments to its future growth. The wealth amassed in its agricultural industries was invested in a wide range of manufacturing industries, and Toronto became the leading center of Canadian industry. Toronto grew as a center for wholesaling and railway transportation; it developed Canada's catalogue and major department-store and catalog-retailing businesses and by the late 19th century it ranked second to Montreal as Canada's leading banking center. In these respects, too, Toronto's growth resembled Chicago's, and it occurred during the same time period. The two cities' growth paths began to diverge in the 20th century. Chicago found no new roles to play in the U.S. economy after the 1930s, but Toronto continued to emerge as the economic capital of Canada.

- John C. Hudson. Across This Land: A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada (2002)

[MolsonExport]

did Toronto overtake Montreal in industry? Today, for sure, but probably not before the 1970s. Montreal was always the industrial heartland of Canada before the 1970s.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

did Toronto overtake Montreal in industry? Today, for sure, but probably not before the 1970s. Montreal was always the industrial heartland of Canada before the 1970s.

i thought hamilton was?

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Docere

This author sees Toronto as a Canadian Chicago



- John C. Hudson. Across This Land: A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada (2002)

he's rather off base, its on its way to being a canadian sao paulo.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

i thought hamilton was?

not a chance. As the primary port of Canada for more than a century and a half (before being overtaken by Vancouver, which ships mostly bulk commodities), Montreal was always many orders of magnitude larger than Hamilton. it was the industrial cradle of Canada.

For almost a century Montreal was the industrial centre of Canada. Between 1847-1945, the area surrounding the Lachine Canal had the highest concentration of industrial buildings in the country.

https://digital.library.mcgill.ca/industrial/intro.html

[Steely Dan]

It's interesting how cities on the interconnecting rivers of the great lakes, like Detroit, Windsor, Niagara falls, Sault Ste. Marie, are still generally considered full-fledged "great lakes cities", but once you get east of Kingston, that regional identifier seems to evaporate immediately.

I mean, no one in Montreal thinks of it as a great lakes city, even tangentially so, right?

How consciously aware is the average Montrealer of the utterly massive inland freshwater seas that lie upriver from them?

[Docere]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

did Toronto overtake Montreal in industry? Today, for sure, but probably not before the 1970s. Montreal was always the industrial heartland of Canada before the 1970s.

Pretty much identical in 1961, but Montreal just edged out Toronto.

# of establishments

Montreal 5,055
Toronto 4,982

Value of products (in thousands)

Montreal $4,232,966
Toronto $4,118,709

https://publications.gc.ca/collectio...9-1961-eng.pdf

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

It's interesting how cities on the interconnecting rivers of the great lakes, like Detroit, Windsor, Niagara falls, Sault Ste. Marie, are still generally considered full-fledged "great lakes cities", but once you get east of Kingston, that regional identifier seems to evaporate immediately.

I mean, no one in Montreal thinks of it as a great lakes city, even tangentially so, right?

How consciously aware is the average Montrealer of the utterly massive inland freshwater seas that lie upriver from them?

I was actually wondering the other day, while reading this thread, how far away from the Great Lakes you could be to still be in/near the Great Lakes? What's the farthest-away from a lake that a Great Lakes city is?

Is Pittsburgh a Great Lakes city? Columbus? Grand Rapids? Lansing? London? Syracuse? Madison? Detroit? South Bend?

Does effectively being surrounded by the Great Lakes make an area the Great Lakes area, no matter how far away from one of the lakes? Is the mitten of Michigan all the Great Lakes area? Is everything in Ontario southwest of Midland/Lake Simcoe/Oshawa all the Great Lakes area?

Clearly, the Midwest is not conterminous with the Great Lakes, since no one would say Des Moines or Kansas City are Great Lakes cities. Nor is central Canada conterminous with the Great Lakes, because Quebec City and Winnipeg are not Great Lakes cities.

[Docere]

Winnipeg is in western Canada not central Canada.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I was actually wondering the other day, while reading this thread, how far away from the Great Lakes you could be to still be in/near the Great Lakes? What's the farthest-away from a lake that a Great Lakes city is?

Is Pittsburgh a Great Lakes city? Columbus? Grand Rapids? Lansing? London? Syracuse? Madison? Detroit? South Bend?

Does effectively being surrounded by the Great Lakes make an area the Great Lakes area, no matter how far away from one of the lakes? Is the mitten of Michigan all the Great Lakes area? Is everything in Ontario southwest of Midland/Lake Simcoe/Oshawa all the Great Lakes area?

Clearly, the Midwest is not conterminous with the Great Lakes, since no one would say Des Moines or Kansas City are Great Lakes cities. Nor is central Canada conterminous with the Great Lakes, because Quebec City and Winnipeg are not Great Lakes cities.

I'd argue you have to be in the St Lawrence drainage basin....

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

Is Pittsburgh a Great Lakes city? Columbus? Grand Rapids? Lansing? London? Syracuse? Madison? Detroit? South Bend?

Does effectively being surrounded by the Great Lakes make an area the Great Lakes area, no matter how far away from one of the lakes? Is the mitten of Michigan all the Great Lakes area? Is everything in Ontario southwest of Midland/Lake Simcoe/Oshawa all the Great Lakes area?

I think a Great Lakes city is a place that is directly on a navigable lake or tributary of a Great Lake, or is derived from a place that meets the standard. So... All of the cities that you named except for Columbus and Madison probably fit the definition of a Great Lakes city.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

I'd argue you have to be in the St Lawrence drainage basin....

I once had a roommate from Toronto who insisted that the Great Lakes did not connect with the St. Lawrence River. There was no map handy, and this incident predated smart phones and Google Earth, so I let it slide.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

How consciously aware is the average Montrealer of the utterly massive inland freshwater seas that lie upriver from them?

Pretty much zero.

Probably in the same ballpark of how aware people in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, Memphis, St. Louis are of Lake Itasca, MN.

(In all seriousness, no one ever wonders where all that water is coming from.)

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by lio45

(In all seriousness, no one ever wonders where all that water is coming from.)

I don't think that most people know or care about the difference between a river and a lake. I also don't think that most people know or care that some lakes are natural and some are artificial.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I was actually wondering the other day, while reading this thread, how far away from the Great Lakes you could be to still be in/near the Great Lakes? What's the farthest-away from a lake that a Great Lakes city is?

Is Pittsburgh a Great Lakes city? Columbus? Grand Rapids? Lansing? London? Syracuse? Madison? Detroit? South Bend?

I think it's a pretty subjective exercise, but Pittsburgh and Columbus would certainly not be considered to be Great Lakes cities.

To me a Great Lakes city has to be located on a Lake. I consider Detroit to be, and is definitely a Great Lakes city. Syracuse and London are like first cousins. I'm not familiar enough with the rest of them on your list.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

I don't think that most people know or care about the difference between a river and a lake.

In this case it's more that the people don't care where the water comes from. Everyone's aware it's a river.

People in St. Louis and Montreal are well aware the Mississippi and St. Lawrence aren't lakes. They just never stop and reflect on the fact that all this water comes from somewhere upriver.