Posted on 03/15/2006 12:09:49 PM PST by Heartofsong83
Separatist fervour hits northern Ontario Residents would rather be Manitobans
Mention secession in Canada, and the mind turns to Quebec, and perhaps the restive western provinces.
Now add to that list the inhabitants of the northwestern part of Ontario, in the heart of the country.
But rather than yearning to leave Canada, they want to leave their province and join Manitoba next door.
If they get their way, Ontario would lose 60 per cent of its area, though just two per cent of its people.
The ambivalent loyalty of these Ontarians has deep roots. When Canada became a confederation in 1867, both provinces claimed part of northwestern Ontario.
For a while they ran rival police forces and town councils in Kenora.
Now once again the people of Ontario’s stony hinterland, stretching over a vast emptiness between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay, have tired of what they see as neglect from the provincial government in distant Toronto.
Dissatisfaction has been given urgency by the woes of their main industry.
The past year has seen 31 full or partial closures of pulp and paper mills in Canada, 13 of them in Ontario.
The pain is felt most keenly in smaller towns. In 2005, three mills closed in Thunder Bay, the regional centre with 100,000 people, two in Kenora (population 11,000), and one in even-smaller Dryden.
More are on the way.
Worldwide, the industry is suffering as the paperless office at last becomes a reality, and newspaper circulations flag.
Canada’s Pulp and Paper Products Council, an industry body, says North American newsprint sales fell 8.5 per cent in January compared with a year ago.
Classified advertising has migrated to the Internet; many papers have adopted smaller formats. In addition, Canada’s mills are battling higher energy costs, a strong currency and competition from Brazil and Indonesia, where trees grow faster.
"We have to do something or there will be nobody left up here," says Kenora Mayor Dave Canfield. He is frustrated by the Ontario government’s slow response to his town’s economic problems.
Together with other politicians in the area, he has formed a group studying whether they should stay in Ontario or leave it.
Dalton McGuinty, Ontario’s premier, seems to be taking this threat seriously. On a flying visit in late February, he flagged up a $220 million package to subsidize roadbuilding and to lower the stumpage fees charged by the province for felling trees. This followed two other schemes worth a combined $680 million.
Too little, too late, say some northwesterners. Another provincial scheme, which caps electricity charges for industrial users for three years, has been met with similar scorn. Industrial users in Ontario pay twice as much as in Manitoba or Quebec.
The northwest, self-sufficient in power, objects to paying for expensive nuclear power plants near Lake Ontario, built to meet southern demand.
McGuinty agreed last week to consider local price differentials, but made no promises.
Joining Manitoba might offer not just cheaper energy but more political clout. Manitoba has only 1.2 million people, compared with Ontario’s 12.6 million, so the northwesterners would become a much bigger fish in a smaller pond.
Thunder Bay, the 12th-largest city in Ontario, would leap to second spot in Manitoba, behind Winnipeg, the capital.
The northwest has only three of the 103 seats in Ontario’s legislature but in an expanded Manitoba could expect 11 out of 68 seats.
The flirtation with Manitoba may be merely a cry for more attention from Toronto.
Secessionist sentiment in northwest Ontario has waxed and waned before. But Livio di Matteo, an economist at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, says it has never before been so strong. He would prefer more autonomy within Ontario, but accepts that there would be political benefits in joining Manitoba to form a new province called, perhaps, Mantario.
Would Manitoba welcome this?
Gary Doer, its premier, was coy when asked recently. He said that he did not want to meddle in another province’s affairs, and that Ontarians would have to settle the matter among themselves.
But he added that Manitobans have a lot in common with the people of northwestern Ontario.
It seems the door is open.
ping
Another better option: Toronto and its immediate suburbs separating into its own province, or even its own fortress country. It would keep all those communities of similar interests together, as they stretch across the province.
bump
Interesting article. A lot of folks in the U.S. may not realize just how enormous the province of Ontario is. Along the U.S. border, it covers a distance that spans a portion of the United States from within 50 miles or so of the New York/Vermont state line in the east nearly as far west as the Minnesota/North Dakota border in the west. It takes damn near three days to drive from one end of the province to the other.
That's so true, and that area is neither East nor West! It is a pretty isolated area with much closer ties to Minnesota than anyone else...
What I've always found so bizarre is that the University of Western Ontario is located in Windsor -- even though about 80% of the province lies west of a north-south line drawn through Windsor.
Leftist/socialist/communist
Don't forget 'progressive' :-)
I remember hearing/reading once that the last part of the Trans-Canada Highway that was completed was the portion that runs through Western Ontario, which is basically just a vast, untamed pine forest/marsh.
The amazing thing about this is that it was only completed sometime in 1970.
Oh, that's funny. That never occurred to me!
Just to be clear... In post 12, I was talking about the portion of the highway that runs from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay.
That, or Toronto forming its own province, would be an interesting option.
This shifting of borders makes sense.
Now let's got nuts and invite in Prince Harry and make him King of Greater Manitoba.
Canada is wild enough (in so many ways) to keep the lad occupied and out of trouble.
Or rather we should say that things that get you into trouble elsewhere are not considered "trouble" in Canada.
Bob, what are you up to??
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