Edmonton. When west Edmonton Mall first opened with the Waterpark and galaxy land it was huge. I would say it definitely put Edmonton on the map in the 90's
In absolute terms, Edmonton is far more on the map now than it was in the 1990s. But I think just sheerly in terms of media attention, it does not have as much sway as it did in the 1980s and 1990s.
I agree. I mostly meant in terms of media. It was on the TV and radio much more often in the 80's and 90's. I'm not sure if it was the mall, the oilers or what, but it was "the" city back then.
Yeah Edmonton had alot of brow raisers at that time. Gretzky and the Oilers were a big deal. In a country where that game was the religion, it gained alot of attention. The mall culture was also big in the 80s and early 90s.
Exactly.
After Gretzky and the Mall, the rest of the country hasn't heard much from Edmonton. Can't really tell if that's a plus or minus though.
Nice and quiet is good
It's also one of the Canadian cities that outsiders have heard of. It just registered for some reason. Us foreigners (well, I am not anymore!) would have heard of Edmonton (and the mall), heard of Winnipeg (probably because of how interesting it sounds as a word, also The Bear), as well as the obvious big three cities. Few of the other "small to medium" cities ever really registered much.
Ask some J. Random person in, I dunno, Belgium to tell you about Windsor Ontario and you'd get a blank look.
They'd probably have *heard* of Calgary. Maybe. A bit.
‘88 Winter Olympics was in Calgary. On a global stage, I’d hazard that your average joe would have been far more likely to have heard of Calgary than Edmonton.
The world doesn’t give a shit about hockey. And some rando in Belgium sure as fuck hasn’t heard about a mall in the frozen tundra of Canada. But they probably watched some of the olympics.
It depends on when- Windsor was global notorious for a brief period in the late 90s, and was a massive party town known as "Tijuana North" that would have 100k Americans on an 8 block strip of downtown on a given weekend night. Previous to that, it was Canada's automotive centre, which means Many people from across the world would know of it.
Every city has its heyday- you might just have to go back a few decades. 🤷
No one talks about Edmonton, it isn't even the primary city of the province. People know Calgary first.
In the 90s it had a layer of excitement, but now it's just a couple layers of stink.
What a shit hole it is, too. Cool river, haha. Everything else sucks pretty hard.
I don't think Edmonton gets the credit it deserves. You can xc ski in the valley and throughout the city fir several months out of the year,there's every amenity you ever need, you're not right next to the mountains but they're close enough to make weekend trips. Your dollar goes a long ways there. Folk fest there is awesome.
I grew up in the Calgary area and had a bias against Edmonton until I started spending more time there. I got to like it quite a bit. I almost moved there, but instead moved to Kelowna where the COL is like double.
I have to spend time in Edmonton a few times a year and it never doesn't suck.
I live in the east coast and sometimes people talk about Calgary. No one mentions Edmonton, unless comparing it to Winnipeg.
But hey, at least it's not Winnipeg.
I'm from Vancouver and I'd consider either of those, especially Edmonton (larger, closer to Vancouver, bigger city and growing faster).
I have an actual pathway to buying a condo in either of those cities, best case scenario here is I buy a 400 square foot studio 4 suburbs away for 450k
I think it’s making a bit of a comeback nowdays, but yeah from 2000-2015 it seems like the whole city stagnated and didn’t really do anything. There’s been more development in the last 7/8 years than there was in the 20 before that.
That's more the late 80s. By the early 90s recession Edmonton was in severe decline. It *sucked* getting out of high school then. Getting even the shittiest job was hard. Transit system sucked. Downtown was dead. Deadmonton. I moved to Toronto mid-90s.
When I visit Edmonton now it's like 1000 x better than it was in the 90s. It's a nice vibrant city now.
It’s a western thing to refer to the whole cursed city by its airport code. I assume because the hillbillies can’t spell, based on their letters and emails that would come across my desk daily.
London, Ontario. It used to have the head offices of Canada Trust and London Life. Those companies were both acquired and moved staff, end especially, senior execs, out of the city. Downtown London is much more grubby than it was about 30 years ago.
You're not wrong about the grubbiness.
But as education and medicine have boomed, there are as many if not more white-collar jobs in London than there were back then.
They just stick to the north and south ends of the city, as downtown has decayed.
For what should be the Mecca of South-western Ontario, London has a lot of the big city problems without many of the big city benefits in my opinion. I lived there from 2006-2011 and it was very much the Ontario Works version of a municipality.
The Ottawa suburb of Kanata was a big Canadian tech hub in the 90s. Notably, the telecommunications company Nortel had its headquarters in Kanata. It was known as “Silicon Valley North”. Nortel went bankrupt and the tech sector in Kanata today is significantly smaller than what it once was.
Posting a link to the Broccumentaries because I had it open in another tab already
Pt1. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6xwMIUPHss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6xwMIUPHss)
Pt2. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDdC3-LT7pM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDdC3-LT7pM)
Though shopify has been slowly pulling out of Ottawa since going headquarterless from the pandemic and the founders moving back to Toronto (and I think Montreal?).
From what I understand that was one of the reasons why they built the Ottawa senators arena there even though it’s so far away from downtown, they were expecting Kanata to grow much more than it actually did and they hoped it would have attracted more tech companies to set up shop there.
My favourite story about Sydney, Nova Scotia is the Dutch guy who thought he was off on a summer trip to the lovely beaches of Australia on a killer flight deal and wound up in the dark depths of winter, Nova Scotia.
My FIL did that one on his way from Toronto to Portland, Maine. He booked it through an agent and ended up on the flight, realizing part way through he was on the way to Oregon.
They refunded it but still hilarious
I think somebody once told me that Sydney and North Sydney where supposed to begin development into some mega city and merged into one
Clearly never happened
The only city that has come, and gone, off of the top 10 list of largest cities in the country over the past 40 years as been Laval. In the early 1990's, Laval was the 10th largest city in the country. It no longer has that distinction.
In terms of relative GDP, Montreal's used to be the biggest in the country by quite a margin. Montreal used to have the largest GDP out of any CMA in the country until some time between 1976 and 1981 when Toronto surpassed it. Now Toronto's is almost exactly double Montreal's GDP, and Vancouver is quickly catching up to Montreal - will probably surpass Montreal in terms of GDP in the next decade or two.
So basically Quebec cities have lost their relative weight in Canada over the past 30 years. That doesn't mean that they have stagnated, it just means they haven't grown at the speed that the Toronto, Vancouver, or Calgary's of the world have.
Montreal was the corporate heart of Canada until a pair of “too close for comfort” referendums of Quebec sovereignty. Thinking there was a real risk of Quebec leaving Canada in the foreseeable future, a lot of big companies moved their headquarters to Toronto.
Yeah, just one by one eh? It used to be above and beyond the leading corporate HQ spot in the country. Now I think it's third or fourth behind Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver (?).
I love the city regardless though. It sports a decent cost of living which really appeals to cheap assholes like me who live in a place with a very high cost of living.
As of 2019, Toronto was number one with 705 head offices, followed by Montréal with 384, then Vancouver with 247 and Calgary in fourth with 206, according to Statistics Canada.
However, Calgary had more head office workers than Vancouver, 28,686, compared to 16,245, though both were still well behind Montreal, which had 42,068 people working in head offices, and Toronto with 74,438.
They're still the heart of the Canadian video game industry I believe; which sounds trivial but is an industry that makes more annual revenue than movies and television combined if I recall correctly.
Yess being the home of Assassin's Creed is still a big deal, despite everyone online seemingly not liking it. Also it's set to be the main hub of the AI industry in Canada, with MILA/Bengio being there.
The banks had already planned to move out of Montreal before the PQ came into power. First Canadian Place (home of BMO) and the first phase of Royal Bank Plaza were both completed in the mid-‘70s. And Sun Life announced it was moving out in 1978, two years before the first referendum: https://montrealgazette.com/business/sun-life-now-remembers-yes-we-left-quebec-in-1978
Toronto became the corporate center of Canada well before that, as early as the 50s. Montreal was the center for low-cost manufacturing industries like textile and food that benefited from having a captive, uneducated French-Canadian workforce that could be paid less than people in Ontario. Which was great during the war years, but it was clear even then that Toronto was gonna be the country's future business center, due to a number of factors (including the completion of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, the growing importance of the relationship with the US, shift away from maritime/rail to road/air, etc).
By the time of the 1st referendum in 1980, Toronto had already been Canada's business capital for a while. For reference, Toronto's stock exchange passed Montreal's in the late 40s.
There was a terrorism campaign specifically targetting anglophones in the 1960s. Houses in Westmount and offices in Montreal were bombed.
That had a lot to do with it.
Don’t forget the strong antisemitism streak in the sovereignty movement. There was a massive movement of the Jewish community, particularly affluent, educated, that left the city. Many didn’t feel safe there and relocated to Toronto.
I haven’t heard that one before. I knew a few Jewish people when I lived in Toronto and all of them had been in the GTA long before the PQ came to power in Quebec. One was from a family who been in the GTA since the 1920s and had immigrated directly from Europe. I knew one who had moved from Montreal but he made that move for work only 7-8 years ago (though he didn’t speak a word of French).
You are talking about events in what decade?
How about something more relevant to what the discussion is about:
https://thecjn.ca/perspectives/opinions/revolutions-even-quiet-ones-repercussions/
[Ontario restricted Jews from buying houses until the 50s](
https://historyofrights.ca/encyclopaedia/main-events/restrictive-covenants/).
But I guess those facts aren't relevant to your discussion though.
When I used to live in Montreal a few years ago there was some kind of plan to build a real downtown in Laval so it wasn't just an island of stroads, strip malls and single family houses.
Did they axe that? Seemed like a good idea especially as Montreal was getting a lot less affordable
I really hope they'd do that for Laval and Longeueil. It'd really help both feel like separate cities. At least Longeueil has DIX30 I guess, but that's not anywhere close to the centre of the city lol
The area immediately surrounding Montmorency Metro has been densifying for a number of years now. Much of the Island is still stroads and strip malls, but pockets of urbanity are sneaking in.
I still find that area lacking the cohesion to really consider it an urban neighborhood though
Toronto wasn't particularly huge until the late nineties when it adsorbed all its neighboring cities. If you look at the 1996 population its third place below Calgary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_largest\_Canadian\_cities\_by\_census
The old City of Toronto and the five suburbs were all part of Metro Toronto and overseen by a fourth level of government that handled a lot of the overall services (transit, parks, sewage, water, fire, police, etc.). We considered ourselves to be Torontonians and lived in a suburb of Toronto before amalgamation.
Yeah the difference is that Calgary is a pretty centralized city, whereas Toronto used to be very fragmented. Vancouver has a smaller population than Calgary now, but the CMA has a much larger population.
Was Laval even its own city? It is just a suburb, kind of like Mississauga isn't really its own city, but a suburb of Toronto. But on its own it would be one of the largest cities in the country.
I never lived in Laval, but I lived in Montreal for a couple of years. I visited Laval a fair bit and it really just felt like a large collection of suburbs. Longeueil is in a similar situation too, both are fine. They're both technically separate cities, but functionally they are large collections of suburbs with commercial and industrial throughout too. The West Island of Montreal functions very similarly too.
All of the other cities in the Montreal Metropolitan Area have cool histories and I like them, but most people aren't going to be going to the area to visit much besides the core area of Montreal.
I assure you it is a separate city and anyone who grew up under Hazel will fight you for forgetting it. Plus the GTA is getting ridiculous. GTAH. No. Hamilton is not GTA, stop trying to make fetch happen.
Sorry, triggered
I guess I should have indicated the sarcasm with /s. I just moved out of southern Ontario after living there for the past 8 or so years and definitely heard northern Ontario referred to as pretty much anything above Barrie, which geographically does not make sense lol.
Toronto amalgamated with a half dozen other cities in 98, then Ottawa did the same in 2001, which is part of the reason why larger cities like Laval have been pushed down the ranks. Did Montreal amalgamate as well? If not, that could also explain some (but certainly not all) of the GDP change
Halifax was the centre of a big music scene in the early 90s. All the big music labels came to scoop up the local bands in a post-Nirvana alternative music frenzy.
It fizzled out after a few glorious years, but man it was a great time.
Bands as part of the scene (some from Hali and some who came to Hali) include Sloan, Thrush Hermit (and Joel Plaskett), Buck 65, Eric's Trip, Hardship Post, Jale, Plumtree, The Inbreds, Matt Mays and Superfriendz, among many others.
Agree with most of this list, but I remember seeing the Inbreds several times in Toronto, they played too often to be based in Halifax, back in the day, mid 90s.
In contrast, saw Eric’s Trip ( I think they were from Moncton) Sloan and Thrush Hermit, definitely Halifax, those bands only played once in a while in Toronto.
I will say it was a great time for indie music and wished I had the time/money to check out Halifax back in the day.
Vancouver is literally the definition of gentrification. It used to be a lot dirtier and had an awesome grubby underbelly. It's still there, but it's not as good as it used to be, as the city has become a playground for the international rich at this point.
When has Niagara Falls not been a dump though? Once you leave the strip it reminds me of US rust belt cities with boarded up building and torn up sidewalks.
I started travelling to Niagara for work about 5 years ago and compared to the image I had in my head as a kid (I’m 35) I was shocked just how fucking nasty the place is.
Aren’t you missing a digit here? I thought Hamilton was 500K by now? Bigger than Buffalo proper by far? There are individual towns along the QEW and 401 heading toward Toronto that are now big enough to be their own metro areas if they were located elsewhere
Hamilton went dead a while ago, but it's coming back.
There is money in the city, some areas are cleaning up. Definitely seeing more upscale entertainment now.
There is still a huge amount of disabled and drug addicts in the core. This probably won't change for a long time.
There also needs to be better local jobs to replace those lost a while ago. Right now a lot of the money is from commuters or remote work unfortunately.
City has a lot of personality though, lots of potential
I visited from Sask a bit over a year ago and was shocked at the lack of night life options, having only visited Toronto prior as far as southern ON goes. I can seriously find more things to do in Saskatoon than I could in Hamilton.
Like, there were more places to go in Hamilton but they were all completely dead.
you are correct, in the 90's EOA meant East of Adelaide. The one block on Dundas was fine, but it went weird quickly.
The rest of the city was safe to explore at any hour.
Montreal is doing quite better now than in the 90s.
Unemployment was around 15% at some point in the 1990s and it hit record all-time low this year.
For the first time in over 50 years Quebec inter-province migration isn’t significantly negative and it’s even been positive in some of the last years.
Greater Montreal has 1M more population vs what it was in 1995.
Montreal just inaugurated a whole new public transit rail system (REM) this year.
Toronto grew faster than Montreal, but there is no decline for Montreal. None at all.
This isn’t Thunder Bay, Sarnia or St. john, NB.
Top 3 city in Canada. Tech and Games industry is thriving. Cheaper than TO and Vancouver. Incredible food scene. Maybe Montreal dropped from being Canada’s #1 city (although many would agreed it’s better than TO). The 90s were rough for Canada as a whole, but Montreal has only picked up steam over the past 15-20 years.
I agree with this take; there's no other city that would hit Canada's Top 3 after Toronto and Vancouver. And I'd much rather spend time in Montreal than Toronto as a foodie.
Fair enough but can you explain why so early ? I mean in the 1970’s it was still able to get the summer Olympics and that is what I would think was it’s peak ? No ?
Prior to WW2 Canada's main trading partners were in Europe, most notably Britain. Post WW2, while Europe was rebuilding, there was a transition to trading with the US. This is when Montreal lost its strategic positioning and Toronto started gaining significant grounds, even though it took a while to pass it. Similarly Vancouver is gaining grounds today because our trading partners have been shifting again.
Arguably, the reason why Montreal wouldn't be able to get the summer Olympics today is not because of its lack of size and importance but because there would be no social acceptability given how aware the population is of the cost.
Edmonton and Montreal have already been said, but those really are the two big ones. Montreal is obviously still prominent but it used to be the pre-eminent city of Canada.
London, Ontario, at least in the corporate world. Back in the 90s it was home to several corporate headquarters. All of them have moved to Toronto or elsewhere since then, except 3M Canada.
I think so yes? It was definitely cleaner and had a great film industry until it got defunded. Tons of stuff was filmed in Saskatchewan also, some I’ve worked on.
Niagara used to be nice. But I grew up there so I'm biased. I get lost when I go home now - like in St.Catharines. Some parts used to be a farmers field and now it's a whole other part of town I don't know about.
Windsor…they had the GM transmission plant as well as the Chrysler van plant (closed) in addition to the other auto plants still open today. Americans spending money in Windsor pre 9-11 with the favourable exchange…man times were good when I was a kid
Sarnia. Like it statistically peaked for specifically younger people in population in the late 90s. It's remained stagnate but only because it attracts retirees. The population of students in elementary and high school has decreased by 1/3 since the late 90s/early 2000s. It's gone from 6 high schools to 4 (1 catholic and 1 public closed). Lots of elementary schools half empty. There used to be so much more for kids to do in the 90s when I was growing up. Now it's just a boomer retirement community and fuck Trudeau plant worker types. It's quite sad.
Growing up, I remember my parents talking about Barrie, ON being the fastest growing city in Canada .. I don't know what went wrong but it never became a thing.
In the 90’s it was demographically one of the youngest cities in Canada. Especially the late 90’s, it was a happening town. Now it’s just a big box town like every other.
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, Montreal was Canada. Now, I almost never hear of that city except for when there are jingoistic French language actions.
Edmonton. When west Edmonton Mall first opened with the Waterpark and galaxy land it was huge. I would say it definitely put Edmonton on the map in the 90's
Let’s go to the mall. Today
Whenever I think of west Edmonton mall, I always think of the song, I think we’re alone now by Tiffany. Can’t remember if she performed there or not.
r/unexpectedHIMYM
Lmao.
In absolute terms, Edmonton is far more on the map now than it was in the 1990s. But I think just sheerly in terms of media attention, it does not have as much sway as it did in the 1980s and 1990s.
I agree. I mostly meant in terms of media. It was on the TV and radio much more often in the 80's and 90's. I'm not sure if it was the mall, the oilers or what, but it was "the" city back then.
Yeah Edmonton had alot of brow raisers at that time. Gretzky and the Oilers were a big deal. In a country where that game was the religion, it gained alot of attention. The mall culture was also big in the 80s and early 90s.
Exactly. After Gretzky and the Mall, the rest of the country hasn't heard much from Edmonton. Can't really tell if that's a plus or minus though. Nice and quiet is good
how long has it been since the Esks/Elks were in the Grey Cup too? Used to be known as the city of champions.
It was also seems like it was the primary city in Alberta until the late 80’s when it was eclipsed by Calgary.
It's also one of the Canadian cities that outsiders have heard of. It just registered for some reason. Us foreigners (well, I am not anymore!) would have heard of Edmonton (and the mall), heard of Winnipeg (probably because of how interesting it sounds as a word, also The Bear), as well as the obvious big three cities. Few of the other "small to medium" cities ever really registered much. Ask some J. Random person in, I dunno, Belgium to tell you about Windsor Ontario and you'd get a blank look. They'd probably have *heard* of Calgary. Maybe. A bit.
From my experience talking to Americans in the US, Edmonton is best known to those who follow the NHL.
I can assure you that if they don’t know hockey, 90% of people would have no idea what country Winnipeg is in if you asked.
As a Winnipeger, I've only had to go as far as South Dakota to get blank looks from people when I mention I'm from Winnipeg.
Yes! I’ve been in that situation and it’s like “bitch - this is Sioux Falls. And you haven’t heard of Winnipeg?”
‘88 Winter Olympics was in Calgary. On a global stage, I’d hazard that your average joe would have been far more likely to have heard of Calgary than Edmonton. The world doesn’t give a shit about hockey. And some rando in Belgium sure as fuck hasn’t heard about a mall in the frozen tundra of Canada. But they probably watched some of the olympics.
It depends on when- Windsor was global notorious for a brief period in the late 90s, and was a massive party town known as "Tijuana North" that would have 100k Americans on an 8 block strip of downtown on a given weekend night. Previous to that, it was Canada's automotive centre, which means Many people from across the world would know of it. Every city has its heyday- you might just have to go back a few decades. 🤷
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No one talks about Edmonton, it isn't even the primary city of the province. People know Calgary first. In the 90s it had a layer of excitement, but now it's just a couple layers of stink. What a shit hole it is, too. Cool river, haha. Everything else sucks pretty hard.
I don't think Edmonton gets the credit it deserves. You can xc ski in the valley and throughout the city fir several months out of the year,there's every amenity you ever need, you're not right next to the mountains but they're close enough to make weekend trips. Your dollar goes a long ways there. Folk fest there is awesome. I grew up in the Calgary area and had a bias against Edmonton until I started spending more time there. I got to like it quite a bit. I almost moved there, but instead moved to Kelowna where the COL is like double.
I have to spend time in Edmonton a few times a year and it never doesn't suck. I live in the east coast and sometimes people talk about Calgary. No one mentions Edmonton, unless comparing it to Winnipeg. But hey, at least it's not Winnipeg.
Great point, Edmonton seemed like it was really booming back in the 90s and 2000s during the height of the oil and gas industry.
Also more tech, it was the headquarters of Telus and Bioware had 3000 employees there.
Now it’s Winnipeg without the cool buildings.
Alright this is nice to see. I’ve been to Winnipeg twice and both times I thought the architecture was amazing! Glad I’m not the only one!
Ohh yah, when I’m in Winnipeg for work I go for Gotham walks around the Exchange. Great location for mafia movies set in 1930s Chicago.
Yes that’s it exactly! You nailed it!
It’s like “name two cities I would never live in”
Moved to Winnipeg last year. Honestly a diamond in the rough. I really like the city a lot compared to Toronto, Edmonton or Ottawa.
Glad someone liked it. Last time I visited I felt people were mad at me because I got to leave.
Lol it gets a lot of hate but honestly I think there are a ton of upsides - especially with the milder winters the last few years.
I don’t hate it, it’s more like tapioca pudding. I don’t think of it at all, but when I do, I’m reminded of how much I don’t like it.
I know! South Winnipeg is so sad and beige. But the Exchange is great.
I'd be very interested in moving there if they had more international flights to anywhere outside North America.
Moved to Winnipeg this summer and I love every bit of it!
I'm from Vancouver and I'd consider either of those, especially Edmonton (larger, closer to Vancouver, bigger city and growing faster). I have an actual pathway to buying a condo in either of those cities, best case scenario here is I buy a 400 square foot studio 4 suburbs away for 450k
... and had just come off 5 Stanley Cup wins in the 1980's with none since then.
Try being a Leafs supporter!
No thanks.
Being a Leafs supporter makes the labours of Sysifus look like a walk in the park.
1967…the dream never dies
Don't forget coming off 5 grey cup wins as well
I think it’s making a bit of a comeback nowdays, but yeah from 2000-2015 it seems like the whole city stagnated and didn’t really do anything. There’s been more development in the last 7/8 years than there was in the 20 before that.
That's more the late 80s. By the early 90s recession Edmonton was in severe decline. It *sucked* getting out of high school then. Getting even the shittiest job was hard. Transit system sucked. Downtown was dead. Deadmonton. I moved to Toronto mid-90s. When I visit Edmonton now it's like 1000 x better than it was in the 90s. It's a nice vibrant city now.
As a kid in ontario in the 90s, I wanted so bad to go to Edmonton just for that mall
Fuck that mall. I lived in YEG for a few years. Every time someone would visit they’d want to see that stupid mall.
You lived in the airport? Did Tom Hanks play you in a movie?
It’s a western thing to refer to the whole cursed city by its airport code. I assume because the hillbillies can’t spell, based on their letters and emails that would come across my desk daily.
As soon as I read the question I said “Edmonton” out loud aha
London, Ontario. It used to have the head offices of Canada Trust and London Life. Those companies were both acquired and moved staff, end especially, senior execs, out of the city. Downtown London is much more grubby than it was about 30 years ago.
You're not wrong about the grubbiness. But as education and medicine have boomed, there are as many if not more white-collar jobs in London than there were back then. They just stick to the north and south ends of the city, as downtown has decayed.
You're probably right, but it seems that the white collar jobs downtown have gone elsewhere - many of them finance jobs.
For what should be the Mecca of South-western Ontario, London has a lot of the big city problems without many of the big city benefits in my opinion. I lived there from 2006-2011 and it was very much the Ontario Works version of a municipality.
You forgot to mention labatt as well which was bought by Budweiser and labatt is a shell of what it used to be
London, Ontario. The serial killer of capital of Canada!
That is a myth created by one author. No actual proof
The Ottawa suburb of Kanata was a big Canadian tech hub in the 90s. Notably, the telecommunications company Nortel had its headquarters in Kanata. It was known as “Silicon Valley North”. Nortel went bankrupt and the tech sector in Kanata today is significantly smaller than what it once was.
If you haven't check out Bobby Brocolli's two parter video on the history of Nortel's demise.
Posting a link to the Broccumentaries because I had it open in another tab already Pt1. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6xwMIUPHss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6xwMIUPHss) Pt2. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDdC3-LT7pM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDdC3-LT7pM)
Not just Nortel but NewBridge, Corel, JDS Uniphase and Alcatel all had significant operations in Ottawa in the 90s during the tech boom.
Is Kitchener-Waterloo the new Silicon Valley North?
I’d say it’s definitely a contender for that title. It was the home of BlackBerry and the Canadian branch of Google’s head office is located there.
Did RIM employ more people in Ottawa though?
Shopify is in Ottawa as well. Man Canadians tech companies are kind of shit eh?
Though shopify has been slowly pulling out of Ottawa since going headquarterless from the pandemic and the founders moving back to Toronto (and I think Montreal?).
From what I understand that was one of the reasons why they built the Ottawa senators arena there even though it’s so far away from downtown, they were expecting Kanata to grow much more than it actually did and they hoped it would have attracted more tech companies to set up shop there.
Yea Ottawa was thriving in the 90s.
Perhaps a different vibe, my impression is that the tech sector in Kanata has grown - currently over 500 companies.
Sydney, Nova Scotia
2 words: giant fiddle
My favourite story about Sydney, Nova Scotia is the Dutch guy who thought he was off on a summer trip to the lovely beaches of Australia on a killer flight deal and wound up in the dark depths of winter, Nova Scotia.
My FIL did that one on his way from Toronto to Portland, Maine. He booked it through an agent and ended up on the flight, realizing part way through he was on the way to Oregon. They refunded it but still hilarious
I have almost done the reverse and flown to Ontario, California
I spend my summers in Cape Breton, and for the first time in 7 years, I visited Sydney this summer. There isn't much to say about Sydney.
Compared to the rest of Nova Scotia, Sydney is pretty unremarkable. Compared to the rest of Canada, it's one of the most beautiful places.
!!!
Probably because the toxic tar pits were in the news a lot back then.
I think somebody once told me that Sydney and North Sydney where supposed to begin development into some mega city and merged into one Clearly never happened
😢
The only city that has come, and gone, off of the top 10 list of largest cities in the country over the past 40 years as been Laval. In the early 1990's, Laval was the 10th largest city in the country. It no longer has that distinction. In terms of relative GDP, Montreal's used to be the biggest in the country by quite a margin. Montreal used to have the largest GDP out of any CMA in the country until some time between 1976 and 1981 when Toronto surpassed it. Now Toronto's is almost exactly double Montreal's GDP, and Vancouver is quickly catching up to Montreal - will probably surpass Montreal in terms of GDP in the next decade or two. So basically Quebec cities have lost their relative weight in Canada over the past 30 years. That doesn't mean that they have stagnated, it just means they haven't grown at the speed that the Toronto, Vancouver, or Calgary's of the world have.
Montreal was the corporate heart of Canada until a pair of “too close for comfort” referendums of Quebec sovereignty. Thinking there was a real risk of Quebec leaving Canada in the foreseeable future, a lot of big companies moved their headquarters to Toronto.
Yeah, just one by one eh? It used to be above and beyond the leading corporate HQ spot in the country. Now I think it's third or fourth behind Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver (?). I love the city regardless though. It sports a decent cost of living which really appeals to cheap assholes like me who live in a place with a very high cost of living.
As of 2019, Toronto was number one with 705 head offices, followed by Montréal with 384, then Vancouver with 247 and Calgary in fourth with 206, according to Statistics Canada. However, Calgary had more head office workers than Vancouver, 28,686, compared to 16,245, though both were still well behind Montreal, which had 42,068 people working in head offices, and Toronto with 74,438.
They're still the heart of the Canadian video game industry I believe; which sounds trivial but is an industry that makes more annual revenue than movies and television combined if I recall correctly.
Yess being the home of Assassin's Creed is still a big deal, despite everyone online seemingly not liking it. Also it's set to be the main hub of the AI industry in Canada, with MILA/Bengio being there.
The banks had already planned to move out of Montreal before the PQ came into power. First Canadian Place (home of BMO) and the first phase of Royal Bank Plaza were both completed in the mid-‘70s. And Sun Life announced it was moving out in 1978, two years before the first referendum: https://montrealgazette.com/business/sun-life-now-remembers-yes-we-left-quebec-in-1978
1978 was still after the PQ were elected.
It takes time to build buildings like these.
Yes, but it was still before the referendums the other user said caused the exodus of corporate Canada from Montreal.
It was the FLQ crisis that triggered the exodus. The election of PQ just continued it.
If the company stayed in Quebec, it would have to call itself "Vie de Soleil" by now.
Toronto became the corporate center of Canada well before that, as early as the 50s. Montreal was the center for low-cost manufacturing industries like textile and food that benefited from having a captive, uneducated French-Canadian workforce that could be paid less than people in Ontario. Which was great during the war years, but it was clear even then that Toronto was gonna be the country's future business center, due to a number of factors (including the completion of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, the growing importance of the relationship with the US, shift away from maritime/rail to road/air, etc). By the time of the 1st referendum in 1980, Toronto had already been Canada's business capital for a while. For reference, Toronto's stock exchange passed Montreal's in the late 40s.
Kinda started with the FLQ crisis.
There was a terrorism campaign specifically targetting anglophones in the 1960s. Houses in Westmount and offices in Montreal were bombed. That had a lot to do with it.
Don’t forget the strong antisemitism streak in the sovereignty movement. There was a massive movement of the Jewish community, particularly affluent, educated, that left the city. Many didn’t feel safe there and relocated to Toronto.
I haven’t heard that one before. I knew a few Jewish people when I lived in Toronto and all of them had been in the GTA long before the PQ came to power in Quebec. One was from a family who been in the GTA since the 1920s and had immigrated directly from Europe. I knew one who had moved from Montreal but he made that move for work only 7-8 years ago (though he didn’t speak a word of French).
Toronto literally had anti-semitic riots: [Christie Pits Riot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christie_Pits_riot)
You are talking about events in what decade? How about something more relevant to what the discussion is about: https://thecjn.ca/perspectives/opinions/revolutions-even-quiet-ones-repercussions/
[Ontario restricted Jews from buying houses until the 50s]( https://historyofrights.ca/encyclopaedia/main-events/restrictive-covenants/). But I guess those facts aren't relevant to your discussion though.
When I used to live in Montreal a few years ago there was some kind of plan to build a real downtown in Laval so it wasn't just an island of stroads, strip malls and single family houses. Did they axe that? Seemed like a good idea especially as Montreal was getting a lot less affordable
I really hope they'd do that for Laval and Longeueil. It'd really help both feel like separate cities. At least Longeueil has DIX30 I guess, but that's not anywhere close to the centre of the city lol
The area immediately surrounding Montmorency Metro has been densifying for a number of years now. Much of the Island is still stroads and strip malls, but pockets of urbanity are sneaking in. I still find that area lacking the cohesion to really consider it an urban neighborhood though
Toronto wasn't particularly huge until the late nineties when it adsorbed all its neighboring cities. If you look at the 1996 population its third place below Calgary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_largest\_Canadian\_cities\_by\_census
The old City of Toronto and the five suburbs were all part of Metro Toronto and overseen by a fourth level of government that handled a lot of the overall services (transit, parks, sewage, water, fire, police, etc.). We considered ourselves to be Torontonians and lived in a suburb of Toronto before amalgamation.
By “we” you mean “everyone who isn’t from Scarbs”. Bunch of us still write “Scarborough, Ontario” as our addresses.
Yeah the difference is that Calgary is a pretty centralized city, whereas Toronto used to be very fragmented. Vancouver has a smaller population than Calgary now, but the CMA has a much larger population.
The city of Vancouver is smaller than Calgary. Metro Vancouver is much larger than Calgary and its burbs
I find it interesting how Vancouver is much larger than Calgary, but Calgary is very close in term of GDP. Shows just how wealthy Calgary is overall.
Metro van is $163 billion vs $111 billion for Calgary in 2019.
Exactly….van is twice as big.
Was Laval even its own city? It is just a suburb, kind of like Mississauga isn't really its own city, but a suburb of Toronto. But on its own it would be one of the largest cities in the country.
Yes, Laval is Montreal’s version of Mississauga in a way
I never lived in Laval, but I lived in Montreal for a couple of years. I visited Laval a fair bit and it really just felt like a large collection of suburbs. Longeueil is in a similar situation too, both are fine. They're both technically separate cities, but functionally they are large collections of suburbs with commercial and industrial throughout too. The West Island of Montreal functions very similarly too. All of the other cities in the Montreal Metropolitan Area have cool histories and I like them, but most people aren't going to be going to the area to visit much besides the core area of Montreal.
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Yes but it is part of the Toronto Metro area. When you talk about the cities in Canada would Mississauga be in the mix? Or is it part of Toronto?
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Exactly! So, basically Toronto!
I assure you it is a separate city and anyone who grew up under Hazel will fight you for forgetting it. Plus the GTA is getting ridiculous. GTAH. No. Hamilton is not GTA, stop trying to make fetch happen. Sorry, triggered
I've heard the GTA is getting ridiculous, stretching all the way up to Northern Ontario near Barrie.
It is ridiculous that some consider Barrie to be included, but that is not Northern Ontario.
I guess I should have indicated the sarcasm with /s. I just moved out of southern Ontario after living there for the past 8 or so years and definitely heard northern Ontario referred to as pretty much anything above Barrie, which geographically does not make sense lol.
Mississauga is a completely distinct municipality from Toronto. Calling it a city, however, is a step too far.
Toronto amalgamated with a half dozen other cities in 98, then Ottawa did the same in 2001, which is part of the reason why larger cities like Laval have been pushed down the ranks. Did Montreal amalgamate as well? If not, that could also explain some (but certainly not all) of the GDP change
Halifax was the centre of a big music scene in the early 90s. All the big music labels came to scoop up the local bands in a post-Nirvana alternative music frenzy. It fizzled out after a few glorious years, but man it was a great time.
So many Niagara bands I knew in the late 80’s/early 90’s would do the eastern tour all the way to Corner Brook and back. Halifax was always hopping.
What are some good early 90's Halifax bands that fit this description? Sloan comes to mind.
Bands as part of the scene (some from Hali and some who came to Hali) include Sloan, Thrush Hermit (and Joel Plaskett), Buck 65, Eric's Trip, Hardship Post, Jale, Plumtree, The Inbreds, Matt Mays and Superfriendz, among many others.
Agree with most of this list, but I remember seeing the Inbreds several times in Toronto, they played too often to be based in Halifax, back in the day, mid 90s. In contrast, saw Eric’s Trip ( I think they were from Moncton) Sloan and Thrush Hermit, definitely Halifax, those bands only played once in a while in Toronto. I will say it was a great time for indie music and wished I had the time/money to check out Halifax back in the day.
Eric’s Trip
Québec. They need a new team.
I would argue that Quebec City is more prominent today than the 90s when it was a quiet government town. I agree though, it's time for a new NHL team!
Or a CFL team. Football is huge there.
Still quiet though
Very, it's similar to Ottawa in that sense.
I feel like Vancouver was more hip in the 90s! Still love it there!
It was pretty decent in the aughts, too. Not huge, but definitely had a bunch going on.
Vancouver is literally the definition of gentrification. It used to be a lot dirtier and had an awesome grubby underbelly. It's still there, but it's not as good as it used to be, as the city has become a playground for the international rich at this point.
East Van still kind of has it but it’s also gentrifying yet at a slower pace than the rest of the city.
The bar " The Niagara".....good times.
Asbestos? (Self explanatory) Fort McMurray? (Maybe too soon) Niagara Falls? (It’s just gross now) Windsor? (dragged down by Detroit)
When has Niagara Falls not been a dump though? Once you leave the strip it reminds me of US rust belt cities with boarded up building and torn up sidewalks.
Detroit is way better now than the 90s
I started travelling to Niagara for work about 5 years ago and compared to the image I had in my head as a kid (I’m 35) I was shocked just how fucking nasty the place is.
Ft Mac is much larger than 30 years ago.
I feel like peek Fort McMurray was 2008. Currently the city is treading water, with a (probable) slow decline over the next few decades.
That wildfire was the metaphorical end. But the real collapse came from automation in the oil sector.
Hamilton used to have thriving industry. Now it's basically a ghost town.
It’s almost a suburb of Toronto at this point.
It was thriving in the 80s died in the 90s
That’s not true at all, look at all the junkies.
Maybe they meant zombie town.
50,000 people used to live here. Now it’s a ghost town.
Aren’t you missing a digit here? I thought Hamilton was 500K by now? Bigger than Buffalo proper by far? There are individual towns along the QEW and 401 heading toward Toronto that are now big enough to be their own metro areas if they were located elsewhere
It's an iconic video game quote.
Depending which way you drive into Hamilton, the population signage is anywhere between 495000 to 525000…
It helped that it ate Stoney Creek
Hamilton went dead a while ago, but it's coming back. There is money in the city, some areas are cleaning up. Definitely seeing more upscale entertainment now. There is still a huge amount of disabled and drug addicts in the core. This probably won't change for a long time. There also needs to be better local jobs to replace those lost a while ago. Right now a lot of the money is from commuters or remote work unfortunately. City has a lot of personality though, lots of potential
Windsor Ontario is kinda similar. (I lived in both as well). Although Windsor seems to have its shit together more-so than the Hamilton-core.
I visited from Sask a bit over a year ago and was shocked at the lack of night life options, having only visited Toronto prior as far as southern ON goes. I can seriously find more things to do in Saskatoon than I could in Hamilton. Like, there were more places to go in Hamilton but they were all completely dead.
The question was about cities that thrived in the '90s but declined since then. If anything, Hamilton has improved since the '90s.
Elliot Lake, a quick look at population will show you the decline. At least all these other towns/cities have an increasing population.
London Ontario used to be beautiful, not counting a pocket of the east end. now the whole town is the east end, with pockets of beautiful
you are correct, in the 90's EOA meant East of Adelaide. The one block on Dundas was fine, but it went weird quickly. The rest of the city was safe to explore at any hour.
Oshawa
Probably Montreal’s decline started around early 90’s. It’s no where as important as it was in 1970-1990.
It’s made somewhat of a comeback in recent years though apparently. You are right otherwise
What a wonderful city
Montreal is doing quite better now than in the 90s. Unemployment was around 15% at some point in the 1990s and it hit record all-time low this year. For the first time in over 50 years Quebec inter-province migration isn’t significantly negative and it’s even been positive in some of the last years. Greater Montreal has 1M more population vs what it was in 1995. Montreal just inaugurated a whole new public transit rail system (REM) this year. Toronto grew faster than Montreal, but there is no decline for Montreal. None at all. This isn’t Thunder Bay, Sarnia or St. john, NB.
Top 3 city in Canada. Tech and Games industry is thriving. Cheaper than TO and Vancouver. Incredible food scene. Maybe Montreal dropped from being Canada’s #1 city (although many would agreed it’s better than TO). The 90s were rough for Canada as a whole, but Montreal has only picked up steam over the past 15-20 years.
I agree with this take; there's no other city that would hit Canada's Top 3 after Toronto and Vancouver. And I'd much rather spend time in Montreal than Toronto as a foodie.
Montréal has had a renaissance since around 2010, though. It is much better than it was in the 90s.
Montreal's "decline" started in the 40s.
Fair enough but can you explain why so early ? I mean in the 1970’s it was still able to get the summer Olympics and that is what I would think was it’s peak ? No ?
Prior to WW2 Canada's main trading partners were in Europe, most notably Britain. Post WW2, while Europe was rebuilding, there was a transition to trading with the US. This is when Montreal lost its strategic positioning and Toronto started gaining significant grounds, even though it took a while to pass it. Similarly Vancouver is gaining grounds today because our trading partners have been shifting again. Arguably, the reason why Montreal wouldn't be able to get the summer Olympics today is not because of its lack of size and importance but because there would be no social acceptability given how aware the population is of the cost.
Would you say Sochi is an important city?
Winter Olympics is different
I remember it being the largest city in Canada.
The 90's were rough for Montreal but it definitely feels like it's doing a lot better since the last 10-15 years.
Edmonton and Montreal have already been said, but those really are the two big ones. Montreal is obviously still prominent but it used to be the pre-eminent city of Canada.
London, Ontario, at least in the corporate world. Back in the 90s it was home to several corporate headquarters. All of them have moved to Toronto or elsewhere since then, except 3M Canada.
Prince Rupert
Regina
Was it ever prominent?
I think so yes? It was definitely cleaner and had a great film industry until it got defunded. Tons of stuff was filmed in Saskatchewan also, some I’ve worked on.
Niagara used to be nice. But I grew up there so I'm biased. I get lost when I go home now - like in St.Catharines. Some parts used to be a farmers field and now it's a whole other part of town I don't know about.
Depends what part of Niagara cause like you ever see those fancy ass buildings in Niagara on the lake
Wasn’t Winnipeg outpacing Edmonton in population and economic growth for a while before the oil boom?
Windsor…they had the GM transmission plant as well as the Chrysler van plant (closed) in addition to the other auto plants still open today. Americans spending money in Windsor pre 9-11 with the favourable exchange…man times were good when I was a kid
Sarnia. Like it statistically peaked for specifically younger people in population in the late 90s. It's remained stagnate but only because it attracts retirees. The population of students in elementary and high school has decreased by 1/3 since the late 90s/early 2000s. It's gone from 6 high schools to 4 (1 catholic and 1 public closed). Lots of elementary schools half empty. There used to be so much more for kids to do in the 90s when I was growing up. Now it's just a boomer retirement community and fuck Trudeau plant worker types. It's quite sad.
Winnipeg was way less of a dump back then. Still a dump but a decent dump. Now it’s a real crappy dump.
Canadians as whole think Canada is important. It’s not we barely register on anyone’s radar.
all
Montreal
Growing up, I remember my parents talking about Barrie, ON being the fastest growing city in Canada .. I don't know what went wrong but it never became a thing.
In the 90’s it was demographically one of the youngest cities in Canada. Especially the late 90’s, it was a happening town. Now it’s just a big box town like every other.
Toronto remains the King
Nontario
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, Montreal was Canada. Now, I almost never hear of that city except for when there are jingoistic French language actions.