The other day someone shared a post showing a list of the various states (and overseas territories) of the United States of America, ranked in order of population, highest to lowest. I find this sort of thing fascinating. I found out that I currently live in the fourth most populous state – Florida. Fair enough.

Being Canadian, I naturally wondered what this sort of ranking might look like for the Canadian provinces and territories. I already knew that my home province (Ontario) and the province where I was born (Quebec) topped the list in that order – but what I didn’t know was by how much. My Calgary and Vancouver friends often mention their frustration that people from Toronto (like myself) feel that Toronto is the center of Canada, if not the universe, but check it out – Ontario is home to almost 40% of Canada’s population.

The natural progression from this point was for me to start comparing American states and Canadian provinces. Where do those Canadian provinces slot into that big list of American states? So I made a chart to check it out.

Here’s what I found, with American states in black and Canadian provinces in blue:

Some points of interest:

• The 2011 census estimated that the population of all of Canada in July of 2013 would be 33,476,688. This means that there are more people living in California than in all of Canada. How crazy is that? And Texas isn’t too far behind.
• Out of all provinces and states, Canada has the bottom five in terms of population. That’s five provinces and territories with fewer people than Vermont, Wyoming, or even the District of Columbia.
• Aside from Ontario and Quebec, most Canadian provinces and territories are well down the list. I didn’t realize that British Columbia has fewer people than South Carolina? That doesn’t seem to make sense to me. And if you add up the populations of both British Columbia and Alberta – home to largish cities such as Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton – that still doesn’t equal the population of North Carolina or Michigan?
• Ontario is up there with the heavyweights (go home team!)

At any rate, an interesting study!

fog over Paudash Lake…

“I will need to eat a good nutritious breakfast in order to crush all those who oppose me!”

yesterday our offer was accepted on a cottage on Paudash Lake (the same lake that my parents’ cottage is on, but in a different bay – it’s about a 15 minute drive by car or by boat). For those not familiar with the area, Paudash Lake is in the Haliburton Highlands region of Ontario, located near the town of Bancroft. If all goes well we will be closing on the property on October 7th. I won’t be here of course – I’ll be in France. But it will be nice to know that the place will be here for us when we get back.

we are very excited about this – in my opinion, cottage life in northern Ontario in the summer and fall is pretty close to paradise. My parents live at their cottage full time, and who knows, in the future we might want to retire here as well – though Ontario winters can get pretty chilly to say the least. Regardless, this is a very long term investment!

here are a few pictures of the place – note that all the furniture and water toys are theirs and not ours!

the view of the cottage from near the lake
the deck in front of the cottage
the living room
the docks at the waterfront
the view of the lake from in front of the cottage

(bonus points if you can identify which province’s flag that is – the answer is here)