Great Lakes Cities

[JManc]

Originally Posted by subterranean

I find it weird that two of the largest lakes wholly within Canada are bigger than 2 of the Great Lakes and yet they get such little attention, comparatively. The blue coloration by Google makes them seem more important and just another way of highlighting typical American exceptionalism.

Google shows the topographical surface in the Great Lakes hence the lighter color. The nearby Finger Lakes and Oneida Lake in NYS are shown dark blue as well because there is no lakebed detail on them either.

[subterranean]

Really? I thought maybe someone just used the color dropper tool to paint the oceans and it just crept up the St Lawrence and someone shrugged and said “fuck it”.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by JManc

Google shows the topographical surface in the Great Lakes hence the lighter color. The nearby Finger Lakes and Oneida Lake in NYS are shown dark blue as well because there is no lakebed detail on them either.

While Google does indeed show bathymetry for the Great Lakes, the Caspian Sea appears in the same shade of blue and lacks bathymetry. Another oddity is the Dease Strait between Victoria Island and the Canadian mainland.

[jbermingham123]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

While Google does indeed show bathymetry for the Great Lakes, the Caspian Sea appears in the same shade of blue and lacks bathymetry. Another oddity is the Dease Strait between Victoria Island and the Canadian mainland.

I've always been annoyed by this inconsistency.. above all with the canadian great lakes. lake winnipeg is bigger than lake ontario and not only does it not have bathymetry, it has this strange orange brown color in the satelite images that make it barely stand out against the surrounding landscape. And its not just the color of the lake, becuase the orange/brown phenomenon also appears on great slave lake but only on the western half, so its definitely a satellite image issue

[Steely Dan]

Well, the entire national political world will be storming the beaches of the western shore of Lake Michigan in summer '24 as our country's two major political parties hold competing national conventions only 80 miles away from each other. First the GOP in July up in Milwaukee, and then the Dems in August down in Chicago.

Both parties seem to think that the path to the presidency goes right through the upper Midwest. They're probably right.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by subterranean

I find it weird that two of the largest lakes wholly within Canada are bigger than 2 of the Great Lakes and yet they get such little attention, comparatively. The blue coloration by Google makes them seem more important and just another way of highlighting typical American exceptionalism.

I vote that we include the Big Ass Canadian Lakes as Great Lakes within the context of this forum. I'm inducting Winnipeg, at very least.

Indeed. There is such little information on these massive bodies of water. Their wikipedia links are particularly sparse on details.

[jmecklenborg]

There is a "Michigan" in the middle of Manitoba. Does this area have a name? In Kentucky, there is the "Land-Between-The-Lakes", but this area is much, much larger.

[pj3000]

It's because these places are incredibly remote places on our planet, and barely anyone lives near these awesome bodies of frigid freshwater.

Similarly, how often do you hear anything about the Hudson Bay? With its connected waterways, it's nearly the size of the Gulf of Mexico.

But few would ever be aware of that. Just like few are aware of the Great Bear Lake up in the Arctic is larger than two eastern Great Lakes.

[rml]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Yes, Crystal Beach is a large vacation community that has lots of American owners. When I went through last summer it seemed like at least half the houses had NY plates parked out front. Crystal Beach is probably the nicest single beach on all of Lake Erie, so it's a very popular vacation spot.

The Lake Erie "cottages" are often more like small houses in beach towns though and rarely have direct lake frontages which is the typical "cottage" definition in the Toronto area.

When I think of cottage, I think of the thousands of lakes north of Toronto line with well treed, large private lots with small to massive vacation dwellings on them. Something like this:


https://kennisiscottagerentals.com/cleary-cottage/

A more typical Lake Erie "cottage" is more like a small dwelling on a quiet little street within a few minutes walk of a public beach, like these ones in Turkey Point, ON:

[IMG][/IMG]

To me these are more beach houses than cottages, more like something you would see lining the US east coast in the hundreds of little beach towns.

The north shore of Lake Erie is lined with little beach communities like this. The north side of the lake is generally cleaner and while the water can still be somewhat murky, the lake's shallow depth and southern location means it has a fairly lengthy swimming season compared to the other great lakes which are often consistently cold for the entire summer.

I swim in both Erie and Ontario every summer and Ontario is definitely "nicer" water, but the beaches are more limited in size, location, and niceness, and the water is consistantly cold other than maybe in late August in an unusually hot summer. Lake Erie comparatively has a solid 3 months of warm water and much nicer beaches.

Great pics. I agree with the 'home' style cottages on Lake Erie, espicially around Rondeau, but if you are looking for cleaner water and WAY better sunsets then you need to go to Lake Huron on the Canadian side. The sunsets are the absolute best there

[rml]

Originally Posted by Wigs

yeah, the biggest issue to my non-educated eyes is the twin flight locks in Thorold where the Welland Canal ships ascend/descend down the Niagara escarpment

• Video Link
skip to about the 4:30 mark to see what I mean.
At 1:28 you see where the split is between the Old Canal and the current 1972 bypass
At 7:40 you see the Garden City Skyway over St. Catharines.

I love watching this video in 2x speed.
entering the Welland Canal from Lake Erie heading North you first see Port Colborne

Wow that is a pretty cool video, thanks for sharing. Oh how the Garden City Skyway has changed over the last 40 years!

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by subterranean

I vote that we include the Big Ass Canadian Lakes as Great Lakes within the context of this forum. I'm inducting Winnipeg, at very least.

I vote that you start a "Big Ass Canadian Lakes" thread.

They are not part of the Great Lakes system, nor do they have any cities. Hence, not appropriate for this thread.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Sure, just from the perspective of people in North America (namely Canada and the US), the locations of Great Bear and Slave lakes and most of the Hudson is considered incredibly remote. I would venture that 90+% of Canadians have never been to Great Bear Lake.

I don't know anyone who has been to any of these places.

Google Maps doesn't recognize "Great Bear Lake" as a destination. It's more than 2,000 miles from Minneapolis to Yellow Knife.

[phone]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

There is a "Michigan" in the middle of Manitoba. Does this area have a name? In Kentucky, there is the "Land-Between-The-Lakes", but this area is much, much larger.

I believe that region is commonly referred to as “Interlake”

[phone]

Originally Posted by pj3000

It's because these places are incredibly remote places on our planet, and barely anyone lives near these awesome bodies of frigid freshwater.

Similarly, how often do you hear anything about the Hudson Bay? With its connected waterways, it's nearly the size of the Gulf of Mexico.

But few would ever be aware of that. Just like few are aware of the Great Bear Lake up in the Arctic is larger than two eastern Great Lakes.

There is a pretty strong awareness of Hudson Bay in Canada, at least on the Prairies, given that the Hudson Bay watershed covers the virtual entirety of the Prairies. Hudson Bay has also had an outsized role in Canadian history, given its anchoring role in the fur trade.

That said, it is true that Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake receive hardly any attention, despite the presence of Yellowknife on the latter. I also can’t blame Americans for being similarly unaware of Hudson Bay, given its irrelevance to the United States (save for maybe Fargo).

[phone]

Originally Posted by edale

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavey

[lio45]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I would venture that 90+% of Canadians have never been to Great Bear Lake.

90%? Try 99.99+%!

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by phone

I believe that region is commonly referred to as “Interlake”

Nice.

Also, per Wikipedia, The Great Slave Lake is named for native slaves kept by another native group back in the 1600s. Somehow this unflattering name, coined by the French roughly 400 years ago, survived translation to English and is still in use.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Sure, just from the perspective of people in North America (namely Canada and the US), the locations of Great Bear and Slave lakes and most of the Hudson is considered incredibly remote. I would venture that 90+% of Canadians have never been to Great Bear Lake.

99.999%, perhaps even a greater proportion. Nobody goes up there.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Henry Hudson somehow managed to get a major river AND a major bay named after him.

But Hudson is overshadowed by the otherwise bit player from Florence named Amerigo who managed to get TWO CONTINENTS + the planet's dominant country named after him thanks to a German mapmaker who could have named those two continents after himself but didn't.

Christopher Columbus got lost but nevertheless got whole countries, cities, and provinces named after him.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Christopher Columbus got lost but nevertheless got whole countries, cities, and provinces named after him.

Including having the capital district of the "the planet's dominant country" named after him despite never setting foot on the mainland of the continent he "discovered".