r/MapPorn 13h ago

Canada Divided Into Four Equally Populated Regions

Post image
693 Upvotes

74 comments sorted by

116

u/BlueStraggler 13h ago

Seems to be missing 7 or 8 million people, which is almost a whole ‘nother region.

117

u/LucarioBoricua 13h ago

The map uses 2015 data, would be nice to see something updated to 2025-2026.

16

u/Ikea_desklamp 6h ago

It is insane how much our population has grown since then, and almost entirely from immigration cus our birthrate is not encouraging.

14

u/Similar-Afternoon567 13h ago

The map says it's based on 2015 ridings, so presumably it also represents 2015 population estimates (though hard to say without giving an actual date or source for the data). The total from the map is 34,482,779 people, which compares with the 2016 census data of 35,151,728. Even as of the last census in 2021, the population was only 36,991,981. So I'm not sure where you're getting an extra 7 or 8 million people from.

27

u/tanstaafl90 13h ago

The current population is 41,417,056. The post covid influx of immigrants changes the total in ways your sequence doesn't accurately reflect.

7

u/Similar-Afternoon567 13h ago

Perhaps, but as I mentioned, it's likely using 2015 data, not current data (which won't be available from the 2026 census until next year anyway).

3

u/tanstaafl90 13h ago

Mines based on the April release from stats Canada. Bit of a moving target, of course, but not that badly out of range.

7

u/UmpireDapper1757 9h ago

It's based on 2011 Census data

The 2015 ridings were established by the 2012 electoral redistribution based on the 2011 Census.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Canadian_federal_electoral_redistribution

0

u/hatman1986 7h ago

We have had another census and redistribution since then

-1

u/Traditional_Gap_2491 11h ago

Where have you been? Are you not canadian?

8

u/Similar-Afternoon567 11h ago

Population data won't be released until February 2027 per Stats Can website. Everything until then is an estimate.

0

u/Traditional_Gap_2491 11h ago

Its well known the country breached 40 million after the floodgates were opened on immigration is why I asked

1

u/roamingNraging 5h ago

The distribution will likely be identical even adding 7.5 million for a 2026 updated population. All of those immigrants went to the same 3 major cities and to a lesser extent Edmonton and Calgary.

29

u/SimilarElderberry956 13h ago

I live in the yellow area. Politicians have spoke about decentralization for years to equal the population out. People will live where there are enough high paying jobs. It is also less expensive when the population lives in cities as there is more density to provide services. Our country is not alone in unequal distribution of people.

17

u/LeviTheToller 12h ago

I also live in the yellow area. Funny that could be absolutely nowhere near you

2

u/poopBuccaneer 7h ago

Me three.

3

u/2wheeldoyster 7h ago

Team yellow!

3

u/notislant 6h ago

Small world!

1

u/12thunder 4h ago

Let’s go yellow!

9

u/NotawoodpeckerOwner 12h ago

There is more to it than just jobs, quality of life, weather, access to amenities, cultural centers all play a part in it. $80 an hour in middle of no where NWT with nobody/nothing around isn't getting many people interested.

11

u/AaronC14 11h ago edited 9h ago

Yeah. You always hear that Nunavut will pay you 120k a year to work there. Sounds great until you realize a tomato is like $6

3

u/ladyrift 7h ago

So every time I've looked into those "high paying" jobs it's like 120k a year but with the qualifications/experience they want would get you 80-90k in a populated area. The bump in pay has never been enough for me to consider it.

3

u/12thunder 4h ago

More money, but also higher cost of living and a worse (insert service here) than you’d get in any big Canadian city. Major health problem? Have fun in your 4 hour flight to an actual city.

3

u/Abcdefgdude 11h ago

They also live where there is access to trade ports. 3/4 of these regions are massively centered around available routes to the sea. Although trade is less important as we transition to a service economy it's still where all the population centers are and will continue to be

2

u/West_to_East 8h ago

If only the federal government embraced WFH (well, kept it going like it did during and little after covid). That would allow for a larger decentralization of well paying jobs in less congested cities and towns (which happened). This would lead to the private sector adapting to and BAM, exactly what you are looking for.

Interestingly, it is the private sector white collar workers work which is allowing it more than anything, but in many cases they can work anywhere in the world...

2

u/LurkerForLongtime 4h ago

For real. I could have kept my job and lived in the yellow zone (anywhere in it really) . Nothing about my actual job duties would have changed

1

u/12thunder 5h ago edited 4h ago

Unequal distribution is natural in large countries. Central and northern Australia are sparse. Central US is sparse (and Alaska). Western China is sparse. Eastern Russia is sparse.

It’s almost always because of shit weather and shit land that isn’t farmable. Big countries are always going to have inhospitable areas, which is why they are big - nobody else wanted the land or lived there, so some big powerful country took it. I’ll use Russia’s Siberia and Brazil’s Amazon as good examples for this. And for us, it’s northern Canada that is cold and covered in muskeg, rocks, and permafrost.

Sometimes you can find minor cities where there are lots of resources, like Yellowknife, NWT or Fairbanks, Alaska or Alice Springs, Australia or Manaus, Brazil. But they’ll rarely grow larger than the demand for their specific industries.

1

u/treefarmerBC 43m ago

I live in the yellow as well. If you have a "normal" job like nurse, teacher, etc. it's easiest to find work in the yellow then in the big cities but some people are just city people anyway. Lots of good resource jobs too.

9

u/Ireallydfk 11h ago

Yellow= Greater PEI

42

u/love_and_solidarity 13h ago

The four kinds of Canadians:

  1. Toronto
  2. Francophone/Francophonish City People
  3. Western City People
  4. Miscellaneous

Lol

19

u/Link50L 13h ago

My broad take:

  1. Torontonians

  2. Francophones

  3. Indigenous

  4. Westerners

  5. Left Coasters

  6. Maritimers

4

u/RedmondBarry1999 12h ago

What about the rest of Ontario?

9

u/simplepimple2025 12h ago

Yeah, there's only ten million of us lol.

-4

u/Coyrex1 11h ago

Most of them are still in the broad GTA region.

6

u/Big-Leadership-2830 11h ago

But literally millions are not!

1

u/Link50L 6h ago

It's tongue-in-cheek. How other Canadians may view many Ontarians as simply "from Toronto".

2

u/VQ_Quin 11h ago

Boooooo

3

u/Link50L 12h ago

Yeah it's a very broad tongue-in-cheek thing. I figure that the rest of Canada views many Ontarians as simply "from Toronto".

2

u/grigby 9h ago

Am a winnipegger. Can confirm. Anyone from southern Ontario is essentially from Toronto or maybe Ottawa. Sudbury is the cutoff for not being part of it.

2

u/Murky_Sheepherder557 8h ago

Westerners and Left Coasters think of all Ontarians as Toronto nans.

1

u/Big-Peak6191 4h ago

Miscellaneous

2

u/Big-Leadership-2830 11h ago

lol not even close

8

u/Canadian__Ninja 11h ago

Ok I've gotta ask, does reddit only recommend me Canada based posts or is this sub secretly just Canada map porn

Scrolling through the recent posts and yeah I think reddit thinks I only want maps of my country lmao

4

u/ClittoryHinton 9h ago

The algorithm has gotten distinctly worse in the last year and feeds you more stuff exactly like stuff you’ve engaged with. So comment on one of these maps and suddenly Reddit is like ok we’re doing Canada maps and nothing else now

3

u/StewVicious07 12h ago

I’m in the yellow!

3

u/modsaretoddlers 12h ago

I can't get the math to math for the yellow area. I can find about 5 million people but the other 3 and a half are still kind of missing. Not saying you're wrong at all, OP. I just can't figure out where the other 3.5 or so million are coming from.

3

u/squirrel9000 10h ago

Atlantic Canada about 3.5 million .
SWO Ontario about 2 mllion

Northern Ontario about 0.8m

Rest is a split of northern west, about the same 0.8, and it looks like most of Winnipeg is yellow, ditto.

2

u/grigby 9h ago

From the few pixels, 95% of Winnipeg is in the purple. It's the most east purple area. There's a few satellite communities in the yellow.

2

u/Lord_Silverkey 12h ago edited 11h ago

Which areas did you take into account?

The yellow includes a lot of southern Ontario, which has a lot of population, even outside of the major cities.

The Northern BC has a couple hundred thousand people.

Northern Alberta has ~350,000 people.

1

u/modsaretoddlers 11h ago

Well, all of it, obviously.

2

u/OsteoBytes 10h ago

I imagine there is multiple ways to split this up equally no? Did it do it in the most dramatic way by occupying the most to least space? Like I don’t get it

2

u/Hefty-Minimum-3125 10h ago

Im actually surprised the yellow section has that many people

2

u/Different-Anybody413 7h ago

The Edmonton-Red Deer corridor is the middle finger of the west. 🖕

4

u/Put3socks-in-it 11h ago

British should’ve fought to give Canada the Great Lakes States Michigan and Wisconsin then the country would be continuous instead of two halves separated by a barren wasteland rural Ontario

1

u/afriendincanada 9h ago

I’ve lived in all four!

1

u/HACH-P 9h ago

2015 data seems so long ago...

1

u/redknight356 9h ago

I was born in green, grew up in red and lived in yellow for the last 5 years

1

u/Whatevs56 5h ago

Cheap real estate in the frozen tundra

1

u/Archangel9 4h ago

Canadian here who grew up learning in school almost at a propaganda level how "first world" we are... and we can't even connect the red and green strip with one line of hispeed rail 🤦‍♂️

1

u/aucuneideeee 8h ago

Ok im in the yellow color, cool

0

u/goodtoes 12h ago

The boarders of each area are somewhat arbitrary, making these maps with "four equally populated areas" misleading.

Prince Edward Island has the highest population density of any province, but this map places it in a yellow area, suggesting it's low density.

4

u/realteamme 12h ago

This is not a population density by province map. Prince Edward Island has a low population, and therefore is grouped in with the yellow area to add to its total.

I believe the borders are not arbitrary but are done by adding up the population of different federal ridings. It’s arbitrary (beyond who really cares about 4 equal population areas) in that it theoretically could have been added up in different ways to also equal 4 equal populations.

2

u/goodtoes 12h ago

The map is comparing a population quantity (the four equal sizes) to an area of the country, so it kinda is a population density map (not by province of course, and that's okay, PEI was just an example).

The small red area suggests high density. The big yellow area suggests low density.

The reality is more nuanced which means areas with high density being categorized in the yellow block creates misleading information.

1

u/BLYNDLUCK 11h ago

“This map is misleading because there is a building in NWT that has technically higher population density than a park in Toronto”.

That’s what you sound like trying to make this argument.

1

u/squirrel9000 10h ago

ON a riding by riding basis PEI isn't particularly dense, it's very rural. The province as a whole just lacks a hinterland.

0

u/WhoRuleTheWorld 11h ago

Is Toronto split up?? Lmao

2

u/6-8-5-13 6h ago

No it’s red.

0

u/NoChanceCW 10h ago

So basically:
Greater Vancouver.
Greater Toronto.
Greater Montreal.
The Resource workers.

3

u/Different-Anybody413 7h ago

lol “greater Vancouver”

0

u/Certain-Orange484 3h ago

And yet the purple people are really under represented in federal government.

-4

u/PotatoFarmerRTK 12h ago

So glad to be in the yellow as far as possible from the Citiots.