Most ethnically diverse?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by beenhereandthere

From what I've seen, out of the major metro areas in Canada, Quebec is the least diverse, but even that town has a lot more minorities that it did 20 years ago.
Toronto, if you are talking about all kinds of diversity, is by far the most diverse.
Talking about all Canadian Metro areas, the least diverse is most likely St Johns. NF.

By both the usual measures (visible minorities and immigration), I think Saguenay (formerly Chicoutimi) and Trois-Rivières in Quebec are probably lower than St. John's, though not by much. Quite low also would be places like Saint John and Moncton in NB, and Thunder Bay and Peterborough in Ontario. Much larger Quebec City is in the same ballpark as well.

Of course, a good proportion of the population in a place like Saguenay (and the other cities in Quebec) actually has quite a bit of aboriginal blood(most probably aren't even aware of this) that would likely come out if you did DNA testing on the population. This phenomenon isn't so present in the more anglo cities like St. John's, Saint John and Peterborough.

Though Thunder Bay in Ontario does have a very large population of aboriginals with "official" status. Perhaps as much as 20% of the city.

All of which to say that diversity can be measured in a number of ways.

[beenhereandthere]

Trois Rivieres I would think has an ok population of Haitians (again compared to the other towns previously mentioned) and come to think of it St. Johns may have more visible minorities since there is a military base.
So it's probably true that the least diverse is Saguenay, followed by St. John, NB, if you count all metro areas, Quebec City if you count the top 10 or 12.

[jungeon]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Inaccurate stuff like this is precisely the reason I started taking part in forums a few years ago. This kind of historical ignorance leads to disunity and fuels separatism.

I know this is an open forum but I can't help but be dismayed by such fallacies.

Montreal was founded in 1642 by a French guy named Maisonneuve. In nearly 370 years of history it has always been predominantly French-speaking except for maybe 20 years in the mid-1800s when it was the main port of arrival for immigrants to Canada from the British Isles. This temporarily gave the city "anglo" majorities until these English-speaking immigrants dispersed across the rest of North America. Quebec City, considered an all-French bastion, was also close to majority English-speaking during this period for the same reason.

But since this period ended almost 175 years ago, French speakers have been the largest group in Montreal and remain so to this day.

Yes there was a period of socio-economic domination by the anglo minority (that stayed behind and didn't move on) over the local francophone majority in Montreal that lasted until the latter part of the 20th century. But the city remained demographically overwhelmingly francophone just the same during this time.

I won't dispute that this socio-economic domination by the minority over the majority occurred, but even English-speaking Montrealers don't like to brag about this too much because it conjures up not-so-nice images of other places in the world where there was a dominant minority that got wealthy while a different ethnic origin majority group remained poor.

The French origin population in Montreal are, as I said before, the original locals, and to try and make it out as some recent artificial construct is absurd. French in Montreal predates English in every single English-speaking city in Canada (with the exception of St. John's, Newfoundland), pretty much every American city west of the Appalachians, and every Australian and New Zealand city.

People with names like Gagnon and Tremblay are locals in Montreal in the same way that Schmidts are locals in Berlin and Espositos are locals in Napoli.

Well natives where there before the French but you don't see natives saying we found montreal and were living there for 1000 of years before the french so natives are hte hisotrically majority. English came and conquered french, all those who didn't want to speak english moved away from montreal, only after the quiet revolution did all the english speakers go to toronto because there was too much anti-anglo dscrimination by the French

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by jungeon

Well natives where there before the French but you don't see natives saying we found montreal and were living there for 1000 of years before the french so natives are hte hisotrically majority.

This is true of most any older city in North America! So why then are there no allusions to English being illegitimate in Chicago or Buffalo?

BTW, the tiny Mohawk village that is presumed to have existed somewhere around present-day Montreal was called Hochelaga. It was there at the time of Jacques Cartier's visit in the mid 1500s but was no longer there when Maisonneuve founded Montreal around 1642.

Originally Posted by jungeon

English came and conquered french, all those who didn't want to speak english moved away from montreal, only after the quiet revolution did all the english speakers go to toronto because there was too much anti-anglo dscrimination by the French

All those who didn't want to speak English certainly didn't move away from Montreal during the period of anglo domination. In fact, that was the period of great migration of French Canadians from rural areas to Montreal. The francophone population of the city exploded starting in the late 19th century and going up to the 1950s.

You just have to get over it. French Canadians ARE the original "locals" in Montreal, regardless of whether they get on your nerves or not.