Lets say that Canada gets the British and French Caribbean and the US is somewhat less immigrant friendly (and Canada a lot more immigrant friendly), what do you think the maximum population Canada could reach by 1970 is? The USA went from about 5 million to 40 million from 1800 to 1870, so could Canada go from about 5 million to 50 million due to modern transport technology? 60 million? Or is the cold more of an issue, making 30 million a more likely target?
Maximum Canadian Population?
- Thread starter Beedok
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The Canadian population was growing pretty quickly prior to the First World War. If thatis delayed/avoided, there will likely be a lot more Canadians.
Well there will still be a WWI in this timeline, but by the late 1920s the US will be nearly closed to immigration, which will be a major source for Canada.
The Know Nothing movement remains powerful, forcing European immigrants who would have immigrated to the US to immigrate to Canada instead.
Or Australia, or Latin America, or South Africa...there's only so many immigrants the Canadians are going to take before their own Know Nothings appear.
Using the crudest metric of arable land, Canada has 18.58 times the arable land area of Denmark, a major food producer. If we assume Canadian arable land is, say, only half as productive as Denmark's, that would give us a Canada of some 52 millions that still exports a lot of food. How much larger Canada would need to get before it would have to become a net food importer is left as an exercise to the reader.
(7 times the arable land of the UK, BTW)
Bruce
If Canada becomes a net food importer then the entire world is staring at a mass starvation nightmare.
By 1970, with the inclusion of the entire Caribbean that is'nt American or Cuba, I'd say a little more than what it is now, around 34-36 million at most; the addition of the Caribbean would only give you about 3 million at the time, while the bulk would be from more immigration.
Not really, you can export alot of food and still be importing alot to, especially stuff you either can't grow at all or only in small number.
Not really, you can export alot of food and still be importing alot to, especially stuff you either can't grow at all or only in small number.
Let's say the Know Nothings are also combined with the Manifest Destiny ideology with a xenophobic undertone, so that only white, British-descended Protestants have a God-given duty to take over all of North America. For whatever reason, the US fails to claim the Oregon Territory. Canada, a vast and empty landmass loyal to a heretical crown, should be the first takeover target of the US. In order to pre-empt such a threat, Britain thus commences an open door immigration policy towards the Canadian Prairies much earlier than OTL, claiming that anyone who is sincere can claim loyalty to Her Majesty. By the present day the Prairie provinces have 10 million people. 15 million in BC and Oregon, and five million in the Atlantic provinces, and Canada has almost 50 million today.
But Canada will always have by global standards a relatively modest demand for food even given 50 million mouths. If we become a net food importer it's because either Canadian agriculture has degraded to Zimbabwe-levels or the entire world is terribly overpopulated and Canada is one of the few nations on earth able to feed all its mouths.
Why would a vastly more populous Canada mean that the rest of the world is overpopulated?
Bruce
A Canada that imports *more* food than it exports, when its "default" position is being a large food exporter, means either there's overpopulation or horrible mismanagement of Canadian agriculture. A Canada of 50 million mouths will most likely still be a large net food exporter. In all honesty I'd prefer that instead, if only because it would make Canadians think less of the frontier and more of sedentary country and city.
This articel says, that the xenophobic reaction on the War of 1812 was a reason, that Canada was less attractive for immigrants then the USA.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ppened-to-this-country/article4285769/?page=1
Maybe if the war can be avoided, we see more immigration to Canada.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ppened-to-this-country/article4285769/?page=1
Maybe if the war can be avoided, we see more immigration to Canada.
As this has been a rather fact free discussion here are the stats:
Canada 1790: 191,311 US 1790: 3,929,214
Canada 1900: 5,310,000 US 1900: 76,212,168
Canada 2010: 34,149,200 US 2010: 308,745,538
1790-1900 Growth rate: 27.75 1790-1900 Growth rate: 19.4
Total Growth rate: 178 Total Growth rate: 78.5
So you can see that in population terms Canada has grown almost twice as fast as the US in total and faster during both the 19th century and the 20th.
Interesting article but it doesn't mention that Canada was growing faster in population terms. Clearly being an agrarian society didn't prevent very rapid population growth. Which makes sense, farmers and lumberjacks have more children than urban merchants.
Canada 1790: 191,311 US 1790: 3,929,214
Canada 1900: 5,310,000 US 1900: 76,212,168
Canada 2010: 34,149,200 US 2010: 308,745,538
1790-1900 Growth rate: 27.75 1790-1900 Growth rate: 19.4
Total Growth rate: 178 Total Growth rate: 78.5
So you can see that in population terms Canada has grown almost twice as fast as the US in total and faster during both the 19th century and the 20th.
Interesting article but it doesn't mention that Canada was growing faster in population terms. Clearly being an agrarian society didn't prevent very rapid population growth. Which makes sense, farmers and lumberjacks have more children than urban merchants.
It's sort of a false comparison to make when you consider Canada started with a tiny population, and a place with a smaller population than somewhere else is going to be seen to grow faster for the simple reason that it's faster to double 20 to 40, 40 to 80 and 80 to 160 than it is to double 400 to 800, 800 to 1,600 and 1,600 to 3,200.
The fact that the United States has nearly 300 million more people than Canada rather than say 100 million even when Canada has had a technically higher growth rate should also tell you that they're still growing slowly in general.
Canada 1900: 5,310,000......USA 1800: 5,236,631
Canada 2000: 30,689,000.....USA 1900: 76,212,168
That is what I am compairing. Both started out a century with near identical populations, yet at the end of a century the US had about 2.5x more people than Canada over it's century with about the same starting population.
Well that's an efficiently useless comparison pitting a society in stages 2 and 3 of the demographic transition (i.e. 19th century US) versus one in stages 3 and 4 (Canada in the 20th).