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Johnny Au said:
I suspect that the Harperites fudged the 2011 census, so that Election Canada can unintentionally gerrymander the ridings in the favour of the Conservatives.

That is not a democratic move, the Right Honourable Steve Harpo!
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Right....Steven Harper invented the Census.....of course he did this and established its "every 5 years" cycle long before he was born so that he could fool us over his real intentions ;)
 
adma said:
Well, there's always the matter of "cottage country" or generic road-tripping here and there--but even there, I suspect that in our 400-series days, the trips are more utilitarian and strictly destination-focused than they once might have been.
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I thought about that when I wrote my reply. I try to get to Algonquin once a year. The stretch from the 401 to the park through Huntsville is the only non-400 series route I have taken while travelling in a few years. I take my bike out to Halton sometimes for riding, but that's still in the GTA so I don't count it. The only other road-trips I regularly do are to Montreal or to The Falls and those are purely 400-series trips with no connection to the communities I pass through. I couldn't tell you a thing about what Bomanville looks like even though I have passed it many times.

I think you've hit the bullseye re what I'm referring to as "common geography"--something that was once, implicitly, understood by everybody, almost by way of provincial-citizen duty. The kind of geographic coordinates advanced by provincial highway maps and the like. But it's also interesting in how you frame it as something of an older-generation exoticism--like, *I* grew up with that common-geographical understanding, but by that time it was almost as a Seth-esque retro-ism, an intuitive identification with "old ways".
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When I wrote that, what came to my mind were trips when I was very young with my great aunts and uncles out to those distant towns where there was some cousin or relative we would visit. Their cars always had lots of maps inside. The official road-map of course, plus all sorts of Map Art maps. All were worn and used with routes marked up. I was fascinated to see all these places and look at how to travel there.

I used to have a car, but sold it a few years ago. I never owned a map while I had it. My friends who have cars don't have maps. Anywhere they want to go is explained to them by the GPS. They are only exposed to the places between where they are and where they want to go. What lies beyond is a mystery. A funny result of this I notice in my generation is the tendency to vastly underestimate travel times to other places in Ontario.

Twice in the past year I have had friends who had reason to go to London who had never been before. Both times the friend refused to believe me that it was more than a 2 hour drive away. One actualy just assumed GO Trains went there. The reality that it was an hour drive just to Kitchener blew their minds. The fact that after that there was another 80 km of farm land down the 401 before you arrived in London was incomprehensible. Another example is a friend who called me up at 5:00pm saying his friend in Montreal was having a birthday party that night and he was going to drive down and he wanted to know if I would come as I had done the trip before. I wished him good luck.

EDIT: Weirdness. Algonquin doesn't show up as "green space" on Google Maps
 
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Maybe I am a exception to my 30-something generation, as I did have a Map book in my car up to 2007 at the latest. And I love poring through maps of places I've visited seeing how different routes connect me to these places (including rail with or without passenger service). I dunno I guess I'm funny that way. In fact even when others were moving to GPS navigators, I was still using Mapquest, and later google maps, to plot out my routes and print out directions and I'd argue that this is the modern day equivalent to the car full of maps.

What I have found is that it has helped me create this "mental map" that I think you guys are referring to of, maybe not all of Ontario but, of the GTA and most places I have visited more than once. I enjoy being able to envision the route to these places in my minds eye. Further what I have noticed is that having this mental image has more or less made my reliance on GPS navigators virtually non existent as I can more or less find my way around the GTA without one. This reminds me of a friend of mine who one day was meeting us downtown and had absolutely no clue how to get where he was to the city, and he was at Jane and Wilson!!!

Anyway sorry for the ot post.
 
Thinking back to discussions in other threads: here's proof that when it comes to officially recognized common geographic usage as opposed to jurisdictional minutiae, Ontario does *not* have Virginia-style "independent cities". Brant includes Brantford, Wellington includes Guelph, etc. (Memo to howl, freshcutgrass, etc)
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Using Statcan as an argument doesn't work, as it delineates in its own imaginary world of imaginary borders. That's why CMA's ignore provincially designated official political borders such as "Regions" or the "GTA".
 
freshcutgrass said:
Using Statcan as an argument doesn't work, as it delineates in its own imaginary world of imaginary borders. That's why CMA's ignore provincially designated official political borders such as "Regions" or the "GTA".
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Judging from your "imaginary world of imaginary borders" sneers, you obviously didn't grow up impacted by Jonny5-style great-aunts and uncles...
 
Judging from your "imaginary world of imaginary borders" sneers, you obviously didn't grow up impacted by Jonny5-style great-aunts and uncles...
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I have no clue what you are talking about. Johnny5 ?????

But I just find it hilarious that you jump all over Statcan as supporting your point, when it couldn't be farther than the truth. First of all, Statcan delineations are not "official" to anyone but Statcan....it does not exist in the real world. Which flies in the face of your notion of warm & fuzzy "commonly held beliefs" theory of reality (itself a logical fallacy). All Statcan understands are things like the forward commuting flow rule.

Statcan isn't even really that accurate....it just tries to be. So to say in Feb 2012 that the population of the City of Toronto is 2,615,060 is really quite misleading. Statcan isn't claiming that. They are just saying that on May 10, 2011, that many people in the City of Toronto participated in their enumeration.
 
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hawc said:
Does anyone actually live in Brampton by choice? Or is it a, "Fine, we'll move to Brampton for now."
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I'd rather live in Scarborough. Brampton is alien. There is nothing out there, the people who've settled there recently are mostly Sikhs so there are some temples, but it's really nothing to write home about. It was a kind of Mississauga-lite concerning business, mostly production plants for auto-industry companies and ugly strip malls.
 
freshcutgrass said:
I have no clue what you are talking about. Johnny5 ?????
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Did you read the posts above the one you made? Quoth Jonny5:

My grandparents, great aunts and uncles know the counties by heart, or at least all of them south of Sudbury and West of Kingston. They are all in their late 70s now. Their parent's parents immigrated and settled in or near Halton. Their were lots of children in each generation and they spread out all over the southern half of the province. They have stories about travelling all over for birthdays, family reunions, funerals and weddings and probably drove on almost every kilometre of highways 2 - 10 at some point. Recent generations have had the number of children per mother drop from eight to two and now one. All of my family members now live between Oshawa and Hamilton. There are no weddings or funerals in places like Clinton, Morristown, Picton, Walkerton, Stratford, Collingwood, Grimsby or Cayuga. If I wasn't as in tune to provincial issues as I am, I probably would not know where any of those places are. I'm quite sure none of my friends have ever heard of them. They mostly don't know anyone who lives out of the GTA, except possibly the ones who are from rural towns.
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And later

When I wrote that, what came to my mind were trips when I was very young with my great aunts and uncles out to those distant towns where there was some cousin or relative we would visit. Their cars always had lots of maps inside. The official road-map of course, plus all sorts of Map Art maps. All were worn and used with routes marked up. I was fascinated to see all these places and look at how to travel there.
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And compare that to

I used to have a car, but sold it a few years ago. I never owned a map while I had it. My friends who have cars don't have maps. Anywhere they want to go is explained to them by the GPS. They are only exposed to the places between where they are and where they want to go. What lies beyond is a mystery. A funny result of this I notice in my generation is the tendency to vastly underestimate travel times to other places in Ontario.

Twice in the past year I have had friends who had reason to go to London who had never been before. Both times the friend refused to believe me that it was more than a 2 hour drive away. One actualy just assumed GO Trains went there. The reality that it was an hour drive just to Kitchener blew their minds. The fact that after that there was another 80 km of farm land down the 401 before you arrived in London was incomprehensible. Another example is a friend who called me up at 5:00pm saying his friend in Montreal was having a birthday party that night and he was going to drive down and he wanted to know if I would come as I had done the trip before. I wished him good luck.
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Now, you ought to know what I mean about the eclipse of a "common geography". But the way you're presenting it, Ontario's counties might as well be as meaningless as Manitoba's census divisions.

Which, according to the kind of "Jonny5's friends and peers" tableau offered in the final quote, might well be the case these days. (But, put it this way, freshcutgrass: if in your teens or even single digits, your mental geography of Ontario had more in common with that latter tableau, you're part of the problem. I knew my counties by the time I was ten; I had more in common with said great-aunts and uncles. You probably didn't; it was an old crock to you, or something...)
 
I think this is brand new and very timely to this discussion... Google maps now highlights the Ontario county and city boundaries when you look them up!

Wellington County

Guelph
 
(But, put it this way, freshcutgrass: if in your teens or even single digits, your mental geography of Ontario had more in common with that latter tableau, you're part of the problem. I knew my counties by the time I was ten; I had more in common with said great-aunts and uncles. You probably didn't; it was an old crock to you, or something...)
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On the contrary...I grew up in a small town in Oxford County, so I was very aware of County and Township roles...as most things were named after one of them.

But I'm partially with you on this...while the term Oxford County is still officially used, it's actually a Regional Municipality (since 2001), so it technically makes no sense to keep the name county in its title. But the word county is so entrenched in its identity, it remains. It's called a county...but it isn't one.

Speaking of "old school", it would be interesting to get the Old Order Mennonite's take on this...they still live there, as if it were still 1850 when the County was incorporated, which is considerably older than your great aunties & uncles take on it.

Here's your stumbling block...perception is relative. There is no privileged frame of reference. While the City of Brantford is a politically independent municipality from Brant County, Statcan ignores this and continues to lump them as one Census Division. To make matters worse, they also include the native reserves, which are definitely not part of Brant County...they don't even consider themselves part of the province.
 
freshcutgrass said:
Here's your stumbling block...perception is relative. There is no privileged frame of reference. While the City of Brantford is a politically independent municipality from Brant County, Statcan ignores this and continues to lump them as one Census Division. To make matters worse, they also include the native reserves, which are definitely not part of Brant County...they don't even consider themselves part of the province.
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Except that not only does Statscan ignore it--practically *everything* public-consumption-wise has over time, right down to the presently linked Google mapping. You're acting as if it's a fatal solecism; it isn't. It's what I'm referring to as "common geography".

I mean, at this point, to condemn it as "incorrect" is like certain Ladies Mile types within UT willing to sacrifice certain currently-prizeworthy pieces of late Victoriana because of its being "incorrect" in detail; as if the Victorianphobic values of Eric-Arthur-in-the-1950s-and-1960s came back into fashion...
 
Except that not only does Statscan ignore it--practically *everything* public-consumption-wise has over time, right down to the presently linked Google mapping.
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First of all, not that much time has passed. And secondly, you aren't correct to begin with. The city vs rural disparities have always existed...and have always been an issue. That's why you don't have two-tiered county arrangements that need to look after both. The introduction of Native Reserves makes it even more interesting. And thirdly...Statcan's motives have nothing to do with what you are talking about.
 
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