Paul_Shepherd

I think you are probably right…. I just think its emphasized more here in Canada because of the geography…. Distances between country and city are a lot more, plus small country towns are often very isolated, so city and country people come into contact a lot less as they would in a smaller European country.

caretaker

The country starts at the city limits here, (as soon as you're on the highway you're driving past farms), but people commute up to an hour by car from farms and small towns to work in the city. I've lived in Canada all my life, over 65 years, probably half of that in the country and half in the city, and I suspect that the premise of your thread may be restricted to your own experience, and in the location where you are. Because I've never been to the UK I can't know what you're comparing it to, but that's irrelevant to Country vs City Canada. I used to have the opinion that Ontario was more "provincial" than other provinces, but while I have travelled it extensively it's been so long since I stayed there more than overnight I can't base that on current experience. It's obvious that the city and the country have some differences, and also that cities have differences between them, and so do provinces. You can make some generalisations that apply to a lot of the population, but saying that there is an absolute divide in attitude between rural and urban Canadians wouldn't be correct.

Paul_Shepherd

I did try to make that clear in my initial post that in what I was saying wasn't hard fact....it is my personal experience and asked if anyone else had noticed it what I had described. I also said that I have only lived in Canada for 10 years (compared to your 65) I came to Canada at the age of 38 so the majority of my life experiences are UK based, which is a considerable different culture to Canada, again much of it because of geography which I hi lighted earlier.

My thread by no means applies to all of Canada, I have travelled all over Canada on vacation, but haven't lived anywhere but south west Ontario, (country and city) so yes my experience is based on that only. I have country friends and I have city friends, and on occasion the two have met in social situations....and they are chalk and cheese, although civil to one an other, they have a limited amount in common....this can also be dependent on individual personalities too though.

However in my experience I do see obvious differences between country and city people, some of which I described in my initial post. An obvious example would be that country people are more outdoors, city are not.

caretaker

Farmers have to go outdoors to do the chores and work the land, so that's a given, but the parade of cars from Calgary to Fernie every weekend in the winter makes it look like a ton of city people go skiing. There are absolutely more snow machines in the country than in the city because so many people in small towns and resort villages have them, and the resort village where my trailer is, is full of them, possibly over half the cottages have them. When I came back from the north I'd been snowmobiling and wanted to get one (you could buy a nice one for $500 then), but then I saw how they just carved up the snow drifts and I liked them less. I appreciate the practical uses of quads and skidoos and I've used them for fishing and hunting but most people just rip around on them. In the summer the lake has boats tearing up and down or just fishing every weekend and most of them are going back to the city to work on Monday. There are a lot of driveways in Regina with skidoo's on trailers or boats sitting on them. Go further north away from the belt of population density along the border and people on farms and in small towns still build cottages at the lake but they just don't have to go as far to get to them.

Paul_Shepherd

Maybe I haven't lived in the city long enough then, I realise here that many city people head up to the cottage in the summer, but other than that, most conversations I have had with people in the city look at me in wonderment when I talk of heading out on the snowmobile or the boat in the summer. Maybe if I had spent the same time in the city as I have in the country, then I would see it differently, it has only been 18months compared to 9 years in the country. As I mentioned in my first post I can see the pluses for both, but I think the country draws me more...

caretaker

There's been a migration to resort villages and small towns caused by high real estate prices in the city. When I moved to the lake in 1990 there were only 12 year-round residents, then 6 or 7 years later cottage owners (first the retirees, then others) whose places were good for the winter started selling their homes and moving to the beach. Now it's become too busy for me, and I bemoan the loss of what it was.

bats

Many of the boat owners on Rice Lake are citiots either cottagers or retirees. The locals can't afford them.
I see there's a difference between Torontonians and the rest of Ontario. Peterborough and Belleville are backwaters stuck in the 1970s if not earlier. The Canadian motto seems to me to be " this is the way we've always done it and we see no need to change". Toronto is full of foreigners with their forward ways

Shard

Probably no different than the locals down the pub in Yoirkshire or Somerset though.

scrubbedexpat091

Long time residents of Squamish which prior to 2010 could have been called a bit country, just an old logging town on the way to Whistler. 2010 Olympics with the highway improvements made Squamish easily commutable to Vancouver and had cheap rent and housing, so people flocked into town and commuted to the city to work, pushing up prices for homes and rents to where it is now where locals who work in town can't afford housing. When I met my wife in 2013, rent for a 1 bedroom in a then brand new apartment building was $645 per month, and they still could not rent them all out even with incentives like last month free rent, fast forward to 2015 and rent in that building were up to $875 per month, and now renting for $1,450 a month.

Citiot is used often by Squamish locals, those city dwellers who moved to the small town and ruined it is a common theme there.

Wasn't as bad in Chilliwack but some long time residents can get pretty vocal about city folk coming in and ruining their town.

Paul_Shepherd

I have quite a few boating friends, they are all Peterborough and surrounding areas born and bred....but then they all have 30+ year old boats!

I do agree on the Peterborough analogy though, many people are stuck in past....and the city council are the worst, they have done nothing to improve Peterborough, just build subdivision after subdivision for retirees, which achieves nothing, instead of trying to encourage new buisiness into Peterborough after its industry has withered and died bit by bit. So yes....totally agree with your view on their backward mentality, nothing has been done to improve the prosperity of the city.

Shard

It's not that easy though to simply "encourage new business" to small town Canada. What's the sell? Building subdivisions is a form of new business, whether it's for retirees or anyone else. The contractors all need to eat, buy stuff, sleep, and there will be following on business in marketing the properties. As for improvements, it depends on how much money the city are taking in, but I'm guessing if prosperity is sluggish so city budgets will be strained as well.