Canada with 25 Provinces

Provincial Profile: ACADIE
Population (2011): 367,154
Capital: Moncton
Admitted as a province: 1958 - created from New Bunswick
Members of Parliament: 6
Premier: Brian Gallant (Acadien)
Profile: The Acadian minority in New Brunswick found its voice after the Second World War and began to argue for their own province. Acadie has suffered from lack of economic development. The raison d'etre of the province is Acadian culture, but it is a desperately "have not" province.
 
Provincial Profile: NEW CALEDONIA
Population (2011): 290,624
Capital: Prince George
Admitted as a province: 1935 - created from parts of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory
Members of Parliament: 5
Premier: Shari Green (Caledonia Party)
Profile: The Yukon territory faced bankruptcy after the Klondike gold rush and applied to join British Columbia. The government rejected the application, but the move had been popular in the north, which had grievances with the southern government. A few years later the idea of a mining focused province had gained support and New Caledonia was formed. On the whole this is a lightly populated province committed to mining and gas development.
 
Provincial Profile: UNGAVA
Population (2011): 152,527
Capital: Sept-Illes
Admitted as a province: 1971 - created from parts of Pontiac, Quebec and the Northwest Territories
Members of Parliament: 4
Premier: Romeo Saganash (Cree)
Profile: Formed from parts of the Northwest Territories, Quebec and Pontiac nominally to give the Cree a voice, but really to create a government which would build the massive hydro-electric project needed to sell power to New York state. The hydro company dominated the province for twenty years, but eventually the Cree won an election. The tensions between the Cree government and the Hydro company have only slightly diminished in the 21st century.
 
Provincial Profile: PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
Population (2011): 140,204
Capital: Charlottetown
Admitted as a province: 1873 - from the Colony of Prince Edward Island
Members of Parliament: 3
Premier: Wade MacLauchlan (Lib)
Profile: Third smallest province and the second smallest of the four island provinces. Controlled alternatively by the Liberal and PC parties.
 
Provincial Profile: CAPE BRETON
Population (2011): 135,974
Capital: Sydney
Admitted as a province: 1929
Members of Parliament: 3
Premier: Cecil Clarke (PC)
Profile: Separated from Nova Scotia in the 1920's to give Gaelic speakers and culture a province of their own. Dependent on tourism since most of the mines shut down in the last part of the twentieth century.
 
Provincial Profile: ARCTIC
Population (2011): 73,368
Capital: Yellowknife
Admitted as a province: 1994 - created from the Northwest Territories
Members of Parliament: 3
Premier: Bob McLeod (Arc)
Profile: Canada's newest and smallest province formed out of the Northwest Territories. The only province that has a majority aboriginal population. Tension between the Inuit and Dene poeple define the politics in the province.
 
I'll admit, I don't know much of Canadian history or pre-Confederation politics, but this looks like an impressive piece of work. You've put in a lot of time and effort into this. Nice job.
 
I'll admit, I don't know much of Canadian history or pre-Confederation politics, but this looks like an impressive piece of work. You've put in a lot of time and effort into this. Nice job.

Thanks I've been playing around with it on and off for about six months.
 
Thanks I've been playing around with it on and off for about six months.

Cool. I've always been interested in the idea of alternate borders myself, a small change early on can result in big differences, especially in settler countries like the US or Canada. Did you make the map yourself?
 
Interesting, and the divisions are plausible in the West- don't know much about Eastern Canada :eek:.

What would be the reason that this Canada is dominated by splitters rather than lumpers?Anything special happened?

(I'm currently working on a TL with a U.S. made of larger states, so I'm interested in how this could happen
 
Interesting! One question - is New Caledonia a realistic name given that there is also a French Pacific territory with that name? (Then again, we have the country of Georgia and the U.S. state.)
 
Interesting, and the divisions are plausible in the West- don't know much about Eastern Canada :eek:.

What would be the reason that this Canada is dominated by splitters rather than lumpers?Anything special happened?

(I'm currently working on a TL with a U.S. made of larger states, so I'm interested in how this could happen

My theory in this TL is that the demands of the maritime provinces start the splitting of what we call Ontario and Quebec. Then because of the lousy border within 20 years of confederation Toronto starts demanding its own province. This trend to see provinces as divisible leads to further splits as time goes on.
 
Interesting! One question - is New Caledonia a realistic name given that there is also a French Pacific territory with that name? (Then again, we have the country of Georgia and the U.S. state.)

In fact it is. For most of the early 19th century what is now the interior of BC and certainly the northern interior was known as New Caledonia. Even today there is a College of New Caledonia in Prince George. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonia_(Canada)
 
Cool. I've always been interested in the idea of alternate borders myself, a small change early on can result in big differences, especially in settler countries like the US or Canada. Did you make the map yourself?

I did make the map myself. I took a census division map from Statscan and divvied up the provinces using it.
 
I suspect there would still be pressure to split off Nunavut from the NWT, for much the same reasons as OTL: the Inuit have political and economic concerns that are different from those of the Dene and Europeans, and they won't want to be a permanent peripheral minority. If the Arctic Province has nonpartisan consensus government similar to OTL, that might help, but probably not enough.
 
I suspect there would still be pressure to split off Nunavut from the NWT, for much the same reasons as OTL: the Inuit have political and economic concerns that are different from those of the Dene and Europeans, and they won't want to be a permanent peripheral minority. If the Arctic Province has nonpartisan consensus government similar to OTL, that might help, but probably not enough.

I considered that - but decided to subsume the Inuit pressure into a desire for provincial status. The Dene and Inuit both agree it is better to be a province, have six seats in the Senate and three in the House. Each community on their own would probably be two small to be a province. As the population grows Nunavut could split off into its own province in twenty or thirty years.
 
When "Estrie" became a distinct province during the 1920s, it was also distinctly English-dominated.
Originally it was called "the Eastern Townships," because land was surveyed in rectangular blocks, versus the segneurial strips up from the riverbank in the parts of Quebec that were originally settled by French immigrants. ET had been abandoned after small pox killed off the original Abenaki inhabitants, because the Catholic Church feared that settlers might be influenced by Protestant, English-speaking, capitalist, industrialist, democrats from New England. Eat attracted a variety of English-speaking immigrants from New England, Cape Breton Island, Ireland and England. They promptly started trading with New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Many of my ancestors were "Late Loyalists" who moved up from New England in response to British Crown offers of free land. By 1805, some of my ancestors were clearing the last arable land east of the Mississippi River. In 1842, they built the first Universalist Church in Canada in Huntingville, Quebec.
In 1840, one of my Irish Protestant ancestors stepped off a ship in Quebec City and walked straight south through the wilderness.
Up until 1970, most ET towns had English names (Bromptonville) separatist politicians started assigning French-sounding names like Saint Denis de Brompton. As separatist politicians grew increasingly obnoxious, (during the 1970s) most of my (bilingual) family and high school class moved to points west.

When defining the borders of "Acadie" remember that there are numerous Acadian-speaking villages in PEI, Cape Breton Island, the south shore of NS and the eastern shore of NB.
Northern New Brunswickers speak a Québécois dialect up near the Gaspe border, while the best farmland along the Saint John Rivet is dominated by English-speaking UEL.
 
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