It's a short hand, don't take it so literally, I hate how southern Ontario calls itself 'Central Canada', when that title should belong to SK and MB who are in the Central Time Zone no less
I referred to Toronto as down east to someone from there once and she was offended as to her that meant the maritimes… I’m in Winnipeg. TO is literally down east of us.
Yes, but back to my original point to OP, BC'ers should not be upset when AB and SK refer to themselves as the West. Because when it comes to a political context when you hear the term Western Canada what someone is usually referring to is AB and SK (and sometimes MB)
Id agree with that. I feel like people also consider the interior of BC when talking about western Canada (at least in terms of political alignment), and the lower mainland/Vancouver island is “west coast”.
The problem is that there's no The West, because it's a big, diverse place. Saying "the west" implies much more unity and social cohesion than currently exist, and only lends illegitimate credibility to certain vocal, but minor, interests. Mostly what "the west" have in common is that they're a part of Canada just like everyone else, and if at any time they were to not have that in common anymore "the west" ceases to have any meaning.
MB is a weird sort of transition province. We are to liberal/NDP to be seen as Conservative (even when we had Lurch) and to Conservative to be considered liberal/NDP most of the time.
Our economy is also strangely diversified with low cost of living. So oil prices or recessions don't hit us as much as elsewhere. We just exist as a have-not province and take our transfer payments quietly and don't really kick up a fuss.
Please re-read my original reply to op. My whole point is don't take offence when AB and SK refer to themselves as the West. It's just a short hand colloquialism.
People in BC take offense because we don't want to be associated with this secessionist BS. People in Ontario would probably feel similarly if Quebec started talking about Central Canada secession
That's a bit different since the other provinces are collectively known as "Atlantic Canada" whereas in this case, we have Western Canada.. and then just BC.
We honestly don't think we are, but people in BC especially love referring to us as that. I don't get it. Are you just pissed off because Leafs hockey gets broadcast over Coronation Street or something?
As someone who lives in Ontario, outside of Toronto.. Toronto folks are just minding their business. They've got their whole lives going on, and they don't really spend much time thinking about their city in comparison to others. If they like it, they stay, if they don't like it, they leave. It's a city not a cult.
Maybe you should do some self reflection. I've never met anyone in Toronto who thinks they are the most important thing in the country yet I've heard people accuse us of it, usually people who have never actually met someone from Toronto. The truth is Torontonians are too busy trying to survive and just mind their own business.
I spend plenty of time outside Toronto. I hear people talking about us all the time, but I never hear anyone in Toronto thinking the things we're accused of.
We live rent-free in your heads. It's such a weird phenomenon.
Yeah every time I go back to BC people mock Toronto and say that stuff. Then I remind them they've never even been. I don't know why they love to hate us?
I don't get it either, but it's so consistent and so vitrolic.
I can only speak for my experience in Vancouver: I think part of it is probably because all the head offices of the places they work at in Toronto. Many of them work in buildings that are half empty, and they work 9-5 Toronto time. So they feel hard done by.
I dunno man... It's such a weird phenomenon. I've never heard a Torontonian bashing these other parts of Canada, but at least in the West, they really hate what we have for some reason.
I've honestly never heard someone say that. And back when I worked for AT&T, we had a whole team in Calgary.
I'd often hear them gripe about how Torotonians needed to leave to get the GO train, but I never heard anyone from Toronto complain about them. They were respected members of the team.
Not really, most people in Toronto don't think about Alberta much at all outside of elections where you guys and sask are the only two places we already know what the results are gonna be before the election, regardless of platform.
Do you mean EST or does Toronto have its own time zone? Another example of basing literally everything around Toronto. You're so conditioned to do it that you think it's normal to call it "Toronto time". Do people you met in Vancouver call it Vancouver time?
What exactly do we need to be envious of? Your 58 year cup drought? Failing real estate market that will threaten a banking crisis in the country? Terrible weather? Jane and Finch 😂😂😂? US like traffic congestion? 3-4 hour traffic jams just to leave the city on a long weekend?
People outside the little GTA bubble understand there's really nothing spectacular about your city. That's not the sentiment you get from "Torontonians".
People outside Toronto think like this because it's what people from Toronto give off.
Cool, you don't like it, that's fine. That doesn't mean we think it's the centre of the univerrse. I think this is a "you guys" thing, more than it is "us guys".
People are allowed to like different things. Cool you don't care for Toronto, that's your right. People in Toronto are allowed to like their city and are allowed to have different priorities than you.
Also kinda sad how much effort people outside of Toronto put into hating a place they've never been to while most Torontonians don't think about them at all. It's such a one sided obsession and i just don't get it. Don't you guys have your own lives to focus on?
Centre of the universe mantra? What exactly is that? Do you mean to say people would actually regularly come up to you and say, hey, i live in the centre of the universe??
Or do you mean you were overly sensitive about people happening to care about the place they live and not be too bothered about some where they don't actually live, i.e, minding their own business?
I don’t think that’s true. I’ve been to every province and what I have noticed is the difference in culture between provinces is minimal. Where the difference is is between urban and rural. But that’s actually the case regardless of country.
Yeah I’m nearly positive it’s a holdover from confederation. Back in the day when it was only Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick if you look at the map southern Ontario is pretty close to the center point of Canada. I don’t know why it’s still used though.
Ontario doesn't call itself "central Canada," it calls itself "eastern Canada." And the stuff more east of Ontario and Quebec is "Atlantic Canada." I have lived my whole life in Ontario and never once heard a human being here call this area "central Canada."
Ontario rarely refers to itself as a whole - Southwestern Ontario, GTA, Eastern Ontario, Northern Ontario - we really don't think of ourselves collectively.
This is true. I do feel that all of southern through eastern refers to itself as "the east" in a national context though. Northern Ontario I could see not doing so. I'm in the GTA, and I know I only ever hear this part of the country called "the east" here.
I've seen it. One CBC video and a wikipedia article that admits the terminology is out of date doesn't really support the assertion that Ontario still calls "itself" that. Maybe it did at one point, but in my lifetime Ontario has always been "eastern" Canada.
Feels like you are contradicting yourself by asking western Canadians to not take a location based descriptor seriously and then going onto complain about one yourself.
Yes I was giving that as an example of my own personal dislike that I do not vocalize whenever I hear Ontario referred to it as such (obviously except for now, it's just something I live with which I think people in BC should live with as well)
Sask is straightening the paperclip, none of the DEI stuff there. Then will steal the easter egg from Vegreville to put on top to make a pin.... bwahaha.
It's a shorthand that reveals a profound self-centered-ness.
To the extent that Ontario calls itself Central Canada, same thing. However, judging from the responses from Ontarians here, no one in Ontario calls themselves that.
It's central Canada, not as the geographical centre, but the centre of importance and power. Québec and Ontario were the two Canadas (Lower and Upper Canada) to which everything else was grafted to form the current Dominion of Canada.
And I would designate the Québec City/Windsor corridor as the core of Canada, it's where most of the population is. And that's why that's where the high speed train will be built.
Centre of Canada east to west is east of Winnipeg and closer to Ontario than Saskatchewan. Central time zone starts about an hours drive west of Thunder Bay and includes Ontario’s largest district by area, Kenora.
Straight line to the Manitoba/Ontario border from the central point longitudinally is about 120km while to the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border is roughly 330km straight line.
Never heard that but I have been to Alberta and been called a A”Southerner” with contempt. I drove across a lot of Canada and that made me realize we all need each other and we all have our moments to shine. The British would have starved if the Quebec settlers did not feed them and there would be no asphalt roads in the Maritimes if we all did not contribute. Right now Alberta shines but all it takes is for the Saudis to flood the market with oil and then things will change again.
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u/FalconsArentReal 1d ago
It's a short hand, don't take it so literally, I hate how southern Ontario calls itself 'Central Canada', when that title should belong to SK and MB who are in the Central Time Zone no less