This is just a newer follow-up to the last post: I didn't post it first because I don't find it quite as aesthetically pleasing, but most people would probably disagree with that assessment.
[Tomorrow Country] National map c. 2067
By 2067, it's been 40-odd years since the big day - the majority of Canada's population now remembers no other world than one where their Dominion is naturally pre-eminent. All of the nation's once-marginal northern regions have come fully awakened: here's a province-by-province overview, because I know everybody loves agricultural geography. (Er, hang on, there's probably a better forum for detailed single-project-oriented write-ups... I'm just leery to make a bunch of new threads immediately after joining.)
Peace River commands the Peace River Country, an always-insular historical region that now serves as the largest expanse of intact, established farmland in North America. Isolated from the main body of the Canadian prairies by the rolling Swan Hills, the Land of the Mighty Peace has been fortuitously protected from drought (as also happened in the 1930s OTL), and its bounty single-handedly keeps the rest of Canada afloat (indeed, Peace River contains a slim majority of all Canadians).
The Northwest Territories (actually a singular province, but a really good name has inertia) has unlocked much of its boreal plain, taking much advantage of the slight frost-melting effects of the Liard, Hay, Slave, and Mackenzie Rivers. The NWT's growth seems liable to continue accelerating - after all, real-life popular legend already holds that the Mackenzie valley in the late 1900s has been warmer than the St. Lawrence valley was in the early 1800s.
The country that controls North America's largest productive river basin will ultimately control the world...
It's no Central Valley, but
Fraser has made good use of British Columbia's internal depression: lots of feed grains and other lower-grade materials get produced here, because the land is cheaper and the soil's worse than in the Peace.
Saskatchewan has also been growing rapidly: at first, it was just a barely-inhabited territory defined mostly for convenience, but some of the dust has been settling lately, and a process of resettlement has begun along the northern fringes of the parkland, where the wind doesn't blow as hard. This process has been slowed down by an unfounded public hysteria about radiation: most of Saskatchewan is barely spoiled, but nothing grown south of the big river is considered truly clean by those damn over-cultured Grande Prairians.
Manitoba isn't a very big winner, because global warming can't magically add topsoil to the Canadian Shield, but the province enjoys a tremendous hydroelectric overcapacity, so Thompson has grown into a swollen nickel-belt industrial capital. Some of the province's middle fringes are arable (especially around The Pas), but Manitoba is generally forced to skew more innovative than any other province: the place has more greenhouses than the entire rest of the country put together. (Oh, and of course the Port of Churchill is now one of the busiest in the entire world.)
New Canada's claim to fame and productivity is the Ontario Clay Belt, a surprisingly bilingual region of extensive glacial-lake soil smeared underneath the northwoods: the province has an incessant and petty rivalry with the NWT, both competing for that second-most-populated status. Other random pockets of soil exist scattered throughout the New Canadian wilderness too, but for now, the future-growth-potential advantage remains the NWT's.
Yukon is a rugged, surprisingly arid country, feeling mostly like a weird parody of Alberta - the province distinguishes itself with elk ranches in the south and caribou ranches in the north, and prides itself on its relative economic freedom. This is a pretty statist future, so Yukon isn't
impressively free... but it and Nunavut are the only province where large-scale private grain buyers are even permitted (and Nunavut doesn't count).
Nunavut has seen the least expansion out of any province, but its natural birthrate is the highest. The rocky tundra up here doesn't yield nearly as much bounty as the other marginal lands previously described, so most agricultural ventures here are done on an experimental basis... and they're not successful experiments, either. In practice, Nunavut is autonomous enough as to be barely Canadian, and the province has successfully spent decades promoting
Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, its very own private code of values. With the Northwest Passage kicked wide open, though,
Our Land's continued participation within Confederation at least makes economic and political sense.
What about America? Well,
Alaska is doing about as well as the NWT would be, if the NWT had caught a bunch of direct nuclear hits (which it didn't)... and the less said about the
Organized U.S., the better.
