I wish to address your 5-6 scenario since I feel it is most likely. If that does happens, then I think the surviving population will come from geographic areas that are presently sparsely populated. As a Canadian, I will address my country. I expect that our most populated area from Windsor (Detroit) to Montreal will suffer catastrophic events. Since our country is governed by votes garnered from that area, I expect that there will no longer be a power base from Ontario. Things will be bad in Vancouver as well, but no one pays attention to them anyway, having had wonky politics forever. We are a country in spite of our geography. Geography dictates trade and in this case, it has been corrected by NAFTA, North-South, rather than East-West as was the case with protected tariffs. I do not expect the country of Canada to survive this. We are a sparsely populated, largely uninhabited country. Take away the megalopolis corridor in the east and Vancouver in the west and you are left with 25% of the population. It will be the end of central government, the end of the country. If we have political subdivisions, it will certainly be North-South, the harsher the result, the smaller the subdivisions. I think the same holds true of the U.S. No one trusts politicians in either country, we will not be overly governed in the future. My daughter just returned from a long stay in rural India. Rural India will be unaffected by y2k. Heavily populated areas in third world countries that are not connected to the global economy will fare just fine. There is so much to talk about, but I don't want to ramble, so I will read some more posts.

-- Rick Reilly (rreilly@home.com), August 13, 1999

Answers

ED:

In connection with Rick's post, you might want to add to your bibliography:

Joel Gareau, The Nine Nations of North America.

Gareau's book is about 20 years old now, but he is pretty much on target in mapping out the genuine regional fault lines on the North American continent. If there is going to be a breakup of Canada/US/both, then Gareau's book will be a useful guidebook for identifying/understanding the players.

It is important to note that with the exception of Quebec, all of the other regional "nations" to which the Canadian provinces belong cross the US border. The Maritimes are part of "New England", Ontario is part of the Northeast/Great Lakes "Foundry", Manitoba & Saskatchewan are part of the Midwest "Breadbasket", Alberta, Yukon and what were the NWT are part of the Intermountain "Empty Quarter", and BC is part of the Pacific "Ecotopia". The question is: would a disintegrating Canada just remain as several mini-states, or would the pieces (except Quebec) all join an intact US, or . . . would the disintegration of Canada provoke the disintegration of the US and the union of the Canadian and US sides of each regional "nation" into a whole?

A final observation, (something I'll call "Stackhouse's law" unless and until demonstrated that someone else said it first): Straight lines on maps demarking political borders are ALWAYS drawn by people who do not live anywhere close to those borders. Non-straight line political borders (usually following natural features of the topography) are ALWAYS created by the people actually living close to those borders, either as a result of warfare or peaceful negotiation.

-- Stefan Stackhouse (stefans@mindspring.com), August 13, 1999.

It will be interesting to see where and how Hawaii fares, since it was a group of kingdoms until after contacdt with the europeans...then one king conquored most of the islands (NOT Kaua'i!). Some of the separateness exists to this day...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), August 13, 1999.

well, rick, i'm a canadian also, and i completely disagree with you about canada's survival. canada still has a strong pioneeer mentality of helping one's neighbor, especially in cold areas, which is everywhere except vancouver. if you were paying attention during the 1997 spring flood of the Red River in Manitoba, you would have noticed it. it was a similar scene a year ago during the Quebec ice storm.

since canada is a parliamentary democracy, a more likely response would be a no-confidence motion in parliament. long-term, possibly a new political party might be formed.

-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), August 13, 1999.