Posted on 01/25/2006 1:16:23 PM PST by Heartofsong83
January 25, 2006
The urban angle
It’s when you no longer know where your milk comes from, let alone where you got your opinions, that you have become over-urbanized. I note, with Allan Gregg, that the Conservatives did not win a single seat in Montreal, Toronto, or Vancouver -- our three largest cities. Let me enlarge on remarks I have made in many previous columns, applying the famous Red State/Blue State division in the U.S. to circumstances in Canada. I disagree with Mr Gregg that the inner urban constituencies should be assuaged. The future of Canada, as the U.S., is -- if we are lucky -- “ex-urban”. (As opposed to “rural”.)
Canada is different from the States in fewer ways than any of our city-borne media realize. We have the same basic Left/Right division, with the same sorts of views on both sides (both in English and French). The difference between countries is geographic -- and derives from the fact that so little of Canada is habitable. We lack the vast, occupied, American outdoors. Against the wind blowing from the Arctic, we are huddled together more densely in cities. A much higher proportion of our population is therefore to be found in typical “Blue State” environments -- where people have lost all contact with nature, and by increments, with the realities of life.
The over-urbanized are the willing clients of the nanny state. They are loathe to take responsibility for anything; they assume when anything goes wrong, some specialist or expert will fix it. Even when they have children they expect “child-care facilities”. They are salaried people; few have ever taken a risk on their own dime. Their taxes are lifted from them at source. They are easily frightened when a Paul Martin or a Jack Layton warns that a bogeyman from Alberta is going to take their entitlements away.
They think of the city and the government as something that was always there -- as a second nature. They are defenceless when primary nature reasserts itself (as we saw, poignantly, in New Orleans). Like isolated and primitive peoples elsewhere, they develop superstitions -- “urban myths” -- that account for the mysterious provision of their public services, and they worship their “rainmaking” urban political gods. Their lives are regulated by principles of “political correctness” bound in on every side by taboo.
I am giving you the profile of a “Blue State” voter, but it is not different in kind from a “Red Province” voter up here. In neither case do we have the boundaries right. Upstate New York can be as Republican as Texas; the difference between Vancouver and the B.C. interior is night and day. The attitudes that animate Toronto diminish, in concentric rings, as you move away from the CN Tower.
Canada was not built by the government; it was built by men and women taking responsibility for things. Yet the over-urbanized have lost this sense that anyone could take responsibility. The postmodern conurbation is vast, and the person who lives in the middle of it, lives 10 or 20 or 30 miles from the nearest open space. He walks or drives past thousands on his way to work. He participates in what used to be called a “rat race”. He adapts quickly in neighbourhoods subject to constant inundation by strange new people -- often speaking languages he can’t understand. His home is something that can be quickly exchanged, more likely rented than owned. He develops a profound sense of personal powerlessness, together with the compensating vanity -- that as an adaptive urbanite, he is especially clever. He assumes people who live away from the second nature of the city are stupid. For after all, they don’t know what living in the city is like; they couldn’t cope with it if they tried.
Now, the funny thing, today, is that “they” do know what life is like in the city, and that is why they left -- in the process, leaving the city to become even more Liberal and New Democrat. Indeed, the Liberals have done a superb job of buying out traditional rural strongholds (such as the fishing Maritimes or the mining Ontario northland) with urbane welfare programmes. Whereas ex-urbans move, not there, but to places where the opportunities are, such as Alberta.
It is not for Alberta, per se, but for these ex-urban people, that Stephen Harper speaks. They know why they left, and they’re damned if they’re going to let Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver rule them.
David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
If you travel just 50 miles from downtown Toronto to Simcoe County, or 50 miles from downtown Vancouver to the Fraser Valley, it is as conservative as Alberta or Texas.
Great article. I think this guy stole a lot of this article from an old post of mine here on FR. LOL.
Very brilliant analysis by this guy.
The funniest thing about urban leftists is that they think they are cool because they live in a city.
The cooler the city, the cooler you are.
Right.
Yet the "not-so-cool" cities, that are either economically prosperous or aesthetically pleasing (or both), are leaning on the conservative side too...those being cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Ottawa, St. Catharines-Niagara, Quebec City and St. John's.
Who's the MP for St. John's? I have a green-voting friend who lives there. I sent her an email gently teasing her about her new PM. ;)
Yup. New York is as much like the US as Paris is like France. San Fran Freako - well, just ask Michael Savage about that. It has much to do with "The Enemy Within".
The three MP's in the area are Loyola Hearn, Norman Doyle and Fabian Manning - all Conservatives.
Poor excuses. Alaska fits this description with most of its population in cities. We have Republican Representative, Senators, Governor, State Legislature and vote Republican for the President.
Thanks!
Canada Ping!
Please FReepmail me to get on or off this Canada ping list.
Um, what passes for "cities" in Alaska would be called "towns" in any other state or Canada. The entire population of Alaska is something like 635,000. Anchorage (which I think is the largest "city") has a population of something like 260,000.
NYC is >8M, LA nearly 4M, Toronto nearly 4M, and Montreal >3M.
I've lived in large cities, small cities, and towns (admittedly, none in Alaska), and the difference between a few hundred thousand and a few million is enormous.
This is a great article, well articulated, and as Alberta's Child said, a line of thought that has been well explored on FR and the 'net already.
I don't think Alaska fits into the analogy as you presented it thackney, for at it's core, Alaska is a state of immigrants who have, like the ex-urban people across North America, left behind their home states and cities to reach Alaska. Alaska has also not yet had it's fisheries depleted and collapse such as the Maritimes and Maine, and they haven't had their old growth lumber forest stocks depleted such as north Ontario or north Appalachia and Upstate NY.
And even if Alaskans are voting Republican, it's not as if they're voting against the guys who are bringing home the large pork, which cuts into larger national issues, off topic to the thread.
Right, another good point, a friend of mine grew up in Queens, NY and moved to Juneau, there were more people in his NY State University then there are college age college students in Alaska.
I think he's been reading my mind ;~)
What a dead on article!
Even more critically, in the States its the ex-urbans (and rurals) who are having all the kids. Those "cool" urban dwellers are having none. Hopefully the demographic tilt towards self reliant conservatives accelerates in both countries.
Good article. Exurbanites or Ex-urbanites do tend to be conservative. But the exurbs tend to get more or less swallowed up in the suburban belt over time. You can see that on Long Island or Northern Virginia or Southern California or New Jersey. Areas that were very Republican quite recently are now trending Democrat. There are also some exurbanites who are liberal. You can see that in Vermont.
"They think that everything in Canada that is important can be seen from the top of the CN Tower."
They have a different concept of reality. In their world there ought to be a law against every annoyance, and a public servant to clean up every mess.
That part isn't completely true. I took a tour in Dutch Harbor a year or so ago. The tour guide was explaining to us that their crab industry was depleted due to overfishing, and now their economy was dependent on catching pollock (which, she said, was then processed to remove the flavor, so they could supply fish sticks to the lower 48. Never mind how I reacted to that!).
I wonder what they will do when the pollock is gone?
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