WI: The US border is the St Lawrence

JJohnson

Banned
Whether it be by Jonathan Eddy or elsewise, the US manages to capture and hold Halifax, and all territory up to the St. Lawrence. What happens to this land? Do we get a state of Quebec and Nova Scotia? What of St. John's Island? And how would that affect the future of Canada without its Maritimes?
 
Well assuming this is possible (and I'm of the firm opinion it is not) then you have a very interesting problem for Canada. The first is clearly that it is now without a access to a warm-water port of its own (the northern St. Lawrence as it empties out into the Atlantic remains iced over from roughly December 5th to May 5th, sixth months of the year) and so remains dependent on US rail lines and ports. Now this either leads to Britain having an increased presence on the Pacific Coast (to prevent the Americans from dominating it) and an earlier 'trans-continental railroad' to connect Canada and BC, or it leads to a very slow absorption by the US of Canada.

It would really depend on the economics, Anglo-American relations, and so forth, but in this scenario I definitely see eventual absorption of Canada into the US as a much higher probability than full on Canadian independence.
 
It just doesn't work. The only towns worth holding are on the north bank, and holding those means you can sally forth and attack the south bank at will, and you can sail sea-going ships far inland meaning that unless you hold those towns and can block access to the river you can be easily bombarded.

There's a very good reason why the St. Lawrence isn't the border, or even a provincial border.
 
Why is the Rhine a border?

Because the French gradually absorbed various territorial entities initially drawn simply as provincial subdivisions (where the Rhine forms a useful border) before acquiring Alsace. The Rhine that far inland is navigable by shallow-drafted barges but not ocean going ships, and has significant settlements on both sides, so holding Strasbourg does not necessarily mean you can control movement on the river. They're not really comparable, and even then I'd note that it's not the whole Rhine that's a border (save for some brief periods during unstable political periods) but a relatively short stretch of it in the middle reaches of the river and the extent of France's frontage there is still essentially defined by the territorial fragments they initially conquered to get it.
 
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