John, I suspect you are right regarding internal migration and the homogeneous aspect of language in Canada. Climate also plays a part, for the masses that retire to the west coast, rather than face another winter in the hinterland.

And, rather than going to where the resources are, there is and has been, a tremendous amount of people, particularly the young, reluctantly forced to leave areas where the resources or the will, are no longer. The demise of the family farm on the prairies, the collapse of the east coast fisheries and coal industries and now the terrible problems with fisheries and the logging industry (50,000+ people out of work in the last three months) here in west.

Where I live on Vancouver Island, the young are leaving in droves to seek their fortunes elsewhere, in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, because the only prospects here seem to be Macjobs catering to tourists, retirees and civil servants and one of the few growth industries, the field of geriatric care.

In this city alone, we had a plywood mill, canneries, numerous lumber and sticker mills (now they just boom the logs out wholesale), a brewery, two foundries, two major shipbuilders, truck gardens and a brickyard, all gone in my lifetime. Now we have Undersea Gardens, the Wax Museum, Whale Watchers, a dozen Starbucks and a couple of sex shops. Times change.