Wank the Maritimes!

Hello everyone!

The Maritimes are the most downtrodden region of Canada (except for the territories), and have been unloved pretty much since the British took it from the French way back in the day. The point of this thread is to reverse this situation.

Challenge 1: What would be the best way to have the border between Nova Scotia->New Brunswick and Massachusetts->Maine be set at the Penobscot River after the ARW? And keep that river as the border until the present day?

Challenge 2: Is there any way to keep Cape Breton separate from Nova Scotia and have it join Canada as its own province? Also, is there any way to keep Gaelic as a surviving language of the island province, at least on par with French in OTL New Brunswick?

Challenge 3: How do we get Halifax to both have an urban population of at least one million, a metro population of at least two million, and have one of the ten busiest ports in the world? And how do we get Charlottetown to become a sort of "artistic capital" with painters, musicians, etc, flocking to the city?

Challenge 4: How do we get the region as a whole to become a powerful centre of industry? Especially aerospace?

Maritimes.png
 
Cape breton as its own province is doable. It was a separate colony for a while, and if pei can make it, so can cape breton.

Getting the gaelic to survive as the common tongue is a lot harder, especially if thee area stays prosperous, as english will be the language of trade.

However, if c.b. is its own province, it could see it pushing the gaelic to distinguish it from the others. Sort of, everyone speaks it badly, and some villages speak it... i seem to remember reading that at one point iotl there were as many gaelic speakers in n.s., presumably c.b., as there were left in scotland. But where i read that, i couldnt tell you.

To get halifax a major metropolis, andor a decent population in the maritimes, you have to do something to make it so. Now, otl, n.s. was quite prosperous as a builder of wooden ships, but when shipping moved to iron and then steel, it lost out.

In my tl, which i really hope to get back to ,,soon,, the is a second us uk war in the 1840s, and the new englanders and maritimers get a head start on ironclads. The cant keep it, but they got a good head start, and made the jump to iron. With newfoundland and ,,canadian,, iron from the great iron ranges, together with c.b. coal, they will weather the transition icely. They wont be rich and prosperous, exactly, but wont be as poor as otl.
 
Cape breton as its own province is doable. It was a separate colony for a while, and if pei can make it, so can cape breton.

Neat, it was its own colony? You wouldn't happen to know why it was tacked on to Nova Scotia, would you?

Getting the gaelic to survive as the common tongue is a lot harder, especially if thee area stays prosperous, as english will be the language of trade.
It doesn't need to be the common tongue of the majority of the province, just a large minority.

However, if c.b. is its own province, it could see it pushing the gaelic to distinguish it from the others. Sort of, everyone speaks it badly, and some villages speak it... i seem to remember reading that at one point iotl there were as many gaelic speakers in n.s., presumably c.b., as there were left in scotland. But where i read that, i couldnt tell you.
So, maybe if it could survive into the mid-twentieth century as a big minority language, it could receive government protection? Not as severe as French in Quebec, but something along the lines of Ontario?

To get halifax a major metropolis, andor a decent population in the maritimes, you have to do something to make it so. Now, otl, n.s. was quite prosperous as a builder of wooden ships, but when shipping moved to iron and then steel, it lost out.

In my tl, which i really hope to get back to ,,soon,, the is a second us uk war in the 1840s, and the new englanders and maritimers get a head start on ironclads. The cant keep it, but they got a good head start, and made the jump to iron. With newfoundland and ,,canadian,, iron from the great iron ranges, together with c.b. coal, they will weather the transition icely. They wont be rich and prosperous, exactly, but wont be as poor as otl.
Good idea.

I was thinking, if somehow Montreal doesn't successfully become a large port, and through some severe penalties/civic pride that a drastically smaller number of goods and people go through Boston from the Canadas, that Halifax would become a much more important port city than OTL, which would help big time also.
 
Neat, it was its own colony? You wouldn't happen to know why it was tacked on to Nova Scotia, would you?

Because it was small and colonial consolidation made financial sense.


It doesn't need to be the common tongue of the majority of the province, just a large minority.

So, maybe if it could survive into the mid-twentieth century as a big minority language, it could receive government protection? Not as severe as French in Quebec, but something along the lines of Ontario?

Not compatible with prosperity, if Cape Breton is prosperous non Scots Gaelic immigrants will arrive and will naturally adopt English as the main language of the region and of trade.

I was thinking, if somehow Montreal doesn't successfully become a large port, and through some severe penalties/civic pride that a drastically smaller number of goods and people go through Boston from the Canadas, that Halifax would become a much more important port city than OTL, which would help big time also.

It would require a geological POD, Montreal is a good harbour and much, much closer to the main areas where export goods and produced and the main population centres where imports are in demand. You are never going to get the Maritimes more populous than Saint Lawrence/Great Lakes in the long term and unless you change the geology somewhere on that river is going to be the main port.
 
It would require a geological POD, Montreal is a good harbour and much, much closer to the main areas where export goods and produced and the main population centres where imports are in demand. You are never going to get the Maritimes more populous than Saint Lawrence/Great Lakes in the long term and unless you change the geology somewhere on that river is going to be the main port.

Unless political instability makes it impossible for Montreal to function as a large port. If railroads to Nova Scotia can be properly developed, and a mix of American hostility (shutting down much of the St. Lawrence trade) and Quebecois nationalism (making Montreal a less functional city) can shut down Montreal's harbour, Halifax is the default choice. This would lead to an increase in the industrialization of the Maritimes, with the St. Lawrence mostly used as a conduit for raw materials from Ontario and Quebec to flow by ship to the factories of Halifax and Dartmouth, the Manchester of North America :D
 
The Maritmies were a lot more prosperous before confederation. The National Policy instituted by John A. The National policy too heavily favoured central Canada over the Maritimes and a lot of trade and industry suffered there as a result.
 
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