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Canada’s western separatists often refer disparagingly to “the Laurentian elite” and “Laurentian Canada,” terms that are not familiar to most readers in the United States. These terms derive from the region around the Saint Lawrence River, Canada’s political, economic, and demographic core, but they refer more specifically to the Canadian establishment, or governing class. As […] The post Who Are “The Laurentian Elite?” Where Is “Laurentian Canada?” & Why Do Americans Ignore the Saint Lawrence River? appeared first on GeoCurrents.
Although it is often claimed that 90 percent of the people of Canada live within 100 miles of the U.S. border, this assertion is of dubious validity. Reputable sources put the figure closer to 80 percent. Statistics Canada more convincingly claims that 66 percent of Canadians live within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the border, […] The post Canada’s Population Is Clustered Near the Southern Border, Yet Is Nonetheless Distanced from the United States appeared first on GeoCurrents.
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The drive up to Michigan was something I did for myself, and I visited a number of historical and cultural sites along the way. But I took the trip to drive a kid home for the summer and now I had a passenger for the rest of the ride. So I front-loaded most of the […] The post Taming the Frontier, Part 2 appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places.
The first ghetto was established in 1516 in Venice, Italy. Jewish residents were forced to live in a small industrial area by the government and locked in at night. Here is a picture of a ghetto map from I took while there a few weeks ago. According to the sign Jews were only allowed to work as doctors, money lenders or second hand clothing sellers. The ghetto was expanded to two squares, the Ghetto Vecchio (old, which is actually the newer one) and Nuovo (new). After the French took over Venice in 1797, Jews were finally allowed to freely move about the city but this area remained a center of Jewish culture. It still is despite most of Venice’s Jews having been murdered in the Holocaust. There are still a handful of restaurants and places of worship. The origins of the word ghetto are disputed. It could mean foundry, street, little town or “throw away” depending on which theory you choose. Here is a simplified (but also hard to read) map of the area by artist Gianluca Costantini.
