Linking Eastern and Western Canada

[ghYHZ]

Divide Canada at the Ontario-Manitoba border and the only highway crossing this line is the two-lane Trans-Canada Highway. The only other roads are a short section of Manitoba 312 to isolated Ingolf, Ontario and Manitoba 525 linking to Minnesota 49 into the Northwest Angle (a part of the US jutting into Canada). From the Minnesota border north, there is nothing else linking Eastern and Western Canada other than single track CNR and CPR rail lines.

http://www.gov.mb.ca/mit/map/pdf/map3.pdf

[Alps]

Also true around Thunder Bay, which I guess makes that part of far Western Ontario "Central Canada"

[Bickendan]

Further north, MB 315 also crosses into Ontario to serve Werner Lake. OSM claims that the number continues into Ontario, though whether as MB 315 or ON 315 is unclear, though there is no ON 315 in the Clinched Highways database.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=50.456411,-95.129585&spn=0.066667,0.180073&z=13

[mgk920]

The 'bottleneck' is not between Thunder Bay and Manitoba, rather it is east of Thunder Bay.  At a point about 30 minutes northeast of town, *ALL* of Canada to the east connects with *ALL* of Canada to the west (within Canada) by means of ONE two-lane road and two single-track railroads.

From a national unity standpoint, it truly and continually amazes me that a vast country with such weak internal infrastructure connections can hold together like it has.

Mike

[Sykotyk]

It's easy, they drive through the United States.

[mightyace]

^^^

Similarly, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific route lot's of traffic into or through Chicago.  I wouldn't be surprised if more traffic goes this way than on the trans-Canada mainlines.

[aridawn]

Similar to this its the at the JCT of Hwy's 11 and 17 at the western start of the concurrency at Nipigon, ON. This is also the only link to the western Ontario communities to western canada. all traffic heading west has to at some point cross this JCT.

[Michael in Philly]

Also true around Thunder Bay, which I guess makes that part of far Western Ontario "Central Canada"

I believe Canadians use the term "Central Canada" to cover Quebec and Ontario; from Manitoba west is the West.

[english si]

So pretty much like the Americans with the Mid-West being in the geographical middle of the country (interesting how lots of countries are heavily weighted to the eastern half - Australia, China, USA, Canada.

[nexus73]

So pretty much like the Americans with the Mid-West being in the geographical middle of the country (interesting how lots of countries are heavily weighted to the eastern half - Australia, China, USA, Canada.

Russia is western-oriented.  Over there it's "Go East young man!".  So is Peru.  The Andes might have something to do with that...LOL!

Rick

[Michael in Philly]

So pretty much like the Americans with the Mid-West being in the geographical middle of the country (interesting how lots of countries are heavily weighted to the eastern half - Australia, China, USA, Canada.

Heck, Midwest (which we don't hyphenate) is actually a relatively recent term; as recently as 1860, the region from Ohio to Minnesota was called the Northwest.  (Because, um, non-Indian population hadn't extended farther west yet, forgetting about the West Coast and some mining communities in the mountains, all of which were very new).  The University of Michigan's sports fight song - which must go back to about 1900, I'd guess - refers to its teams as "Champions of the West."

A lot of Americans forget that Canada extends farther east than the U.S. does.  And Quebec and Ontario even today account for about two-thirds of Canada's population.  

[Fcexpress80]

I agree that most motorists travelling from one end of Canada to the other will usally cross the border and drive, primarily, Interstate 90.  I really do wish there was a good economic reason to build a continuous freeway across Canada to "Interstate" standards. 

Driving east out of Vancouver, the continuous freeway ends at Kamloops.  TC-1 in Alberta is a freeway pretty much from the continental divide to past Calgary.  From there much "twinning" has been done across Sask. and Manitoba with short sections of true divided freeway near bigger cities.  East of Winnipeg, the highway drops to two lanes for a few hundred miles.  Northern Ontario seems rather desolate.  Build a good road and more poeple may find a reason to live along it (like the US railroads in the 19th century).  Freeway systems from southern Ontario and east are extensive and rival the US Interstates.

I personally see many BC vehicles using I-90 across Washington State, probably because it is ultimately faster and safer for cross continental travel.

[Sykotyk]

You see a lot of BC vehicles in Montana as well.

[Bickendan]

I'd wager there's more economic sense to extending the Mackenzie Highway from Wrigley, NWT up to NT 8 and connecting the remote NWT villages (such as Deliné) to all weather routes; or even building the all weather highway into Nunavut from Alberta than upgrading the TCH across the Canadian Shield.