[Long Island Mike]

Everyone: I was looking at an atlas I have in my geography collection recently and I thought about Canadian political boundaries: Canada has been willing to change political boundaries and change but the US is almost not willing to allow the same. This atlas is a Hammond
Atlas from MCMLIX (love those roman #s) with good US and Canadian State and Provincial maps. This atlas shows the following in CANADA:

It shows the Maritimes with counties-but not in Newfoundland/Labrador;
Quebec-counties are on the map as examples are: Montreal Island: WI-Jacques Cartier(Pt.Claire) EI-Hochelaga(Montreal); Nearby-Deux-Montagnes,Terrebonne,L'Assomption,Laprarie,Chambly,Beauharnois,Vercheres counties - For Quebec City-Quebec County and Levis County across the St.Lawrence;Sherbrooke-Sherbrooke County and near Ottawa is Gatineau and Hull Counties. My question is: When did Quebec eliminate its county boundaries?

Ontario: Toronto is the county seat of York County and I noted these: Ontario Co.(Oshawa);Peel Co.(Brampton); Halton Co.(Milton W.);Wenthworth Co.(Hamilton);Lincoln Co.(St.Catharines);Welland Co.(Welland);Middlesex Co.(London);Kent Co.(Chatham);Elgin Co.(St.Thomas);Essex Co.(Windsor) and Carleton County(Ottawa). My question here is when did Ontario go to regional municipalities and in how many cases like Toronto and Hamilton have unified cities been created and where do counties still exist?

From Manitoba on W the provincial maps show no existence of any internal boundaries. I remember being told that Winnipeg is an interesting example: WPG annexed all its close suburbs to create the City we know today. When did that happen?

Here in the US it seems when it comes to this we are so unlikely to change anything! Two NYS examples I recall are: Here on LI I live in Suffolk County. It Consists of ten townships-the eastern 5 wanted to secede and form Peconic County. The western 5 towns are large and suburban but the eastern 5 towns are more rural in nature but what happened was a referendum that turned it down-because of tax issues. Some see the W 5 Towns subsidizing the E Towns-to an extent that is true.

The other is the Boro of Staten Island seceding from NYC and forming the City of Richmond-it is Richmond County now-but issues namely the large tax increase to bring this about pretty much ended the matter. When Rudy Giuliani was NYCs Mayor he got SI its #1 wish: Closing the infamous Fresh Kills Landfill. SI was NYCs only large Republican stronghold-which helped matters. Nowadays I cannot help but wonder what NYC services that SI receives would cost with its own rule-like the Ferry-it is FREE-and the SI Rapid Transit-fares are only collected on/off at the St.George Terminal-other then that no other fares are collected.

In closing Canada is willing to change and annex its boundaries-much easier and without problems like in the US! LI MIKE

 

[Edward Skira]

LI Mike please use paragraph breaks. Some of your posts are really hard to read.

 

[Long Island Mike]

I Tried To Separate It But...

ED: I tried-but because I get logged out on almost every post it did not come out how I wanted it....LI MIKE

 

[afransen]

If you have problems with that you can try writing your post in something like notepad or wordpad and then copying and pasting it to the message field when you're ready to post.

 

[Long Island Mike]

The Paragraph separation WORKED this time!

Everyone: I separated the paragraphs using my return. This feature has given me fits in the past getting it to work-now if I can only get rid of that assinine emoticon that is NOT supposed to be there....LI MIKE

 

[Long Island Mike]

I revised the post again-I think it looks OK..

I just found out what that error was and deleted it-I Re-submitted the post for the topic thread and FINALLY it is what I originally wanted! LI MIKE

 

[Observer Walt]

Getting back to the topic: I can't speak for other provinces, but in much of southern Ontario, counties still exist. Across northern Ontario they are usually called "Districts" but serve pretty much the same purpose. Back in the 1970s, in a few urbanized areas the Counties became Regions. This includes Halton, Peel, York and Durham, surrounding Toronto.

In the 1990s a few cities became "one-tier" entities. The City of Hamilton and County of Wentworth for example had become the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth, in the 1970s. The Region had included several "lower tier" municipalities. In a further round of reorganization, they all amalgamated into one municipality, and the name that was retained was the City of Hamilton.

Another example was the former County of Victoria, northeast of Toronto, which included Lindsay and a number of rural municipalities (a two tier system). They all amalgamated into a one-tier govt. called the City of Kawartha Lakes.

There were also a number of other amalgamations. The number of local municipalities in Ontario was cut roughly in half during the 1990s.

 

[afransen]

Amalgamation was something of a fad under the Mike Harris regime starting in 1995. It often didn't make a whole lot of sense. For instance, proposed amalgamations within the Regional Municipality of Niagara involved a new 'Welland' that encompassed the entire Welland canal and its adjacent cities from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. Presently, it has three fairly distinct urban centres, being Port Colbourne (at Lake Erie), Welland (about midway), and St. Catharines (at Lake Ontario). It really didn't make any sense, especially given that the Regional government handles many things like water and garbage already.

What I'm saying I guess is that it was largely an ideological exercise by the neoconservative government of the day. What would supposedly yield efficiencies has lead to massive cost increases in many cases.

 

[AndreaPalladio]

Toronto isn't the county seat of York County. Toronto hasn't been in York County since Metro was created. There is no York County since York Region was created out of the north ridings of the old York County.

 

[EnviroTO]

Municipal governments are controlled by the province and therefore the provinces can change municipal and county boundaries for various reasons such as cost reduction or to increase land for a city sprawling out into a largely rural county. Also, in Ontario, I'm not sure about other places, once a town becomes a city they are no longer under the jurisdiction of the county. I believe that wasn't always the case. In areas where the growing cities were granted land area so large the county was no longer a feasible stand alone entity, regional municipalities were created. Basically if the province wants to move a municipal boundary it has all the power it needs to do so.

 

[ShonTron]

The Regional Municipality of Halimand-Norfolk is quite interesting. Back in the 1970s, I guess it was going to be a high-growth area (look at Townsend, near Jarvis, and the Naticoke industrial area). The two counties were amalgamated, several townships and towns as well (though the largest towns like Simcoe were untouched), around the same time as the Regions around Toronto were formed.

In 2000, Halimand-Norfolk was split back in two, and all the lower-level municipalities were amalgamated.

Counties that really no longer exist:
Kent (now a single tier "Municipality of Chatham-Kent")
Prince Edward (now "Muncipality of Prince Edward County")
Brant (now "City of Brant" parcelled from City of Brantford, another confusing one)
Victoria (now Municipality of Kawartha Lakes) edit

Plus the already mentioned Ontario County (now part of Durham), Wentworth County (which lost part of what is now Burlington), Welland and Lincoln counties.

It is somewhat unclear if Frontenac is still a county.

 

[JasonParis]

For instance, proposed amalgamations within the Regional Municipality of Niagara involved a new 'Welland' that encompassed the entire Welland canal and its adjacent cities from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.

So this never happened, right?

I think Sudbury and Ottawa are two of the other mega-cities created by the Harrisites.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Everyone: I was looking at an atlas I have in my geography collection recently and I thought about Canadian political boundaries: Canada has been willing to change political boundaries and change but the US is almost not willing to allow the same.LI MIKE

Suburban American municipal boundaries are constantly changing, annexing bits of unincorporated stuff here and incorporating bits of unincorporated stuff there...

Then there's a list like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._county_secession_proposals

 

[ShonTron]

Sudbury, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Kawartha Lakes (used to be Victoria County, don't know how I missed this one above) and Chatham-Kent are the largest single-tiers created by the Harrisites. The "Counties" of Norfork and Haldimand are close too. Brant is big (an entire county with a hole in the middle) is damn big too.

 

[adma]

Suburban American municipal boundaries are constantly changing, annexing bits of unincorporated stuff here and incorporating bits of unincorporated stuff there...[/url]

It depends where, and how. In places like Texas, that's definitely the pattern. In other portions (particularly the older NE States), the "incorporated" tends to be circumscribed more permanently within set boundaries--and even more emphatically with New England's "town" (i.e. township) system. And around Maryland/Virginia, the unincorporated tends to stay stubbornly unincorporated.

As for Ontario, I presume Harris + co. might as well have been giving a Nietzschean kiss of death to the presumed anachronism of "counties" or any coherent municipal-structure rationale; like big deal about boundaries and "status", the communities'n'such exist anyway. Sort of the same way atlases like Rand McNally have slowly veered away from displaying "city limits"...