That moment when you grew up in rural Canada and you see someone on a US show claiming that Alaska is “the last real wilderness in North America” and end up contemplating how he just literally doesn’t know that 60% of the area of your country exists.
The usual vague stat is that 75% of us live within 100 miles of the US border.
There are about 35 million Canadians. 6 million (approx) live in Toronto; 4 million (approx) live in Montreal; 2.5 million (approx) live here in Vancouver (if you properly count our whole metro area, rather than being kind of weird and actually just counting the south-side Vancouvers which a different set of numbers on wiki does, because they’re weird, so don’t be misled if you look there); and 1.3 million (approx) live in Calgary, Ottawa-Gatineau and Edmonton each.
Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are The Big Cities (yes I know, stop laughing) of Canada, and we make up 12.5 million out of 35 million total – something over a third. When you’re generous and add Calgary, Ottawa and Edmonton, the top six cities contain approaching 17 million, which is half of our population.
Of the next six largest cities, however? Four of them are in Ontario. (Kitchener, Hamilton-Waterloo, St Catharines-Niagra, and London; the other two are Winnipeg and Quebec City). So that puts Toronto, Ottawa, and these four in Ontario. They are all within relatively short distance, compared to the rest of the country, of Toronto. So in some senses, yeah, most of us live SOMEWHERE around Toronto, which is why Toronto gets convinced it’s the centre of the universe and gets so annoying the rest of us want to burn it down. (Especially the other Ontarians.)
While I’m at it, exactly half of the population of Manitoba lives in Winnipeg. Not even in all the towns and cities AROUND Winnipeg, not in the southernmost fifth of Manitoba: in Winnipeg.
So yeah. For anyone wondering, I grew up up in the second-most northerly cluster of pale yellow in BC. I now live in Vancouver.
In closing I will share my favourite population of Canada fact: the population density of the NWT is officially zero. Now, slightly more than 40K people live in the NWT? But that means that compared to the territory involved, there are fewer than 0.1 of them per square km. Their population density is officially zero. XDXD
My home province, Saskatchewan (the big rectangle in the middle of the map), has an average population density of just under 2 people per square km, and about 1.1 million people total. About half of those people live in either Regina or Saskatoon.
We get unreasonably excited every time the census shows our population has grown. I’m pretty sure there was a party when we passed a million people about a decade ago.
My super advanced mapmaking technique – a handful of dice makes the map nice
interesting method
My question is do the die affect topography any or just set the borders?
I imagine it’s up to the person making the map. But maybe the more dice in a single spot, the more mountainous or forested the area. Maybe choose a few dice to be deemed cities, and some dice for ruins.
Maybe let the dice choose, like a nat 20 would be the world capital, and 10’s would be mountains or something like that.
1-5: Plains and fields
6-8: Forests
9-11: Mountains
12-14: Tundras and snow covered lands
15-17: Farms and towns
18-19: Larger cities
20: Capitals and castles
what would happing if all the dice landed on a 20?
then you have a very busy continent
not all of those are d20s though, so you’d have to come up with another method for the other ones
Adjusted for all dice you might have
D20
1-5: Plains and fields
6-8: Forests
9-11: Mountains
12-14: Tundras and snow covered lands
15-17: Farms and towns
18-19: Larger cities
20: Capitals and castles
D12
1-3: Plains and fields
4-6: Forests
7-8: Mountains
9-10: Tundras and snow covered lands
11: Farms and towns
12: Larger cities
D10
1-3: Plains and fields
4-6: Forests
7-8: Mountains
9: Tundras and snow covered lands
10: Farms and towns
D8
1-4: Plains and fields
5-6: Forests
7: Mountains
8: Tundras and snow covered lands
D6
1-3: Plains and fields
4: Forests
5-6: Mountains
D4
1-2: Plains and fields
3: Forests
4: Mountains
Holy shit. Definitely using this.
I swore at how simple this motherfucking thing is. You’re all bastards and i love you.
Steel Phoenix Studios 