How TORONTO explains Canada

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J.J. is literally the first YouTuber I’ve heard talk about the English religious conservative part of Toronto’s history, I have Catholic relatives that have told me truly wild stories about the Toronto of old, before it was the multicultural metropolis it is now.

I love how JJ keeps on finding new ways to talk about Canada

Being an American in my 70's I remember when Montreal was the dominant cultural center of Canada. Toronto was a boring backwater. With Quebec passing so many laws limiting English there was a noticeable decline in Montreal and a remarkable increase in Toronto's cultural dominance..

I was born in Ontario, but in NORTHERN Ontario, where many towns have substantial or even majority francophone populations. I went to French-language schools. There is one town I know which is still 95% French-speaking. My mother had roots in Quebec but only lived there briefly, while my father's family had origins in Saskatchewan's French-speaking Metis population, but had become assimilated into Northern Ontario's French Canadian culture. About 12% of Ontarians report being bilingual in English and French. Anglophone Ontarians seldom notice their francophone neighbours as standing out because Franco-Ontarians usually speak English with no noticeable accent, while Quebecois have a strong accent. Franco-Ontarians (apart from recent immigrants from French-speaking countries) do not particularly identify themselves with Quebec, but very strongly with being "French Canadian." People in Northern Ontario, whatever their language, are very conscious of being in a different place from Southern Ontario, but feel closer ties to Manitoba or to Northwestern Quebec. Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and all the thickly populated urban and agricultural areas are all "Down South" but someone in Timmins (Northern Ontario), Val d'or (Northwestern Quebec) or The Pas (Northern Manitoba) will see themselves as more or less the same. In general, people who come from "The North" will feel comfortable anywhere dominated by forests, mining towns, and insanely cold weather. When I visited a town in far Northern British Columbia, everything seemed familiar, and I was not at all surprised to hear French spoken in the streets. The same goes for the Territories, where the working language is English, but you meet many French Canadians. Winnipeg still maintains a substantial French Canadian community. Canadian intellectuals are broadly aware of the East/West dichotomy in Canada, but understand little about the North/South dichotomy. Another thing to note: People in Ontario and Quebec are aware of the existence of Atlantic Canada, while Western Canadians don't seem to know that region exists. I notice that J.J.'s video doesn't even mention the four provinces on the Atlantic. Western Canadians talk about "the East" and mean Ontario, while people in Ontario mean Nova Scotia or Newfoundland when they say "the East." Ontario is in the Middle, not the East. This tendency has become recently modified in parts of Alberta, where many Newfoundlanders have moved to seek jobs, but on the whole people in the Western provinces just never think about that part of the country. Non-urban Canada is not uniformly Conservative in outlook. Northern Ontario almost always votes NDP and the Atlantic Provinces have been firmly Liberal for generations. Canada's "progressiveness" didn't start in Ontario ---- it started in the Prairie Provinces. That's where many progressive policies first appeared. Saskatchewan was the birthplace of progressive politics in Canada, and it was far more influenced by the first big wave of immigration than either Ontario or Quebec ---- the Prairies were the template of Canada's "multiculturalism." Winnipeg was a Babel of languages and cultures long before Toronto. So was Halifax. Toronto had to catch up.

Comparing Vancouver to Toronto left me with the impression that Toronto feels way more like a US city..

As a Dutchman, your video is pretty comparable to the Netherlands. I live in Groningen (the north) and often times we feel as though everything is only dictated from Holland in particular Amsterdam. Same goes for culture and international image

I'm not from there, but Austria has like a third of it's population in or directly adjacent to Vienna and Vienna has a distinct culture to the rest of the country. And whenever I visit Austria, it feels like it's two separate countries.

Hi, a Hungarian from Budapest here. Firstly, I wanted to mention how much the experience of the capital city having its distinctive and influential culture is very much present here as well. The grnerally underdeveloped and politically pretty conservative countryside feels like a totally different world to the rather large, modern and progressive city. It is often jokingly said, that Budapest should form a separate republic in order to remain in the EU, because the remaining part of the country would definetly vote to leave. This is of course exaggerated, but sheds some light on the situation. Secondly, on a much less serious note, I found it strange and amusing at the same time, how you mention that Toronto is "only" a 4-hour drive away from Ottawa and Quebec, and that this sort of distance counts as a short one for you North Americans. Meanwhile if you were to drive in literally any direction away from Budapest for four hours, you'd end up in a different country. Thanks for the video, it was interesting as always, not many people could make content about Canadian culture and politics in a way that's still intriguing to me, a person with virtually no connection to Canada.

I'm not even Canadian, but the way JJ pronounces the second "t" in Toronto kills me.

JJ as a Torontonian we love you…but your pronunciation of the second T is killing us 😂. Pls do a meet & greet next time you drop in

It’s amazing how much influence that the Irish have had on Toronto - in fact, it used to be known of the Belfast of Canada, due to sectarian strife between Irish Catholics and Protestants.

As a born & raised Torontonian (to immigrant parents), the most eye-opening experience for me was taking the train across Canada. Of course the scenery was spectacular, but it was the people I met and the experiences we shared that completely changed how I saw our country and what it meant to be a Canadian.

Another riveting and insightful episode! I visited Toronto once as a teen from suburban Philadelphia. Our destination was Niagara Falls bit 'no room in the N' so we drove all the way around to Toronto. At the time, it felt like a very sparse place...like a Soviet city, if you will. Guess this was 1972-ish. I would like to visit again as some great modern quilters headquarter there. Keep up the great commentary!

It was really cool to hear about Toronto from a Canadian perspective. I grew up in Detroit, and so always found Windsor to be my template of "What Canada Is". Though relatively small, I bet Windsor would be a fun deep dive. I've always been curious about how Canadians view it. Niagara Falls could also be an interesting topic.

It's so weird watching this video as an Albertan. You always feel like your national identity is fundamentally based on your local experience. Growing up in Alberta I have always equated Canadian culture with prairie culture. Small towns, outdoor rinks, largescale Ukrainian cultural tradition, oil money, growing up on a farm or having family who own a farm. As a kid these things were fundamental to my understanding of what "Canadian" culture meant and I assumed this would be relatively uniform across the entire country. Obviously this isn't the case and as I've grown older I have seen that the "Canadian experience " varies location to location. Still feels weird watching a video discussing how 40% of the population has such a different interpretation of the Canadian experience. Would love to see you make a video on this topic JJ. It would be interesting hearing you discuss how Canadian identity varies on province to province. "What it means to be Canadian" in Newfoundland vs BC for example.

A few months ago me and a friend (americans) got passports in order to go on a week's tour of eastern Canada, hitting Niagara, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Trois rivière, and quebec city, Toronto was BY FAR the best city we've been to probably in our lives, and I've been from West Palm FL to NYC, it was lively, mostly kind, everything you could imagine right there, and a lot of Canadian culture which I've found is vastly different from mine, a southerner in VA

Wait TD Ameritrade is actually a Canadian company simply called “Toronto-Dominion” bank in its home country. That might legitimately be the most famous company based in Canada in the US.

While there isn't one city like this for all of the US, this definitely applies at the State level, where one city (often times not the Capitol) can dominate the States culture and perception.

Toronto's influence reminds me a lot of São Paulo and Rio's influence in Brazil, especially how the media is concentrated in those areas. Being a journalist from another city, when I moved to São Paulo to work in a national magazine, I was shocked at how often the reporters would assume that everyone in the country would already know the names of the most famous streets in the city. I've been living in Toronto for 5 years, and it's the best city I've lived in so far. But I'd love to see some of the resources and development go to other areas of the country. Toronto can't be the major option for everything in Canada, or we risk ending up like São Paulo - with 20 million inhabitants and all the problems that come with it.