Posted on 03/15/2006 12:09:49 PM PST by Heartofsong83
Separatist fervour hits northern Ontario Residents would rather be Manitobans
Mention secession in Canada, and the mind turns to Quebec, and perhaps the restive western provinces.
Now add to that list the inhabitants of the northwestern part of Ontario, in the heart of the country.
But rather than yearning to leave Canada, they want to leave their province and join Manitoba next door.
If they get their way, Ontario would lose 60 per cent of its area, though just two per cent of its people.
The ambivalent loyalty of these Ontarians has deep roots. When Canada became a confederation in 1867, both provinces claimed part of northwestern Ontario.
For a while they ran rival police forces and town councils in Kenora.
Now once again the people of Ontario’s stony hinterland, stretching over a vast emptiness between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay, have tired of what they see as neglect from the provincial government in distant Toronto.
Dissatisfaction has been given urgency by the woes of their main industry.
The past year has seen 31 full or partial closures of pulp and paper mills in Canada, 13 of them in Ontario.
The pain is felt most keenly in smaller towns. In 2005, three mills closed in Thunder Bay, the regional centre with 100,000 people, two in Kenora (population 11,000), and one in even-smaller Dryden.
More are on the way.
Worldwide, the industry is suffering as the paperless office at last becomes a reality, and newspaper circulations flag.
Canada’s Pulp and Paper Products Council, an industry body, says North American newsprint sales fell 8.5 per cent in January compared with a year ago.
Classified advertising has migrated to the Internet; many papers have adopted smaller formats. In addition, Canada’s mills are battling higher energy costs, a strong currency and competition from Brazil and Indonesia, where trees grow faster.
"We have to do something or there will be nobody left up here," says Kenora Mayor Dave Canfield. He is frustrated by the Ontario government’s slow response to his town’s economic problems.
Together with other politicians in the area, he has formed a group studying whether they should stay in Ontario or leave it.
Dalton McGuinty, Ontario’s premier, seems to be taking this threat seriously. On a flying visit in late February, he flagged up a $220 million package to subsidize roadbuilding and to lower the stumpage fees charged by the province for felling trees. This followed two other schemes worth a combined $680 million.
Too little, too late, say some northwesterners. Another provincial scheme, which caps electricity charges for industrial users for three years, has been met with similar scorn. Industrial users in Ontario pay twice as much as in Manitoba or Quebec.
The northwest, self-sufficient in power, objects to paying for expensive nuclear power plants near Lake Ontario, built to meet southern demand.
McGuinty agreed last week to consider local price differentials, but made no promises.
Joining Manitoba might offer not just cheaper energy but more political clout. Manitoba has only 1.2 million people, compared with Ontario’s 12.6 million, so the northwesterners would become a much bigger fish in a smaller pond.
Thunder Bay, the 12th-largest city in Ontario, would leap to second spot in Manitoba, behind Winnipeg, the capital.
The northwest has only three of the 103 seats in Ontario’s legislature but in an expanded Manitoba could expect 11 out of 68 seats.
The flirtation with Manitoba may be merely a cry for more attention from Toronto.
Secessionist sentiment in northwest Ontario has waxed and waned before. But Livio di Matteo, an economist at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, says it has never before been so strong. He would prefer more autonomy within Ontario, but accepts that there would be political benefits in joining Manitoba to form a new province called, perhaps, Mantario.
Would Manitoba welcome this?
Gary Doer, its premier, was coy when asked recently. He said that he did not want to meddle in another province’s affairs, and that Ontarians would have to settle the matter among themselves.
But he added that Manitobans have a lot in common with the people of northwestern Ontario.
It seems the door is open.
ping
Another better option: Toronto and its immediate suburbs separating into its own province, or even its own fortress country. It would keep all those communities of similar interests together, as they stretch across the province.
bump
Interesting article. A lot of folks in the U.S. may not realize just how enormous the province of Ontario is. Along the U.S. border, it covers a distance that spans a portion of the United States from within 50 miles or so of the New York/Vermont state line in the east nearly as far west as the Minnesota/North Dakota border in the west. It takes damn near three days to drive from one end of the province to the other.
That's so true, and that area is neither East nor West! It is a pretty isolated area with much closer ties to Minnesota than anyone else...
What I've always found so bizarre is that the University of Western Ontario is located in Windsor -- even though about 80% of the province lies west of a north-south line drawn through Windsor.
Leftist/socialist/communist
Don't forget 'progressive' :-)
I remember hearing/reading once that the last part of the Trans-Canada Highway that was completed was the portion that runs through Western Ontario, which is basically just a vast, untamed pine forest/marsh.
The amazing thing about this is that it was only completed sometime in 1970.
Oh, that's funny. That never occurred to me!
Just to be clear... In post 12, I was talking about the portion of the highway that runs from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay.
That, or Toronto forming its own province, would be an interesting option.
This shifting of borders makes sense.
Now let's got nuts and invite in Prince Harry and make him King of Greater Manitoba.
Canada is wild enough (in so many ways) to keep the lad occupied and out of trouble.
Or rather we should say that things that get you into trouble elsewhere are not considered "trouble" in Canada.
Bob, what are you up to??
I just thought he wanted to expand his empire....
If you're camping, making sure to stay in Sleeping Giant Provincial Park and pray for thunderstorms. Extremely very impressive.
Those paper companies are really foul. Google Dryden Ontario and see the impact on the air and water.
Physically, western Ontario is part of Ontario. The huge Canadian prairie starts at the eastern Manitoba border. East of that is rolling hills, rivers with waterfalls, rock outcrops, etc.
West of the border, flat with extremely deep topsoil, slow moving rivers, shallow lakes.
You're right about that. There's a roadside historic marker along the roadway somewhere between Wawa and White River -- which are about 150-200 miles north of Sault Ste. Marie in the Algoma Region of Ontario -- that marks the last segment of the Trans-Canada Highway to be completed. It was somewhere around the late 1960s, I think.
It's pretty remarkable, when you think about it . . . It wasn't until 40 years ago that you could even drive across Canada on a paved road.
Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Thanks! I guess I was thinking of the wrong part of W. Ontario.
Would love to see that marker some day.
That's OK -- it all looks the same anyway, at least for those parts of northern Ontario that aren't right alongside Lake Superior. LOL.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Yes, plus policies that drain resource-based economies such as forestry, minerals and agriculture...
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
The Prairie-Shield line is a diagonal one actually; starting about 50 miles east of Winnipeg (and about 40 miles into Manitoba travelling west), then roughly through Gimli, north of Swan River, Prince Albert, Meadow Lake and south of Fort McMurray. North of there in the Prairies, it is very much like northern Ontario, particularly in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
LOL!
Given a choice, I'd vote for being part of Manitoba over Ontario. It's rather like choosing between New Hampshire and Vermont.
Regards, Ivan
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
There was no continuous paved route across Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific until the last segment of the main Trans-Canada Highway was completed in the 1960s. Before that time, anyone who wanted to drive between Montreal and Winnipeg had to cope with gravel/dirt roads in Canada, or (more likely) had to drive across southern Ontario through Toronto, cross the border into the U.S. at Windsor, and then drive across the Upper Midwest and cross back into Canada from Minnesota or North Dakota.
Only if you stop . Once made the trip from Brandon to the Toronto Stockyards in 31 hours . I've always thought the experience of coming down Montreal River Mountain , looking in your mirrors , and seeing your back brakes burning off enough to cure anyone of the truck driving bug . Miss the curve at the bottom of that hill and you go for a swim in Superior , if the rocks don't kill you first.:)
Once made the trip from Brandon to the Toronto Stockyards in 31 hours.
I am thoroughly impressed!
Yeah . I couldn't do it today . Pretty stupid , now that I think about it. Then , maybe now , it's been a while since I was up there , the curves on 17 weren't banked . That was fun too. And then there were the moose. At night . In the dark. :)
my family is from Thunder Bay originally. They wre really upset when Ontario, under Bob Rae, mandated curbside recycling. It was increadibly expensive and logistically a nightmare in the more isolated communities in northern Ontario. But the province, guided by the wisdom of the political elites of Ontario forced it into that region without $ to make the program work. At the time, they didn't even have a viable recycling center in the vast area. Toronto just doesn't understand anything outside it's urban experience.
While they are not part of Manitoba when it comes to the national curling tournament known as the Brier (which is happening as we type) Northern Ontario has its own separate team.
I once drove around Lake Michigan in 22 hours. From Chicago up through WI near Door County and into the UP of Michigan. Drove into Sault Ste. Marie turned around and then headed back through Michigan to Grand Rapids and back to Chicago. A great case study in aimless driving.
Snowyman's 31 hr. trek is much more impressive though!
Their policies are not working all that great in Toronto either. lol
I've taken VIA across Canada a few times and it took days to get from the Manitoba/Ont border to Toronto.
Thunder Bay is a nice area with good folks and they certainly deserve better than a Parliament that alternates between neglect and patronage.
Thank you for that answer. My statement was based on visual experience, having driven from the east into Manitoba. It really is very obvious at or near the point where the TC Hwy. enters Manitoba. I was a little surprised to see the line goes diagonally toward Gimli (remember the Goose?) because we went to Grand Marais from Winnipeg and the terrain was pretty much the same. Gimli is a place I'm sorry I missed. We had fun at the Portage fair! And the Morris rodeo.
Do you know the name of that isolated Orthodox church about 30 miles northeast of Winnipeg?
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