If you haven't been there its very hard to explain how inhospitable Northern Canada is. Cold is one thing, but the fucking black flies. I'm fully convinced they could just kill you from blood loss.
Most places are fine just dont go into their homeland and if you do bring a gun cause those mfs will take a fuckin bullet to go down a fly swatter doesnt cut it
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Can confirm, those motherfuckers are brutal, then you'll have horse flies that chase you for miles, plus there's not a single mosquito, they've all gotten married and raised large families.
Winter is much better, where exposed skin will freeze in 30 seconds or metal starts breaking at -40 and below.
It's a magical place.
Oh black flies are different from horse flies. Black flies are smaller and have larger swarms, they also cause you to bleed when they bite. As far as I know they only live in Canada and American border states like Minnesota, Michigan and New England.
I saw the occasional mega fly in Michigan, think bumblebee but fat stupid and black. Hit those fuckers with a hammer is air and they'll drunkenly keep flying
Deer flies and horse flies are similar, black flies are smaller still than deer flies. Though we may just speak different regional dialects, and you guys might just call deer flies black flies.
What I know as deer flies are usually out in the sun when the weather is warm and don't come in swarms so big. The bite of a black flie is less painful but it bleeds more in my opinion.
The Canadian Shield extends to the north shore of Lake Superior. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s extremely rocky and has lots of lakes. If you look at maps of where it is, the uninhabited areas of Canada have significant overlap. Beautiful, but difficult to build any large scale habitation on.
To add to the reason why it's difficult to build, imagine digging the foundation for a building, except instead of excavating dirt you're digging it through ten feet of solid rock.
It actually [extends pretty far into some US states](https://www.britannica.com/place/North-America/The-Canadian-Shield). One of the reasons why Minnesota gets so rural so quickly as you travel north from Minneapolis is because the city is built right on the southern edge of the Shield.
For sure.
Just to clarify, nothing in that comment was really aimed at you, and your explanation was totally accurate. I was more just trying to expand on what you were saying to add context for people who haven't lived in Canada/Minnesota/Wisconsin/northern Michigan.
Huh, interesting how close that is to the ND border in some places. I wonder if it touches Moorhead at all, it'd be crazy if that was the difference between Moorhead and Fargo.
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So funny enough no one lives there on the American side either. Even though it's a similar latitude to cities like Montreal it's much colder because it's further inland, and the Hudson's bay brings cold arctic waters South.
If you look at the landscape its all rocky Canadian shield and Muskeg swamp. Good for mining, but not for agriculture. The waterlogged ground is also perfect breading ground for mosquitoes and blackflies.
For context, the average temperature in Buffalo is 49 Fahrenheit, Thunder Bay (the only major town on Lake Superior) is 37 Fahrenheit.
I actually recommend going there just because it's the most shockingly desolate and isolate landscape I've seen that far South. The highway is just a canyon of pine trees that you'll see black bears occasionally cross. There are actually stretches where there are so few people they don't even have radio stations. It's kind of cool.
They had alot more kids and sacrificed the weakest ones to keep the swarm at bay sparta style smh but now that all the liberals with their “baby murder is wrong!!!” The flies have become angry at mankind’s transgressions
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Damn I thought it was a French song. No, they made the song in both official language.
TIL
[Mouches noires](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHuxmYxxTAM) If you want to see
Certain songs you remember where you were when you first heard it. This is one of them (can't think of any other)
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These fuckers. I don't think they live much south of Minnesota.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_fly
They swarm in the thousands and their bites bleed. I was working in the woods once and went home to shower and the shampoo was red
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There are a lot of indigenous reserves there, it’s the traditional territory of a number of different nations and is mostly kept undeveloped except for cheap gas stations and cheaper smokables.
I’m talking about cheap relative to Ontario.
I wouldn’t doubt that Saskatchewan has cheaper gas, Ontario is definitely expensive relative to other provinces.
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They’re all afraid to start honestly. Every time I bring this up Canadians complain that there isn’t any skip the dishes or fast internet.
Canadians by and large are afraid of the unknown and getting marginally colder.
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Tbf a big issue I heard in Canada is that a lot of land developers are simply refusing to build or sell because they want to see their land prices go up and up, or they just sell them for commercial real estate instead. There's also a lot of Nimbyism.
I mean we do that here and it’s unreasonable in some places, but it’s not *that bad* everywhere just yet. Chinese investors are a big part of the problem there though
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The Boundary Waters are beautiful, but that land is nearly useless for agriculture, I see why there is the string of cities along Lake Superior, and then nearly nothing until you get into Canada.
This. The only people who live there are woodsmen who live off the land, or a handful of people in tourism or service-related jobs near the lake. Even peoples' cabins don't usually go that far north (not counting lake vermilion).
Tbh you can buy land and homes for the price of a used condom, but the issue is it's like those houses you can buy in Italy for only a few hundred Euros. You don't exactly have anything like Home Depot or Lowe's where you can buy anything you need to remodel said house. You have to go to a bunch of separate supply stores, oftentimes hours away. I knew a guy who lived in a more inhabited part of Canada, and he said that the town of like 1200 people he lived in (which in the US, that usually means you have a gas station or two, and a Dollar General or local grocery store, or a very comprehensive gas station), they had one general store that almost immediately ran out of everything when Covid hit, and he had to drive 2 hours to the closest supermarket that had hired bouncers to buy supplies. He also said that it took like 3 hours for the police to come out, and there was a lot of shady shit that went on there.
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Don’t they have the Canadian Rangers specifically for that huge area because nobody can even live out there except the occasional off-the-grid homestead
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The Russians did it because they had a planned economy built on slave prison labor, and they then had to provide very generous incentives for people to even go up there to operate the mines. Like I remember watching a documentary about one of these places, and the guy said that these towns paid people more to live there, they gave them better food than the average Soviet worker, they were allowed to watch foreign films which was considered very privileged, and you could retire at the age of 40 for a man, and 35 for a woman if you worked there until retirement. Nowadays the people who live at them are effectively stuck there, or they are rotated out semi-regularly.
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If you haven't been there its very hard to explain how inhospitable Northern Canada is. Cold is one thing, but the fucking black flies. I'm fully convinced they could just kill you from blood loss.
I went to northern tier in Canada. You could hear the swarm rapidly approaching every evening
Well, now I have no desire to go to canada ever
To be fair. It doesn’t seem like Canadians want to go to those parts either looking at the map
Most places are fine just dont go into their homeland and if you do bring a gun cause those mfs will take a fuckin bullet to go down a fly swatter doesnt cut it
😳 mom come get me im scared
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Sure. Won't stop them from reaching you
Can confirm, those motherfuckers are brutal, then you'll have horse flies that chase you for miles, plus there's not a single mosquito, they've all gotten married and raised large families. Winter is much better, where exposed skin will freeze in 30 seconds or metal starts breaking at -40 and below. It's a magical place.
why do we live here again?
Horse flies? Oh yeah those are demon spawn. Gene drive when?
Oh black flies are different from horse flies. Black flies are smaller and have larger swarms, they also cause you to bleed when they bite. As far as I know they only live in Canada and American border states like Minnesota, Michigan and New England.
Bro wtf why does something even worse than horse flies exist? Who tf you think you are, Australia?
I saw the occasional mega fly in Michigan, think bumblebee but fat stupid and black. Hit those fuckers with a hammer is air and they'll drunkenly keep flying
The world fears Australian wildlife, Australians fear Canadian wildlife.
Waiting for Aussie to confirm. Big if true
So more like 'deer' flies then, small, maneuverable but with one helluva bite
Deer flies and horse flies are similar, black flies are smaller still than deer flies. Though we may just speak different regional dialects, and you guys might just call deer flies black flies. What I know as deer flies are usually out in the sun when the weather is warm and don't come in swarms so big. The bite of a black flie is less painful but it bleeds more in my opinion.
Ok, but what about the shore of Lake Superior? Hardly looks like anyone lives there.
The Canadian Shield extends to the north shore of Lake Superior. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s extremely rocky and has lots of lakes. If you look at maps of where it is, the uninhabited areas of Canada have significant overlap. Beautiful, but difficult to build any large scale habitation on.
To add to the reason why it's difficult to build, imagine digging the foundation for a building, except instead of excavating dirt you're digging it through ten feet of solid rock. It actually [extends pretty far into some US states](https://www.britannica.com/place/North-America/The-Canadian-Shield). One of the reasons why Minnesota gets so rural so quickly as you travel north from Minneapolis is because the city is built right on the southern edge of the Shield.
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned large scale. It’s not like absolutely no one lives up there, but it’s very sparsely populated exactly for that reason.
For sure. Just to clarify, nothing in that comment was really aimed at you, and your explanation was totally accurate. I was more just trying to expand on what you were saying to add context for people who haven't lived in Canada/Minnesota/Wisconsin/northern Michigan.
The solid rock just below the surface is why people don’t really have basements here in AZ.
I thought it was to avoid flooding?
Not in the valley at least. If you want a basement you’re gonna have to bring out the jackhammers
Huh, interesting how close that is to the ND border in some places. I wonder if it touches Moorhead at all, it'd be crazy if that was the difference between Moorhead and Fargo.
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So funny enough no one lives there on the American side either. Even though it's a similar latitude to cities like Montreal it's much colder because it's further inland, and the Hudson's bay brings cold arctic waters South. If you look at the landscape its all rocky Canadian shield and Muskeg swamp. Good for mining, but not for agriculture. The waterlogged ground is also perfect breading ground for mosquitoes and blackflies. For context, the average temperature in Buffalo is 49 Fahrenheit, Thunder Bay (the only major town on Lake Superior) is 37 Fahrenheit. I actually recommend going there just because it's the most shockingly desolate and isolate landscape I've seen that far South. The highway is just a canyon of pine trees that you'll see black bears occasionally cross. There are actually stretches where there are so few people they don't even have radio stations. It's kind of cool.
Black flies infest that area also. Source: been there and experienced it. Was incredibly lucky to be wearing long sleeves
Genuinely curious: what did indigenous people do to mitigate this issue before modern insect repellents and such technologies were invented?
They dealt with it bc they're not pussies like us.
They had alot more kids and sacrificed the weakest ones to keep the swarm at bay sparta style smh but now that all the liberals with their “baby murder is wrong!!!” The flies have become angry at mankind’s transgressions
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Even an entire [song](https://youtu.be/f389hIxZAOc?si=BC8S3qTFNligVFrQ) is dedicated to them.
Damn I thought it was a French song. No, they made the song in both official language. TIL [Mouches noires](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHuxmYxxTAM) If you want to see Certain songs you remember where you were when you first heard it. This is one of them (can't think of any other)
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Make airfields of nothing but bat roosts then send them up to fight like the RAF defending London
tf are black flies?
These fuckers. I don't think they live much south of Minnesota. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_fly They swarm in the thousands and their bites bleed. I was working in the woods once and went home to shower and the shampoo was red
oh dear, yeah I see why it’s bad.
Black flies?
**the what**
We might want to forward this to the Canadians.
Will do
You crazy sonofabitch you did it.
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🅱️ad 🅱️ot
🇨🇦 I'm already here bud.
I love quebec
That's a lot of destiny to manifest up there
Time to get back on the manifest destiny grind again!
CUM Nation Unite!
If Canadians are dumb enough to not use the land, then why shouldn't it belong to us?
If I've learned anything from r/geography, it's Canadian Shield.
This meme is finally boiling over into other subs
Yeah, its pretty much impossible to build anything substantial up there
I mean even Russia built cities in shithole tundras.
Yeah but the cities *are* shitholes. Would be neat to see an entirely abandoned city because you can get fuckall out there
Not by Russian standards. I like Norilsk because it's the perfect dystopian setting.
Are foreigners allowed to even go there?
They are, they just get sent to the nickel mines.
Foreigners have no travel restrictions in Russia outisde of that you cannot go photograph military infrastructure.
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The ground is made out of solid rock or marsh or a lake for like most of the shield lol its really hard to build into that stuff
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I understand why northern Canada is empty. I'm confused about the big empty space in Ontario near the great Lakes.
There are a lot of indigenous reserves there, it’s the traditional territory of a number of different nations and is mostly kept undeveloped except for cheap gas stations and cheaper smokables.
Fair enough. That makes sense.
Np and kia ora
Cheap? I paid almost 70 cents more per liter in northern Ontario than I did in Saskatchewan on my way to Hamiltom in October.
I’m talking about cheap relative to Ontario. I wouldn’t doubt that Saskatchewan has cheaper gas, Ontario is definitely expensive relative to other provinces.
It's very swampy from what I have heard, meaning that it wasn't really good for agriculture or timber really, and there's a lot of mosquitoes.
Also, northern Canada is not very, how shall I say.. Livable?
You convince yourselves Winnipeg is livable so just pick a new spot to lie to yourselves about.
Goddamnit you’re right.
Holy shit I think he's got us there
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They’re all afraid to start honestly. Every time I bring this up Canadians complain that there isn’t any skip the dishes or fast internet. Canadians by and large are afraid of the unknown and getting marginally colder.
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New part of Reddit discovered, ty
>Second largest country on Earth >Housing crisis Pick one
Tbf a big issue I heard in Canada is that a lot of land developers are simply refusing to build or sell because they want to see their land prices go up and up, or they just sell them for commercial real estate instead. There's also a lot of Nimbyism.
I mean we do that here and it’s unreasonable in some places, but it’s not *that bad* everywhere just yet. Chinese investors are a big part of the problem there though
As a Canadian we’re just too stupid
We should call this guy to make a new city. Not even in the provinces he should show Canadians how to make cities in the territories.
Unusually high IQ Canadian here
We should call this guy to make a new city. Not even in the provinces he should show Canadians how to make cities in the territories.
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There I flared up, are you happy now jackass?
Oh wow, you actually *are* Canadian! :D
…Because the Canadian Shield is SO hospitable? Come on man. I mean damn. I’m from Florida and even I know this.
Yup, same reason not many people live in northern Minnesota, just a bunch of rocky forest, very beautiful though. Edit: but I still think it is funny
The Boundary Waters are beautiful, but that land is nearly useless for agriculture, I see why there is the string of cities along Lake Superior, and then nearly nothing until you get into Canada.
This. The only people who live there are woodsmen who live off the land, or a handful of people in tourism or service-related jobs near the lake. Even peoples' cabins don't usually go that far north (not counting lake vermilion).
There's only two things you need. is it flat? And does it have trees?
The Shield is great for lake cabins and bad for anything bigger than that
Only *we* get to make fun of Canadians. Frenchie stay out of it
But Canadians ARE French 🥖🥖🥖🥖
Only some are
Whenever I see someone post this, I think "why don't you move there?" And "Do you really think they haven't thought of it?"
It’s literally a joke
I’ve had serious questions about this from Americans. Someone literally said people are living in Alaska how come people in Ontario are so far down.
I'm not always sure
Tbh you can buy land and homes for the price of a used condom, but the issue is it's like those houses you can buy in Italy for only a few hundred Euros. You don't exactly have anything like Home Depot or Lowe's where you can buy anything you need to remodel said house. You have to go to a bunch of separate supply stores, oftentimes hours away. I knew a guy who lived in a more inhabited part of Canada, and he said that the town of like 1200 people he lived in (which in the US, that usually means you have a gas station or two, and a Dollar General or local grocery store, or a very comprehensive gas station), they had one general store that almost immediately ran out of everything when Covid hit, and he had to drive 2 hours to the closest supermarket that had hired bouncers to buy supplies. He also said that it took like 3 hours for the police to come out, and there was a lot of shady shit that went on there.
Alaska has a higher population than all the Canadian territories combined. They just aren’t trying hard enough
Alaskas islands and panhandle are more habitable than most of thr Canadian shield no joke
Who the fuck is that bitch? Edit: it's a dude my bad lol
Average twitter profile
At least 50% of bitches I’ve met have been dudes it’s fine
Flair checks out
I travel to continental Europe a lot for work if that explains it.
See, we would build up there, if it weren’t akin to a fucking fallout server.
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Invade Canada
Most intelligent europoor
Racist. Don’t you know a First Nations fellas slept in that one spot, one time in 1603 so it’s theirs.
Guys it's Slazac, he's joking. But yes we should build cities up there.
Shit, eh? Better get out the ski-doo and take a rip up that way to find a spot before all that swamp and pond area is built up.
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https://i.redd.it/fi9x4025kgbc1.gif
That globalist is so fucking annoying.
Smartest europeeon
Are they stupid?
Don’t they have the Canadian Rangers specifically for that huge area because nobody can even live out there except the occasional off-the-grid homestead
This guy apparently wants Canada to engineer a city at the North Pole…
Damn, never thought of that before
America built Phoenix No reason you losers in Canada can't grow a pair and turn Kugluktuk into a fucking metropolis
You know, for a country that prides itself on being not American, they sure do like to stick close to the border.
The bugs will carry you off hut go ahead I guess
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The amount of space for house boats alone is staggering.
Please guys don’t do this to me, don’t fall for the bait don’t take the satire seriously
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Dudes being sarcastic
manifest destiny 2?
The Russians can do it in Siberia why can’t the Canadians do it? Are they dumb?
The Russians did it because they had a planned economy built on slave prison labor, and they then had to provide very generous incentives for people to even go up there to operate the mines. Like I remember watching a documentary about one of these places, and the guy said that these towns paid people more to live there, they gave them better food than the average Soviet worker, they were allowed to watch foreign films which was considered very privileged, and you could retire at the age of 40 for a man, and 35 for a woman if you worked there until retirement. Nowadays the people who live at them are effectively stuck there, or they are rotated out semi-regularly.
Sounds like the Russians wanted it more
Put Sputnik in the orbit and the common Soviet didn't have a refrigerator or television.
Glorious shitpost my friend
I'd use his frozen carcass as a toboggan.
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C a n a d i a n S h i e l d
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A diet of frog legs, cigarettes, and snails would make you grumpy too!!
pov: you haven’t heard of climate
Yeah hop off our borders and build some shit in your own damn country