Is Buffalo "Midwestern" (Syracuse, Albany: high school, vs, assessment)

[northstar22]

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

I agree with a lot of what you said. I think Rochester is more like Buffalo than Syracuse. Even when I was going to college in Michigan, you would hear people say "Pop" instead of Soda, like they say here. They also call sneakers, gym shoes, for example.

As for Syracuse, we get some Canadian influence and we get more from NYC, PA, NJ and the New England states too. I think a lot of that has to do with Syracuse University and our location, which is very centralized for the Northeast and parts of Ontario and Quebec to get to.

Yeah, I'm from Michigan, and I say "pop" and "gym shoes." Do they say that in Buffalo/Rochester too? I know someone from Rochester and he doesn't have a New York accent.

Anyway, Buffalo is definitely not the Midwest. It may have similarities with industrial Midwest cities like Cleveland or Detroit, but it has nothing in common with the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Indiana, or Minnesota - states that are the heart of the Midwest. It is WAY too far east, well east of Ohio and east of the east coast of Florida and Georgia. How is that Midwest? It's closer to New York than Chicago or Kansas City. It's IN New York State! Also, I would imagine Buffalo has far more in common with Albany and Syracuse than Grand Rapids or Kalamazoo, let alone Rapid City and Wichita. Buffalo is Northeast, folks.

[jblake78728]

Other than being part of the same state Buffalo has next to nothing in common with NYC or Albany. In fact Albany has more of a New England feel to it than anything. Not saying Buffalo is midwestern, just saying.

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by jblake78728

NYgirl, IMO the best radio stations are still from Ontario (but I guess that depends on what kind of music one likes) & you can still get CBC & CTV. Many of the Buffalo TV stations (especially CW & MyTV networks) advertise heavily for Southern Ontario.


I do think Detroit is a good comparison. Cities both hit hard with heavy loss of blue collar jobs. Both areas have nicer suburbs than they will ever get credit for because so much negative is made of the actual cities that it over shadows any of the good. Border towns with Canadian influences. Both are in states that are considered a winter sportsman's paradise.

What Canerican says about Canada may have some merit to it but I don't believe it is necessarily true for all of Canada. When I lived in Northern NY I found a lot of the attitudes/beliefs he mentioned in Montreal & the part of Quebec that lies along the NY/VT border. I would say it was still 0resent in the Ottawa area but nowhere near as bad as in Quebec. In my experience I haven't found Southern Ontario to be anything like this though. I think the people in Ft Erie, NFO, St Catharines & even Hamilton have much more in common with the people of WNY than they do not.

I was going to say that this part of NY has a strong Canadian influence. I saw it when i was stationed at Fort Drum

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by nygirl200

Well, I was referring more to the presence of a lot of Canadians in Buffalo, and, at the time of my youth, the presence of some Canadian-owned or Canadian-inspired stores in Buffalo. Heck, a good half of the television and radio channels in Buffalo were Canadian back then, too! The "influence" of Canada was unmistakable. The influence even extended to Rochester, NY. I remember watching a good deal of Canadian TV in my youth, and my favorite radio station was a station based in Toronto. My point was that I felt closer ties to Canada growing up than I did to Ohio or other parts of the Midwest. That was my only point.

Same thing here in Syracuse. We used to get CKWS(Channel 11) from Kingston and if you had a TV without cable you could sometimes get Channel 15 from that area, which might have had French programming. I used to watch Expos games, Hockey Night in Canada the CFL, Wok(?) Can Cook, Finnegan(a local Kingston show) and other shows as well back in the 80's. Actually, just north of Syracuse in Oswego and Jefferson Counties, they still get CKWS and Jeff. County gets a channel from Ottawa too.

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by jblake78728

NYgirl, IMO the best radio stations are still from Ontario (but I guess that depends on what kind of music one likes) & you can still get CBC & CTV. Many of the Buffalo TV stations (especially CW & MyTV networks) advertise heavily for Southern Ontario.


I do think Detroit is a good comparison. Cities both hit hard with heavy loss of blue collar jobs. Both areas have nicer suburbs than they will ever get credit for because so much negative is made of the actual cities that it over shadows any of the good. Border towns with Canadian influences. Both are in states that are considered a winter sportsman's paradise.

What Canerican says about Canada may have some merit to it but I don't believe it is necessarily true for all of Canada. When I lived in Northern NY I found a lot of the attitudes/beliefs he mentioned in Montreal & the part of Quebec that lies along the NY/VT border. I would say it was still 0resent in the Ottawa area but nowhere near as bad as in Quebec. In my experience I haven't found Southern Ontario to be anything like this though. I think the people in Ft Erie, NFO, St Catharines & even Hamilton have much more in common with the people of WNY than they do not.

Same with SW Ontario cities like Windsor, Chatham and Amherstburg with the Detroit area. Actually, there are people with family on both sides of the border(Black and White).

[jblake78728]

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

I was going to say that this part of NY has a strong Canadian influence. I saw it when i was stationed at Fort Drum

Definitely does. I think it is even noticeably stronger where the water boundary of the seaway ends & the land boundary begins from Franklin County east through the rural areas of Northern Vermont & NH. Very strong French Canadian influence. Many people with French Canadian heritage live in Franklin, Clinton & Essex Co.'s

[nygirl200]

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

Same thing here in Syracuse. We used to get CKWS(Channel 11) from Kingston and if you had a TV without cable you could sometimes get Channel 15 from that area, which might have had French programming. I used to watch Expos games, Hockey Night in Canada the CFL, Wok(?) Can Cook, Finnegan(a local Kingston show) and other shows as well back in the 80's. Actually, just north of Syracuse in Oswego and Jefferson Counties, they still get CKWS and Jeff. County gets a channel from Ottawa too.

You are bringing back memories, Ckh!! I used to watch Channe1 11 (Kingston, ON), Channel 12 (Peterborough, ON), Channel 25 (A Montreal French station), and Channel 6 (CJOH) from Ottawa. I remember Finnegan! Actually, now that i think of it, some of the best TV I watched as a little kid was on Canadian TV.

Toronto had the best pop radio station. My family used to turn it on in Rochester on road trips to Toronto, and it used to last all the way there! It was an ungodly strong station. In fact, weather reports on the station used to give weather for Toronto, Buffalo, and Rochester. And the radio ads were inclusive of the 3 cities as well.

[Canerican]

What Canerican says about Canada may have some merit to it but I don't believe it is necessarily true for all of Canada. When I lived in Northern NY I found a lot of the attitudes/beliefs he mentioned in Montreal & the part of Quebec that lies along the NY/VT border. I would say it was still 0resent in the Ottawa area but nowhere near as bad as in Quebec. In my experience I haven't found Southern Ontario to be anything like this though.

Southern Ontario is the most Liberal part of Canada outside of Quebec, so you are to put it very bluntly, dead wrong. Alberta is the only place where you will see real conservatism in Canada.

You must understand, in Canada, Liberalism is often tantamount to mild anti-Americanism, and Conservatism usually means pro-Americanism, or at least ambiguity on the issue. The best way to show you attitudes is through election results. You should note that the NDP and Bloc are consistently dead set against Americanism.

Things have changed a bit, the Conservative Party really made nice gains in Ontario, especially Southern Ontario, but the area is still a big area for the Liberal Party and NDP (NDP is Socialist leaning). Montreal is even more extreme, it is really the head of the Bloc Québecois, which is a Socialist/Québec Centralist party, only present in Québec. Toronto and the poorer suburbs are areas which are vital because of the concentration of Liberals. So if you didn't ever see those attitudes there, you just didn't talk to many people about politics.

I find it odd that you found Ottawa to be less pro-American than Toronto, as Ottawa is full of Conservative Party members, the suburbs are nearly entirely Conservative.

I still follow Canadian politics quite a bit, and unless you have a survey to refute it I've lived in Montreal, Cornwall, Kanata, and Belleville, I have a pretty good grasp on the attitudes of Ontarians about political issues.

Take a look at this map I found, it shows how the ridings in the election in October went. You need to zoom down to city level to see Southern Ontario though. (which ends up being about 1/2 blue, 1/3 red, and 1/6 yellow when you see, proving what I already knew )

http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/engli...ions/jj_elec08

[garmin239]

Having spent a lot of time in Canada due to one of my parents being from Toronto, I just don't see the Canadian influence in Buffalo and Rochester. Sure there are a couple stores and restaurants that are Canadian, but that's about it.
I think it would be more so in northern NY which has already been mentioned. I went to college in Plattsburgh and saw a Canadian influence on more things than I saw in WNY.

[nygirl200]

Really, garmin?? You seem to dispute everything that I state on here, observations that I have gathered from my own personal experiences, no less! You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but come on! Are you saying that I just imagined growing up around a Canadian influence and that my exposure to Canadian culture was just a fluke?? LOL. For heaven sake.

The Canadian influence was there. Less so in Rochester than Buffalo, but it was there, at least in the 80's when I grew up there. I have also been to northern NY and definitely see a Canadian influence there as well, but to state that there is no Canadian influence in Buffalo is just silly. Let's see, we had Canadian people living or working or going to school in Buffalo, Canadian tourists, some Canadian stores, Canadian media, etc. It definitely has more than a hint of Canadian flavor to it.

As it also has a midwestern orientation as well (which you also dispute). You seem to see things only in black or white here. Yeah, Buffalo may not be technically midwest and definitely not part of Canada, but these influences are present in the city. This is what makes it such a unique place in my opinion.