Expand North! So much room up there.
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If anything, this proves how much Canadians don't want to be Americans.
Canadian weather is shitty, you can't grow crops for most of the year. During the fraction of the year where the climate is suitable for growing crops, the variety of things that grow is small compared to what's possible in the US. And, as bad as winter can be, summer's no good either. You don't want to be outside in the winter because it's -30, and you don't want to be outside in the summer because it's +35. The cost of living in Canada is high because you need to heat your home in the winter and cool it in the summer. Almost everybody drives a car because of that "being outside sucks" thing, but cars are expensive to own and operate in Canada. There's the cost of winter tires, more expensive winter fuels, antifreeze in the windshield washer, plus the constant freeze/thaw cycle wrecks the road surfaces, which results in potholes, which results in more wear and tear on cars. In addition, to make driving safe they drop a lot of salt and sand, which just rusts your car. Because the country is a thin strip, everything is far away, and everything communications-related is expensive. And, a low population relative to the US means that a lot of companies just don't offer services in Canada because it isn't worth it to comply with Canadian laws just to get the same number of customers you could get from a single American state. I could keep going on and on.
Yet, despite all that, Canadians huddle up as close as possible to the border for warmth, but refuse to go any further south because that would mean entering the US. As bad as Canada's climate is, putting up with that is an easy decision to make when the alternative is 'Murica.
You just described Minnesota, minus the part about the services.
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Yes and it includes 'within 100 miles of an airport'.
so basically the entire us?
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As for bike lanes, winter is a major factor.
But actually, even in Canada. And even with bike share programs.
So actually:
Canadian cities aren’t doing enough to build mass transit [and bike lanes]
Is all you need. End of post.
The video says that there were more than 500,000 bike share trips in Toronto in the winter months. Let's be conservative and say that "the winter months" are just December, January and February. The reality is that there's ice on the ground until May pretty often, but let's just pretend it's 500,000 trips in 3 months to make the numbers seem as big as possible.
Is that big? Not really, 500,000 trips in 3 months is 167,000 trips per month. Meanwhile in the summer it's 1 million trips per month. So, cycling drops by a factor of at least 6 in the winter. That's massive.
And yes, I've watched that Not Just Bikes video. It makes the point that in order for people to bike in the winter, you need massive infrastructure that Canada refuses to spend on. The city in question in the video, Oulu, makes it a priority to clear the bike routes within 3 hours of a 2 cm snowfall. Theoretically could that be done in every rich city in the world? Sure. Is it realistic it will ever happen anywhere in Canada? Doubtful.
I stand by what I said, "winter is a major factor". Do you have any idea how much it would cost to commit to clearing all the bike routes within 3 hours of a 2 cm snowfall? You could argue that the cost is worth it, and that the cost is smaller than doing similar things for cars, but it remains a major factor.
Besides, it wouldn't even make sense to have snow clearing like Oulu unless they first built a dedicated bike network for the city. There's no point in just clearing the "bike lanes" which are just a tiny strip of pavement next to the gutter.
Canadian cities aren't doing enough to build mass transit and bike lanes. But, even if they did, the weather sucks in the winter. And Oulu, is colder than Toronto. But it's slightly warmer than Ottawa and Montreal, and significantly warmer than Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary. So, even if you replicated all the bike lanes from Oulu, committed to clearing the snow as quickly as they do in Oulu and made cars and fuel as expensive as they are in Europe, Canada would probably have nowhere near the number of winter bikers as Oulu per capita. Canada is much colder, cities are designed around cars, and people have "car brain".
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Meanwhile they have wheatfields 4 hours north of Edmonton. Posts like this always remind me how much I hate most Canadians and their whiny, weak, entitled, arrogant, half clever bullshit.
Ooh, wheat! Great. What about fruits? They're important for a balanced diet.
It turns out that Canada imports 50% of its vegetables and 75% of its fruit.
But do go on, tell me how Canada's climate isn't limiting in what it can produce domestically.
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so basically the entire us?
Yep, which is why its more or less blatant ignorance of the constitution
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In B.C.'s defense, imo, most of the land to its North is either too mountainous ^[1][2.1]^ or has too harsh a climate ^[2.2]^ to be realistically inhabitable. I think it's also worth noting that 15.4% of B.C.'s lands are protected ^[3]^.
::: spoiler References
- Type: Document (PDF). Title: "BC Fact Sheet". Publisher: "Super, Natural British Columbia". Accessed: 2025-08-09T04:10Z. URI: https://www.hellobc.com/content/uploads/2019/04/TM_BCFactSheet.pdf.
- Type: Text. Location: [§"The Land". ¶2]
Ten mountain ranges push west from the Canadian Rockies in the east to the Coast Mountains and the Vancouver Island Ranges in the west, and ancient temperate rainforests hug the coast. In between are rolling grasslands, lush valleys, tens of thousands of lakes, glacier-fed rivers, and even semi-arid desert. Mountains cover 75% of the province.
- Type: Text. Location: [§"The Land". ¶2]
- Type: Article. Title: "British Columbia". Publisher: "Wikipedia". Published: 2025-08-08T03:18Z. Accessed: 2025-08-09T05:48Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia.
- Type: Image. Filename: "BC_Elevation.svg". Author: "Awmcphee". Published: 2024-04-27. Location: §"Geography". URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BC_Elevation.svg.
. - Type: Image. Filename: "British_Columbia_Köppen.svg". Author: "Adam Peterson". Published: 2016-08-12. Location: [§"Geography"§"Climate"]. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:British_Columbia_Köppen.svg.
- Type: Image. Filename: "BC_Elevation.svg". Author: "Awmcphee". Published: 2024-04-27. Location: §"Geography". URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BC_Elevation.svg.
- Type: Article. Title: "Protected Lands & Waters in B.C.". Publisher: ["Environmental Reporting BC". "Ministry of Environment". "British Columbia".]. Published: 2016-06. Accessed: 2025-08-09T05:59Z. URI: https://www.env.gov.bc.ca/soe/indicators/land/protected-lands-and-waters.html.
- Type: Text. Location: ¶1.
[…] Protected lands and waters cover 15.4% of B.C.'s land base and 3.2% of B.C.'s marine areas. […]
- Type: Text. Location: ¶1.
- Type: Document (PDF). Title: "BC Fact Sheet". Publisher: "Super, Natural British Columbia". Accessed: 2025-08-09T04:10Z. URI: https://www.hellobc.com/content/uploads/2019/04/TM_BCFactSheet.pdf.
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Every Canadian knows that the secret forests of magical splendour begin 101 miles from the border.
yukon is where all the magic is.
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Considering the relative surface areas, with those percentages you provided, actually, yes, America is less consolidated.
The United States also has eight times the total population. I only saw one source that said 40% and the overwhelming majority said either 2/3 or something in the low 70%
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What exactly are you guarding? I figure there’s a reason not many people live outside of that area depicted.
Have you seen Game of Thrones?
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so basically the entire us?
Don't be such a hyperbolic drama queen; I'm sure theres like a ten square foot area in south dakota or something.
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Yep, which is why its more or less blatant ignorance of the constitution
Pretty sure it's not ignorance, otherwise how would they clean their butts?
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Fun Fact, a lot of North Dakotans live higher north than half of Canadians.
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Fun Fact, a lot of North Dakotans live higher north than half of Canadians.
If I understand correctly based on a map and Wikipedia, the concept of "a lot of people" does not exist in North Dakota, though.
I had never heard of the city of Bismarck, their state capital of more than 70 thousand inhabitants, a bit over 10% of the state's population. But, now I do. I also had not thought there can be a state capital with that little population. (And then this made me curious and I learned that in Germany the smallest state capital is Schwerin, in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and it has about 98 000 inhabitants in a state of 1½ million inhabitants.)
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The United States also has eight times the total population. I only saw one source that said 40% and the overwhelming majority said either 2/3 or something in the low 70%
Could it be that one source referred only to places with an actual border, while the rest included anything within 160 km of any coast?
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If I understand correctly based on a map and Wikipedia, the concept of "a lot of people" does not exist in North Dakota, though.
I had never heard of the city of Bismarck, their state capital of more than 70 thousand inhabitants, a bit over 10% of the state's population. But, now I do. I also had not thought there can be a state capital with that little population. (And then this made me curious and I learned that in Germany the smallest state capital is Schwerin, in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and it has about 98 000 inhabitants in a state of 1½ million inhabitants.)
The subset is a lot of and the set is North Dakotans.
If you have a room of ten people a lot of them can have things in common.
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We stand on guard.
For thee?
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If I understand correctly based on a map and Wikipedia, the concept of "a lot of people" does not exist in North Dakota, though.
I had never heard of the city of Bismarck, their state capital of more than 70 thousand inhabitants, a bit over 10% of the state's population. But, now I do. I also had not thought there can be a state capital with that little population. (And then this made me curious and I learned that in Germany the smallest state capital is Schwerin, in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and it has about 98 000 inhabitants in a state of 1½ million inhabitants.)
Speaking of Germany, Bismarck is named after Otto von and when he was still alive! Greater Bismarck includes Mandan too, so it’s a bit more like 100k+ people in the area, but yeah it’s pretty small. Lots of the middle west is like that. They need to be consolidated into a single state for the senate lol
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FTFYWinnipeg has almost a million people!!
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Speaking of Germany, Bismarck is named after Otto von and when he was still alive! Greater Bismarck includes Mandan too, so it’s a bit more like 100k+ people in the area, but yeah it’s pretty small. Lots of the middle west is like that. They need to be consolidated into a single state for the senate lol
Awesome trivia! Thanks!
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But Canada is "too big" for rail. Except of course all those railways 100 years ago that pretty much made this nation possible, or how nearly every city had trams in most neighborhoods.
And the Trans-Siberian railway has existed for years, is thousands of miles long in awful conditions, AND electrified. We don't have an excuse.
