r/geography • u/christopherbonis • Oct 06 '24

Terrifyingly Vast Discussion

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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/[deleted] 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/Turbulent_Cheetah Oct 06 '24

I mean, Kamloops is pretty close too … but yes

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u/GandolfLundgren Oct 06 '24

That's fucking nuts. It takes me two plus days to drive from the Pacific Ocean to Lake Michigan.

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u/adrienjz888 Oct 06 '24

Keep in mind that BC is almost entirely mountainous, so it takes a lot longer to drive through than most other provinces. Over 700,000km² of BC's 944,000km² is endless mountains, larger than the total land area of Texas.

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u/corryvreckanist Oct 07 '24

And the Alaska highway is not as well-maintained as highways in the lower 48. Much slower travel in the North due to road conditions

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u/christopherbonis Oct 06 '24

Everything is so spread out up there. It’s so different from what I’m used to around Boston. Thanks for sharing your perspective.

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u/brineOClock Oct 06 '24

I've found the best way to drive home how remote Canada can be is by comparing the furthest you can get from a road. In the US it's like 30km in Yellowstone. In every province other than PEI and New Brunswick you can get that far from a road with 400 km of the provincial capital!

Or for the Europeans - we have parks that are bigger than Denmark and every province has one that's roughly 200 km square plus.

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u/boarshead72 Oct 06 '24

Yeah, I’m from Saskatoon but live in southern Ontario now. Saskatoon is not considered remotely north in western Canada, but its latitude is on par with James Bay, crazy north by Ontario’s standards. It’s amazing to me how far south Ontario dips.

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u/Zenkas Oct 06 '24

Yep, the geographic centre of Alberta is pretty far north and west of Edmonton, which people always have a hard time grasping because of the way the mountains cut the province diagonally in the south.