r/geography • u/christopherbonis • Oct 06 '24
Terrifyingly Vast Discussion
So I live in Massachusetts. And from my point of view, Maine is huge. And indeed, it’s larger than the rest of New England combined.
And I also think of Maine as super rural. And indeed, it’s the only state on the eastern seaboard with unorganized territory.
…and then I look northward at the Quebec. And it just fills me a sort of terrified, existential awe at its incomprehensible vastness, intensified by the realization that it’s just one portion of Canada—and not even the largest province/territory.
What on Earth goes on up there in the interior of Quebec? How many lakes have humans never even laid eyes on before—much less fished or explored? What does the topography look like? It’s just so massive, so vast, so remote that it’s hard for me even to wrap my head around.
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u/GoldenBuffaloes Oct 06 '24
Maybe my favorite region on Earth. I’ve spent so much time on Google maps just looking at the remoteness of Quebec. All the lakes are forests are so cool.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
You and me both! Australia and the Amazon too. I find it oddly relaxing (but scary).
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u/tytrim89 Oct 06 '24
You should start looking at Africa, too, specifically off tributaries of the Congo River. I was looking for super remote places and ended up looking at random barren spots in the jungle, 50-100 miles, as the crow flies from any other signs of human habitation.
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u/sairam_sriram Oct 06 '24
Become a driver for a Google Street car. You'll get to explore the vastness, and you'll be safe, and you'll get paid for it.
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u/Culzean_Castle_Is Oct 06 '24
Absolutely nothing happens there.
More Polar Bears than humans.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Imagine being dropped somewhere random up there. I would almost be comforted by the presence of another large mammal—until it tried to eat me!
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u/Culzean_Castle_Is Oct 06 '24
Yeah you'd have to fly in. I don't believe there are any roads up there unless they go to a hydroelectric dam.
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u/Feisty-Session-7779 Oct 06 '24
Not sure about Quebec but I know Ontario doesn’t have roads going to the northern parts of the province. There’s some small towns up there that are only accessible by plane or rail though, I’d assume the same is true for Quebec.
I live in the Toronto area and it always blows my mind when I think about the fact that I live closer to Florida than I do to Manitoba. Canadian provinces are immense. Ontario is nearly twice the size of Texas, Quebec is almost triple the size.
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u/snoopexotic Oct 06 '24
In Manitoba we have some roads that are only accessible in winter aka ice roads. Have to fly or take the train up north in the other seasons.
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u/RepresentativeKey178 Oct 06 '24
What happens to the roads when they aren't ice?
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u/BookswithAmanda Oct 06 '24
They're lakes and rivers
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u/RepresentativeKey178 Oct 06 '24
Ohhhhhh
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u/Abacae Oct 06 '24
I think they made a whole show about it called Ice Road Truckers, and when the weather warms up in the summer there's a few calculations because your truck literally could break the ice road, and it falls in. No more truck and you have to escape before you drown.
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u/Cortower Oct 06 '24
People make the same calculations here in Minnesota, but the calculation goes, "I can see ice and want to fish today." Ice fishing season is about 2 weeks shorter on average than it was 50 years ago, and oh boy, do people not like change.
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u/fudgykevtheeternal Geography Enthusiast Oct 06 '24
You can drive much further north into Quebec than you can into Ontario. The Billy Diamond Highway runs north through the James Bay Cree territory all the way to the access road for Chisasibi reserve at the northern shore of James Bay. My girlfriend teaches at the high school in Waskaganish, the southern most community along this highway, which sits almost directly across the bay from Moosonee, which is a larger town but which you can't drive to. Weirdly enough, even though Waskaganish is roughly a 13 hour drive straight north of Montreal or Ottawa, and is in the taiga transition zone, it sits roughly at the same latitude as Edmonton.
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u/kevinpilon17 Oct 06 '24
Ill add to this. I'm a travel nurse for northern Québec. Was in waska a few weeks ago. Currently in nemaska which isnt much higher but to the east of the billy Diamond. Essentially there are roads up to the bottom of Hudsons bay, or the 55th parallel. From waska to mistisini up to chisasibi, it's the james bay region and it's cree land. Above the 55th parallel, it's the nunavik region of qc, and innuit land. There are 7 main innuit villages on the Hudson Bay coast. Each of these are only reached by plane. Similar amount of villages I believe on the bay of Ungava, but I haven't been out there yet.
There are definently more ppl than polar bears(from another comment above). Pretty sure there's 5000 ppl in mistisini, and a several villages have 2000+ ppl, even in nunavik. These villages are actually growing.
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Oct 06 '24
There are dirt roads for the lumber trucks and some hunters but past a certain point, you can only go by plane
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u/Corgilicious Oct 06 '24
How in the world do they get the resources needed to build an airstrip into an area where there are no roads to?
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u/AresV92 Oct 06 '24
Airdrop them in or take them in on sleds with snowmobiles in the winter.
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u/confabulati Oct 06 '24
This, and I suspect most airstrips are in coastal communities where there is seasonal shipping
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u/Lower_Cantaloupe1970 Oct 06 '24
I drove to my BILs in Red Lake Ontario from Toronto this summer. It's 24 hours of driving. It's faster to drive to Miami from Toronto than to drive to another part of Ontario.
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u/PipiPraesident Oct 06 '24
AFAIK the most northern/remote place in Québec you can reach through a continuous street is Caniapiscau (https://maps.app.goo.gl/h1cinB6wbWg2Dyie6), which is, of course, the site of a large reservoir for hydroelectric power. It's a 27 hour drive from Montreal.
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u/AnonObvious56 Oct 06 '24
From Toronto, it's a shorter drive to Nuevo Laredo, MEXICO than to Caniapiscau.
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u/dragonborn071 Oct 06 '24
And its only halfway up Quebec wtf, thats awesome
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u/-Zxart- Oct 06 '24
Look up the directions on Google maps from say Boston. The longest stretch of highways is 360 miles. There’s a million small turns and so many different roads to get up there.
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u/Linzabee Oct 06 '24
I just looked them up from my starting point. It’s 1593 miles away, but the good news it’s only $16.65 in tolls.
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u/FarmTeam Oct 06 '24
Looks like it’s only 120 miles from a reasonably large settlement, Schafferville, due east, but there’s no road connection
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u/lgr142 Oct 06 '24
Thanks for this, one of the more interesting posts amongst a sea of indifference.
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u/IsaJuice Oct 06 '24
No roads? It's amazing how much of Canada's population is on the border / near
It'd be interesting to see in the long term if any yearly warming will lead to Canada eventually populating more of their northern territories.
No roads is crazy
Edit: a word
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u/MathAndBake Oct 06 '24
Northern Quebec isn't just cold, it's also mostly Canadian Shield. Aka, incredibly hard bedrock with a tiny layer of soil held on by tree roots. You can't really farm it, and building almost anything requires dynamite.
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u/kander12 Oct 06 '24
Watch the show Alive. Season 10 I think it is... they drop the contestants off way the fuck up north in the territories (northern most provinces). Santa Claus is probably the closest other person to them 😂
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u/DetectiveJed Oct 06 '24
Do you mean Alone or is there another show I should also be watching?
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Oh man that sounds crazy!
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u/kander12 Oct 06 '24
As the person below me said.. I meant to say Alone not Alive lol. Great show though.
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u/Stephenrudolf Oct 06 '24
...ever read Hatchet?
The terrifying posibility of getting lost in the woods is unapproachably vast.
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u/MrDeviantish Oct 06 '24
Or a moose that is a vegetarian but just wants to fuck you up because of your face.
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u/MrPowerPoint Oct 06 '24
I wouldn’t call it “try” I’m quite sure a polar bear would succeed
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u/wildwestington Oct 06 '24
What is that circle lake?
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u/Culzean_Castle_Is Oct 06 '24
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u/myleftone Oct 06 '24
It’s weird to me that you don’t hear about this impact a lot. The thing that caused it was three miles across, but it caused no major climate changes and only regional die-offs, and it’s millions of years before the Triassic extinction event. The earth kinda shrugged it off.
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u/GudAGreat Oct 06 '24
They should build a new tenochtitlan on that circle island with the huge water moat around it in the middle of the province that would be super epic.
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u/agfitzp Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
There are Cree and Inuit communities all along the coast from Ungava Bay to Hudson’s Bay the last accessible by road is near the top of James Bay, from there you can tour Northern Quebec by plane as there is an airline that services about a dozen of the northern communities.
There may not be millions of people living in the north, it is probaly a lot more than you think.
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u/epi_introvert Oct 06 '24
Oh, but they don't count as people!
I'm being severely sarcastic. I'm part Mohawk, and indigenous erasure is a huge thing in Canada. Many of our indigenous communities don't have drinkable water, despite the fact that Canada has more lakes than any other country.
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u/ManBearEagle Oct 06 '24
Lake Mistassini sticks out to me in this photo more than Lake Manicouagan as an unnatural appearing formation. Looks like a giant animal scared the land with its claws or something.
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u/simpletonius Oct 06 '24
Minerals, fish and enough fresh water to turn a desert like the Southwest into a garden. Bit too far away though.
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u/Turbulent_Cheetah Oct 06 '24
There’s some mining and I believe some very isolated indigenous communities, but for the most part, yeah, nothing happens there.
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u/Other_Bill9725 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
I read an account, by a modern day adventurer, who’d gone on a solo expedition to the largest beaver dam (located in northern BC I think). He landed his plane on a lake 25 miles from the dam. It took him 85 days to make the round trip.
This man had previously climbed the highest peak on every continent and visited both poles. He said that his trip to the dam was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
Imagine how many equally remote places there are in the vastness of Canada.
It’s been some time since I encountered this story and my memory was clearly flawed in several respects. A few commenters have corrected some(?) of my errors, one even provided a link.
I thank them.
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u/Bradventure916 Oct 06 '24
This sounds fascinating. I imagine one of the main difficulties in overland travel is all the water (bogs, lakes, rivers…). I once met a young woman from Montreal and she introduced me to the concept of “portage” for overland travel—makes sense.
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u/Other_Bill9725 Oct 06 '24
The entire area is a flooded evergreen forest between a few inches and 20’ deep. The “hike” was through the rotting canopy. “The mosquitoes were legion”. I imagined the “Swamp of Sadness” from “Neverending Story”.
He had to proceed island to island so that he could find safe places to sleep. He was apparently ON the dam, still looking for it for days before he realized.
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u/strategicallusionary Oct 06 '24
https://macleans.ca/society/science/meet-the-first-person-to-explore-the-worlds-largest-beaver-dam/
85 days?? This article says 3 days in
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u/rainman_95 Oct 06 '24
Wow. Sounds like a hell of a story. Do you recall the name Or the author?
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u/Other_Bill9725 Oct 06 '24
I believe I heard it referred to on the podcast The Memory Palace with Nate Dimeo, then googled the adventurer. It’s a great commute listen!
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u/Puzzleheaded-Dingo39 Oct 06 '24
I've lived in Montreal almost all my life, and yes, i've pretty much given up on trying to understand all this vastness, let alone seeing it one day. It just feels like it's a completely different universe out there.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Thanks so much for your perspective! It’s something I think about a lot, even as a New Englander. Canada is just so ridiculously massive.
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Oct 06 '24
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
I know! The same goes for all the provinces and territories (minus maybe PEI) Canada is scary.
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u/corryvreckanist Oct 06 '24
I leave Vancouver, BC driving north. Two plus regular driving days later I reach the northern border with the Yukon. Between here and there I go through one town - Prince George - with around 75K people. Nothing else comes close to that size. That is on the first day. From there, it’s 1200kms to the Yukon border, and very few people.
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u/TheLastRulerofMerv Oct 06 '24
It's massive but the population is very concentrated. But yes, the north's sheer size is mind boggling.
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u/Turbulent_Crow7164 Oct 06 '24
Starting in Montreal, you can go directly north as the crow flies for 1,000 miles, and still be in Quebec.
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u/LibraryVoice71 Oct 06 '24
A writer, I forget who, said that because of the vastness of Canada’s north, few of its people even know where the border starts. It just kind of fades into a mess of islands and a wobbly line hovering somewhere over the North Pole. Even Russia has a more defined border. How can you conceive of a country without a northern edge?
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u/drizzt-dourden Oct 06 '24
I have an invitation from my family in Montreal. And I started wondering if there is a national/educational park or some hiking trails to catch a glimpse of the wilderness? I don't feel reckless enough to go straight into the wild.
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u/smurf123_123 Oct 06 '24
The area around Mt. Tremblant can give you a pretty good idea of what it's like. If you can take a lift to the top of Tremblant you can get a pretty amazing view of what lays north of there. It's vast and beautiful.
On my way back from Europe this summer we flew over northern Labrador and Quebec. It was mostly clear skies and the views from the plane were unreal. The only thing I kept thinking at the time was "how bad are the mosquitoes there right now?".
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u/FastSquirrel Oct 06 '24
Depends how far you're ready to go. Lots of nature hiking trails, but not in the city (for obvious reasons).
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u/applex_wingcommander Oct 06 '24
As a fellow big city guy, the Australian outback is on a similar scale. Hours apon hours of nothingness
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u/IcyStruggle5976 Oct 06 '24
We say hours upon hours of nothingness because we have cars. But in reality, it is months and months of nothingness. If you even survive a month
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u/Accomplished_Job_225 Oct 06 '24
Quebec is the largest province by area, although it is smaller than the territory of Nunavut. Not that such takes away from your point :
It is all sort of terrifying ( that sheer wilderness ).
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u/EmperorThan Oct 06 '24
And with this comment I just learned that Canadian "Territories" are not "Provinces".
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u/Accomplished_Job_225 Oct 06 '24
The difference boils down mostly to a population size;
territorial governments answer more directly to the federal government, whereas a province has more/almost entire self autonomy over its own affairs;
both territories and provinces are led by elected premiers; provinces appoint Lieutenant Governors, and territories appoint Commissioners, as viceroys.
But without this context: it does seem pedantic or curious, as the terms are fairly interchangeable to describe a piece of geographic jurisdiction.
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u/OpalFanatic Oct 06 '24
Fun fact: There are a fair number of impact craters visible in this image. The two craters of Clearwater lakes are easily visible. Lac Couture is also visible, and the large ring of Manicouagan crater is pretty hard to miss.
Barely visible if you know which dots are which are Pingualuit crater and La Moinerie. And I'm pretty sure I'm missing several here. But it's late and I'm tired. Lol
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u/lanbuckjames Oct 06 '24
Just read a bit about the Clearwater lakes. The craziest thing about them is that they were previously thought to be formed by a pair of asteroids striking at the same time, but they were really formed nearly 200 million years apart!
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u/pataterates Oct 06 '24
Ive drive from Rouyn-Noranda to Chibougamau a couple of times.
The first time, I could only think about how many corpses must be hiding in this forest. You are on the 113 and the only thing you see is black spruces.
It is also freaking scary to ride at night. It’s pitch black. The first time, I called a friend to talk with, because I was panicking.
But the territory is wonderful and I would do it again. I hope to go up up north one day too.
Link to see the road : https://maps.app.goo.gl/yC3D3s1iAa9UpQJT6?g_st=ic[Road 113](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yC3D3s1iAa9UpQJT6?g_st=ic)
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
That’s so cool. And to think Maine’s Route 26 was scary for me—during the day (for the eclipse)! Thanks so much for sharing that first-hand experience!
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u/mapleflavouredmoose Oct 06 '24
I've always kind of wanted to do that drive, and I know people who have, but it really does give me the willies.
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u/A55Man-Norway Oct 06 '24
Funfact: Norwegian explorer Lars Monsen spent 947 days in 2005 as the first human ever to cross Canada west to east. Using feet, dogsled and skis. He made a documentary which is still very popular here in Norway.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0802961/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
Alot of the areas and animals he crosses have never seen humans before. Quite fantastic.
It's possible to watch on YT now:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAF1A219B60F9A35C&si=-ISdJzm-SS3jLgfn
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u/RiotMedia Oct 06 '24
I live in the Saguenay region. It's pretty big in and of its own and a beautiful place.
I got to work up north in Fermont for a few weeks and that was a wild ride. Once past Baie Comeau, it's nothing for HOURS. I don't know if it still exists, but Relais Gabriel is a sort of pit stop in the middle of nowhere, close-ish to Lac Manicouagan, the crater-lake we see so clearly.
I've lived in the province all my life and saw many places, yet in my 32 years of existence, I only scratched the surface.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Wow, that’s so cool! Thanks for your insight! I’ll look up all those places.
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u/ldunord Oct 06 '24
The fjords in that region are without doubt the prettiest landscape in Eastern Canada.
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u/Successful-Mine-5967 Oct 06 '24
Never thought I’d find a fellow Saguenay resident here
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u/kal0d Oct 06 '24
if you look closely, there are 3 round formations on the map, one tha looks like an islando surrounded by a river, and close to the center, just a little high there are 2 lakes with a rounded shape, side by side. those formations are asteroid impact craters that are mostly eroded away, but we can still see because of thw water in them, the one more to the right, where is surrounded by rivers, it's different e from the other two because when the meteor hit earth, it melted the rock and, just like water, the rock bounced back after the impact,if I'm not mistaken, it looked more like some kind of shield, but it eroded away too Sorry if bad English, not my native language
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u/gospelofturtle Oct 06 '24
Lots of First Nations use the land, and have done for centuries. Us Québécois have learned to use the land as well. To give us hydroelectric energy for exemple. The vastness of Quebec and its beauty, has also fuelled our culture and traditions too, a part of our identity.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
I’m sure it’s breathtaking. And I know there are lots of isolated indigenous communities up there. But I wasn’t familiar with the hydroelectricity. Thanks for sharing!
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u/quebecesti Oct 06 '24
99% of the energy used in Québec is renewable, the vast majority of it comes from hydro dams in the north. You can Google Baie James Dam or Manic 5 Dam for exemple
You are in New England so a portion of the electricity you use comes from there too.
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u/puppymama75 Oct 06 '24
I’m thankful you commented. All of this ‘terrifying empty wilderness’ talk gives me a bit of a weird feeling, like people are overlooking some things, and what you said confirmed it. I doubt that James Bay Cree folks, for example, think that their home turf is empty or terrifying.
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u/dave078703 Oct 06 '24
I lived in Lac St Joseph, which was pretty much a final stop before kilometres and kilometres of forest. The vastness beyond the lake was always something that fascinated me as a kid
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
It’s so cool to actually have Québécois responding to this post! And that’s what I mean. I can’t really relate, but I try to imagine what it must look and feel like to be on the ground there. A seemingly endless, frigid frontier.
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u/dave078703 Oct 06 '24
It's basically just the St Lawrence River valley that's inhabited, and even then north of Quebec City there's just not much. I live in Australia now, which is a whole other genre of "full of nothingness". I guess I like big places 😁
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
I could’ve easily made this post about Australia instead. It’s just Canada is far nearer to me.
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u/Intelligent_Fun4378 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
I looked it up, and that lake really is like the last frontier before vast wilderness. It is almost like an ocean. I would love to hike over there... but not too far :-).
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u/dave078703 Oct 06 '24
There's a nice nature reserve there called Duchesnay. Beautiful hiking trails in summer, and snowshoeing and Nordic skiing in winter.
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u/mrcheevus Oct 06 '24
Labrador resident from western Canada, and I have driven from Baie Comeau up to and across Labrador. Western Canada is big but there are communities and people in Northern BC and Alberta.
There is nobody up there in QC and Labrador.
You take a satellite phone with you on that highway because cel service is non-existent.
Leaving the shores of the st. Lawrence North there's a series of hydro projects ending at MANIC 5 (Cinq on the map). There's a hotel and a restaurant and a gas station at the foot of a massive cement dam which creates the "Eye of Quebec", Lake Manicougan, the big circle lake with the giant island in the middle. The sad thing is the road goes right by the lake but you hardly get any view of it. It takes hours to get to Manic 5 but it's the best place to stop until you hit Lab City, a good 3 hours of driving away.
About an hour south of Lab City you start hitting iron mines. Huge iron mines. But no people. If you pay attention there is a place where the road divides for about 1km. That is actually a ghost town where former mine workers lived. It's gone now.
Leaving Lab City technically you can take mining or hydro or rail roads up to a place called Schefferville which is actually in QC. I haven't been that far up but I am told it is actually tundra, that you leave the boreal forest.
Going east across Labrador it's another 3 hours until Churchill Falls, a hydro company town. I've fished north of there on the reservoir, some of the most astonishing fishing I have ever done... Constant action with Pike and Lake Trout at the dam outflow.
From Churchill Falls it's 3 hours of nothing until you reach Goose Bay. But a half hour west of Goose you start seeing little cabins dotting the roadsides. It seems like everyone in Goose Bay owns a cabin on crown land in the middle of nowhere. They use them as bases for snowmobiling or hunting.
Speaking of snowmobiling, look up Cains Quest. It's insane. A snowmobile race that covers nearly all of Labrador every winter. Hundreds and hundreds of miles of land, no roads, no signs, the competitors have to figure out their own routes between points on a map. They race in teams of two and have support crews meet them wherever they can for food and gas.
I shouldn't say the road has lots of nothing though. Some of the scenery is breathtaking. My favourite spots are the Groulx Mountains, the iron mines, Churchill Falls (the actual waterfall) and the south coast of Labrador from Port Hope Simpson to L'Anse au Clair. BTW the longest stretch of no civilization on that road is from Goose Bay to Port Hope Simpson. 4.5 hours of boreal forest crossing untouched rivers with not a human for hundreds of miles. It's so remote they installed Starlink at the road maintenance shelters so that motorists have somewhere they can get emergency messages out from if they experience an emergency.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
That is just ridiculous cool. Thank you so much for sharing all this!
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u/ipini Oct 06 '24
North-central interior of BC here, biologist. I’ve stayed in some places where the closest thing resembling civilization is hours of driving down dirt roads away. Nights are quieter than you can imagine. The scenery is amazing.
I’ve helicoptered onto some mountaintops and have realized that I may be the first human to put my feet there in hundreds of years, or longer — or maybe even ever.
I’ve seen wolves, grizzlies, lynx, and more moose, black bears, and elk than I can count. Also mountain caribou, which are rare and amazing.
Still haven’t seen a cougar or a wolverine, though doubtless both have watched me at some point while I was working.
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u/throwawayfromPA1701 Urban Geography Oct 06 '24
It burned last year. So much of it burned.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
:(
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u/Environmental_Main90 Oct 06 '24
Yeah the sky was orange and it smelled smoke even down in Montreal :/
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u/Hellpepper2001 Oct 06 '24
70% of Brazil's population were choking on smoke from the Amazon fires last month; shame that its happening in other places
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u/Pepto-Abysmal Oct 06 '24
It was really bad last year, but "the boreal forest is born to burn" (Edward Struzik).
Fires are a fundamental part of the forest's life-cycle (although if 2023 becomes the norm, we will have to re-evaluate our approach on a very big level).
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u/Dum_beat Oct 06 '24
What on Earth goes on up there in the interior of Quebec?
Well, I'm making pancakes for breakfast tomorrow. You're welcome to join if you want
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u/AcidaliaPlanitia Oct 06 '24
I'm from Mass too, and it's always absurd to me how long it takes to get to Quebec City... and yet there's still all that Quebec above it.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
YES, EXACTLY. I meant to include something about driving in the original post but didn’t wanna make it too long. It’s like seven hours from where I live—to the foot of the province!
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u/TorTheMentor Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
Living down in Texas, where our whole state was once sea bottom, there's something both intimidating and fascinating about the phrase Canadian Shield. And about boreal forests, which I've only ever gotten to see on film.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
I totally get you. And I don’t take anything away from Texas. It’s enormous in its own right—certainly compared to where I’m from. But the Shield is really on another level, especially in terms of remoteness.
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u/HadrianMCMXCI Oct 06 '24
Lived on the Shield most of my life, it's basically a younger Appalachia with less mist. Nice rocks, good swimmin' and you sure get used to long car trips. When I did a high school exchange, we took my German exchange student on a road trip down to Toronto; ~1400km (~850 miles I guess). If we did the same thing from his city in Germany we could have crossed most of Germany, straight through Austria, Slovenia and Croatia and then most of Bosnia. Meanwhile, we never left Ontario..
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
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u/doktorapplejuice Oct 06 '24
That, my friend, is the reason why Canada has more lakes than the entire rest of the world combined. Also part of why building highways anywhere outside the prairies and the Quebec City-Windsor corridor is very expensive.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Yup, I totally believe it. All you have to do is zoom in on Google Earth and it’s like millions of blue dots open up to you! And many of them are larger than my hometown!
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u/doktorapplejuice Oct 06 '24
I grew up in a small town called Cold Lake, which sits alongside a lake also called Cold Lake, aptly named because it is cold. It's so big that you can't see the other side. And that seems huge. Until you zoom out from it on Google maps and see lakes like Athabasca and Great Bear that make it look like a puddle.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Yup, I considered mentioning Great Bear Lake as well. Absolutely gigantic. Thanks so much for sharing!
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u/Killshot5 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
it's wild. On our flight back from Amsterdam we flew over Newfoundland and Labrador. I looked out the window and it was just endless ridges covered in ice and snow. Was wild and serene.
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u/hman1025 Oct 06 '24
Flew over northern Quebec in March. Not a single sign of human life in those parts as far as the eye can see.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Oh man that must be exhilarating. I’d love to do that, but I’d probably be too scared.
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u/hman1025 Oct 06 '24
It was a flight from Norway to NY, so not something I planned out
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
That’s awesome. I didn’t realize a commercial flight would take this route. Endless frozen tundra. Thanks for sharing!
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u/ericblair21 Oct 06 '24
Basically every flight from Northern-ish Europe to the US Midwest or West Coast is going to go over a huge amount of tundra in daylight hours. Amazing to watch.
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u/Weary_Interaction580 Oct 06 '24
I just watched the first season of The Terror and fell down a rabbit hole of looking at all the maps and wiki pages for the Canadian North and Northwest Passage attempts. Brutal
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Oh yeah. Those early explorers were just unbelievably courageous. We don’t give them the credit they deserve.
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u/RidsBabs Oct 06 '24
Wait till you see Western Australia. 2.646 million square kilometres. There’s about 2.6 million people in the state, with about 2 million in Perth (which is 6,418 square kilometres) meaning there’s about 600,000 people spread over 2,639,582 square kilometres (1 person every 4 square km).
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Oh you best believe I have! That, the Amazon, the Sahara, Siberia, etc. These are my favorite places to explore on Google Earth cause I feel like I’m seeing somewhere I’m almost not supposed to.
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u/HINEHAUS Oct 06 '24
I drove from Perth all the way up to Darwin in the early 00's. Absolutely incredible journey. The night sky there is out of this world!! Its hard to describe to be honest, something I will never forget! Saw olive pythons longer than the road was wide! I Surfed so much as well. Normally with bleeding feet from waking over reefs while surrounded by sea turtles 😬 I remember one afternoon lying on my board waiting for a set and a sea turtle rose literally one metre from my head and it took a huge breath. It was so quiet I could hear the air racing into its lungs. Kind of feel a bit emotional thinking about to be honest. A very special moment in my life. Pure serenity. I was 18 when I was there and didn't make the most of it. I'd love to go back as a grown adult. The scale of Australia is insane. I bought a postcard while there that had Europe superimposed onto Australia and the trip I made (Perth to darwin) was the equivalent of driving from Lisbon to Moscow. Also termite mounds.
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u/Eyeguy9999 Oct 06 '24
I love this post so much. This vast northern wilderness is actually very under-appreciated. So firstly a disclaimer the more popular projections of the the spherical earth on flat 2D maps makes the poles looks slightly proportionally larger than land closer to the equator.
Buuutt I’ve been on puddle jumpers on 2 separate trips to remote places in northern Ontario and the amount of unclaimed space containing freshwater lakes and giant forests is hard to describe.
I’m from a fairly densely populated area in the Midwest and I was blown away by the amount of square footage up there that has probably never been step foot on by a human.
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u/5alarm_vulcan Geography Enthusiast Oct 06 '24
I work in northern Alberta in oil and gas and there are often times when we are hours from the nearest anything. We’ll stay at a camp and we only see the people we work with and the camp staff for two weeks at a time.
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u/Kingofcheeses Cartography Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
Nord du Quebec is home to thousands of Cree and Inuit archeological sites. Most of the 45,000+ people who live there speak an indigenous language (58.7%), mostly Cree-Innu and Inuktitut. The remaining one third of the population is French-speaking. 68% of the population is First Nations. Mostly it's just trees.
Source: I have relatives who live out there, also wikipedia for population stuff
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u/Theoderic8586 Oct 06 '24
From Mass too. Feel the same way. Siberia would make you really scared
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Oh yeah, for sure. Australia, too. And the Amazon, the Sahara—hell, what about Antarctica‽ It’s just Canada is quite a bit nearer to us. The world is so big.
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u/TheLastSamurai101 Oct 06 '24
It's huge, but it's only the tenth largest subnational division in the world and only the fifth largest in the Americas. Greenland, Nunavut, Alaska and Amazonas are all larger.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Very good point. I explore all those as well, but only Quebec borders New England. Can you believe that the Northwest Territories used to encompass Nunavut as well‽ I think it was even larger than Greenland!
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u/BoredMan29 Oct 06 '24
Yeah, I remember New Yorkers complaining about the smoke from the fires in Quebec... was it this year or last year? I forget. Anyway, they were asking why no one put out the fires when they were small and it was like... you know no one actually sees them until they grow pretty big, right? And then you need to worry about getting people and equipment out there which may be straight up impossible until they're already big enough to be approaching a community or forestry area, all to protect an area without structures that'll probably just burn next year anyway if we save it this year. It's just not happening.
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u/PhilParent Oct 06 '24
Most of it is a bunch of rocks and pine trees & moss. Colonization efforts northward went on until the end of the 1950s, when the Duplessis regime still tried to do what started 300 years before.
Then he died, and the father of modern Quebec Jean Lesage famously said he wouldn't spend one more nickle on those godforsaken rocks, and such colonization efforts stopped aside from hydroelectric power plants and mines and whatnot later.
Fact of the matter is, there wasn't enough depth of soil to have agriculture happen up there, and for a long time that was THE issue, you'd dig a foot and you'd hit massive rock. Plus the weather sucks and if you go north enough you hit permafrost so even building anything becomes an issue.
Nowadays with modern transportation the agricultural issue isn't as much a problem anymore, but I'm thinking there isn't a need for colonization anymore. We just have a higher population density in the south of the province.
And here's the REAL crazy part, if you didn't know about it. They say Quebec is shaped like a dog's head, well see the ears up there? People live there, villages of them, they've lived there for longer than we've colonized the place. Kuujuaq, Inukvik, Salluit, all Inuit villages, and there's more.
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u/smiley82m Oct 06 '24
But it is the largest providence of canada by area.
Also, Quebec City, its capital, the 12th largest city in canada, isn't even market on the picture, is over 400 years old, so older than the US.
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u/yo_gringo Oct 06 '24
I've been in a lot of flights from St. John's to Calgary and I'm always blown away by just how vast and empty much of Canada is. At night, you can go hours of flying and see only the occasional tiny speck of artificial light on the horizon. So many lakes as well, impossible to count them all.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
You hit the nail on the head. It’s just so big. How can we (Canadiens, I should say) even lay claim to it all?
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u/76bigdaddy Oct 06 '24
Half of Canada's population lives in the corridor of Southern Ontario and Quebec. Montreal Ottawa Toronto. 90% live within 150 KM of the US border. Outside of this. Lots of wilderness.
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u/Sudden_Specialist563 Oct 06 '24
Hello, I just come from Quebec. We are the main French-speaking province (80%). The economic capital is Montreal and the capital of the province is Quebec City. We have multiple lakes and rivers. The St. Laurent River is the maritime open door to the interior of North America. We had 2 referendums in 1980 and 1995 to have our total independence, but it failed. We are a rather left-wing province politically speaking. We have negative a priori on Americans and are afraid of the upcoming American elections. We are a people proud of our history and natural wonders. We are the main producer of maple syrup. The Catholic religion was very important until the 1960s, since then we are no longer very religious.
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u/Lex_le_Vagabon Oct 06 '24
Come visit us!
Ville de Québec has a beautiful old town.
For natural reservations, without going to much north like in Abitibi, you can experience the vastness in most of the SEPAQ on the north side of the St-Laurent
I recommend "Réserve faunique de Portneuf" and "Réserve faunique Mastigouche"
I went camping there, I had 1km in every direction from the next person campsite, the silence felt really nice
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Maybe Canada’s Four Corners lends some perspective!
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u/ComCypher Oct 06 '24
Someone has to go there and climb that janky observation tower.
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u/GeoSheep17 Oct 06 '24
this isn't in quebec
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
I know, I know. But it’s another super remote part of Canada and the only picture I can find on the Internet from that spot. Gives you some insight on what it must look like to be in the middle of absolutely nowhere. But it’s still not that helpful, you’re right.
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u/growling_owl Oct 06 '24
I just have to say your enthusiasm for Canada’s landscape is infectious. Thanks for this great post and your comments.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Thanks so much! I think about it probably more than I really ought to. Maybe it’s cause I’m pretty outdoorsy, but in a suburban sense!
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u/rejoicinginthehands Oct 06 '24
Check out season 9 of the show Alone. They film it in the corner of this map near coastal Newfoundland. It’s badass and a cool look at this area on the ground.
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u/purju Oct 06 '24
All northerners have the same problem unless there is oil/ore or you are finland, finland just loves living up north for the fun of it
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u/plan_that Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
I spent a summer working on public land, yet in the scale of the province map I was still way down there by the inhabited part.
Though it was still a 3h drive on lumbering gravel trails before you even hit the first road to the northernmost village of the county.
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u/Jonpollon18 Oct 06 '24
If it became independent it would become the 19th largest country in the world by area, replacing Perú (which has more than 4 times the population).
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Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
Agree, it is incredible to think this vast tract of land coexists with a current Canadian housing shortage/crisis.
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
For sure. Real Life Lore has a great video on Canada’s human geography. They all live so close to the border! And for good reason. I’m sure it’s pretty inhospitable up there for year-round residence.
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u/TheLastRulerofMerv Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
It actually has a lot more to do with watersheds. When most of the cities and towns were founded in Canada they relied on watershed for travel. Even in the west slot of those communities sprouted out from old trading forts whose founders used rivers for transport.
Quebec and Ontario's population is on the St Lawrence / Great Lakes watershed. The far north has big rivers but they ice over for extended months - so travel was kind of confined.
It was thought back in the early 20th century that air travel would open Canadas north up to big time settlement but it never really materialized. The furthest northern metropolitan area is Edmonton - which is right on the North Saskatchewan River, has great agricultural land, and most importantly I'd a major hub for the oil industry. There are scattered medium sized cities north of there (Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Ft St John).
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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24
Fascinating. Thanks so much for sharing all this information.
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u/Lame_Johnny Oct 06 '24
I'm fascinated with the north of Canada in general. It's remote on another order of magnitude.
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u/Col_Leslie_Hapablap Oct 06 '24
Welcome to basically every Canadian province. Everything about halfway up is essentially mining, cold, and indigenous people who got a really shitty deal out of the federal government. It’s Canadian Shield, super labour intensive resource industries, and super expensive groceries.
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u/Jugheadjones1985 Oct 06 '24
Wait till you get to the Canadian north… it gets even bigger and remoter. Look up Tuktoyaktuk sometime and the Dempster highway to get there 😊
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u/Adam90s Oct 06 '24
Vast but the map projection makes it look larger than it really is.
But yeah, it's vast and mostly uninhabited.
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u/BrokeGuy808 Oct 06 '24
There are multiple Inuit communities in northern Quebec!
Check out the public indie documentary Inuuvunga - I Am Inuk, I Am Alive to see local Inukjuak teenagers document their lives up in the cold, barren Arctic tundra.
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u/CannabisPrime2 Oct 06 '24
The only thing that really goes on is the production of hydroelectric power. Quebec has a huge network of hydroelectric dams.
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u/UyghursInParis Oct 06 '24
Don't forget to account for map projection. Not taking away how massive this place is, but scale does not translate well to maps
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u/joellapointe1717 Oct 06 '24
This summer I did a roadtrip to the northernmost accessible village by road in Québec, Radisson. A town mostly there to serve as a base for Hydro-Quebec's workers from the nearby LG2 hydro plant. The vegetation changes drastically between Matagami and Radisson. Up there, it is mostly an open forest of coniferous trees with a bedding of lichen. No trees are worth being harvested so no log economy possible. Full of animal life, I saw a lynx. Foxes are living as stray cats in the village. Full of stupid partrige birds hiding in the brush thinking being protected despite their constant noises... Very good for the lynx!
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u/Farfetchh1 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
Typical views from James Bay area: bogs, lakes and wetlands.
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u/fullyoperational Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
I live in northern Quebec if you had any questions! We don't have any roads leading to our community, so everything must be flied in. Hunting is a big deal here, the schools have their breaks around when the geese arrive and when it's moose/caribou hunting season. Occasionally polar bears will be spotted close to town.
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u/Vaaluin Oct 06 '24
Xander Budnick on YT recently went camping far north. Was a fun vid seeing the shifting ice and such.