So. I saw a few posts on the topic of survivability in Canada. Some of these posts were very well done, and I thought I might as well pitch in. For reference, my experience is with Quebec, Nunavut, Ontario, the Northwest Territories, and British Columbia. I can't really speak for much else, but I thought I might as well share some of the stuff I think and daydream about.
The major issue for Canada is that most of its production capacity, agricultural capacity, and population are all jammed in narrow corridors of arable, high-pop density land. Cascadia (The Victoria-Vancouver-Seattle triangle), Upper and Lower Canada (Roughly from Quebec to Toronto - largely flat-land, very arable, very open - the center of Canadian trade for a reason), the Red River Settlement area (old Manitoba), and the Calgary-Edmonton corridor, as well as largely island of civilization in that sea of geography we call our country. These are all maximum overdead. They are all modern cities - flat, grid-like, largely unholdable and extremely porous. Quebec City is the only exception, but being the last fortified city in North America will do little against the infection. So the Woodlands of Southern Ontario and Quebec, as well as the open plains of the prairies and the valleys of British Columbia are screwed.
This leaves basically all settlements entrenched in the, in context, apply-named Canadian Shield. The problem with the Canadian Shield is that it's roughly 8 000 000 square kms of garbage - for civilization as we know it. It's extremely rugged, marshy, and comes with two seasonal settings - Cold and Mosquitoes. Most major settlements and aboriginal reservations situated within the Canadian Shield are not self-sufficient in the matters of most staples and food.
For instance, I work at a major grocery store in Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories. We receive major shipments of food from Edmonton, and in turn we supply the smaller communities. Collapse of the south means collapse of food stock. Almost immediately. A lot of people adopt a survivalist mindset up in the North. After all - you just need a bad blizzard or a very bad forest fire season and all communication of the south can be cut for a few days or even a week. Many people will have cache. But those will be spent sooner than later and should not be accounted seriously. Some agriculture is possible. Kale, potatoes, cabbage, rhubarb - those can grow very well during the very short but luminously intense summer season.
A return to the land won't be easy either. Needless to say that the average Canadian is not much of a survivalist, even less a hunter-gatherer, though a lot of us do supplement the usual supermarket fare with some game. Even aboriginals will have a hard time -a lot of traditional knowledge has been lost and eroded in just the last 100 years. Inuit kids of my generations will not know how to hunt without a skidoo or a gun, if they will know how to live off the land at all. The land may be harsh enough to stem the beasts and trolls, and the likelihood of giants is more or less nil, but that goes both ways - the land will kill us too, if we aren't careful.
So survival, to use the model proposed by user
Hrolfr - I think a lot of Northern Canada, while isolated and should be able to resist phase 1 well enough, will stumble pretty hard by phase II - actually handling the apocalypse.
In the Northwest Territories, if civilization survives at all, it will be concentrated around Yellowknife and the Great Slave lake. In summer and winter the lake can be used to connect with other communities around it (the lake is massive) by boating and sledding. Hay River could be a small agricultural hub. The culture would be largely Dene with some European, Philipino and Vietnamese touches, if the current demographics are anything to go by.
Population: 15 000. Maybe. If they have recovered. If they can get something stable going, they will not have to fear much, beside the night, a sudden outbreak among the bisons or the cariboos, or the arrival of some kind of monster in the region. Due to a return to largely pre-industrial living conditions, in a harsh land, reproduction rate will remain low. High child mortality, not to mention the odd case of Rash, combined with the looming threat of starvation and the fact that they are only one bad harvest or infected herd away from being snuffed out, another light going out in the dark.
Nunavut and Nunavik, and everyone living around the Hudson's bay, will probably go down to 2-3000 souls. At most. No cities can be sustained without intervention from the south. They would have to revert to traditional hunting and survival techniques. The problem with this is that they relied heavily on sea mammals - especially seal, and to an extent, whales. If infection levels are low, they can thrive, if they are not, I can't imagine the horror of paddling a kayak out there with a leviathan lurking below. 1000 at most or nil/displaced and the frozen wasteland they call home is abandoned.
Now Quebec provides a few interesting opportunities.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/124103985@N06/14943835818/This image, provided to us by user
ruth is solid - and I would just make some additional suggestions:
- I think I case could be made for the inclusion of Sept-Iles as a major surviving settlements. With it's eponymous islands, it could set up a system similar to Mora. Plus, its access to aluminium, ores, and electricity would be invaluable to the technological efforts of the New Canada.
- The Saguenay River, as well as some of the major settlements on it such as Saguenay, could still be intact and probably the core of the Quebec economic engine. The high population density makes it unlikely, but I would make the argument that considering that it's probably on the cusp and cutting line between isolated/hospitable to agricultural civilization, that it would probably have been a major effort from Canadian/or even Quebec Forces - to make their stand there. Saguenay is the Reykjavík/Mora (outside of St.John) that civilization in Canada would need to be able to re-assert itself and at least keep the Silent World at bay. But this is about as far down as it is possible to do so.
So, again, I follow Hroflr on this.
Another cool thing is that it would probably be the hub of something else - relations with the Cree nations. Their territories lie mostly in sparsely populated land and connect themselves upward through most of the Canadian shield. You could, in fact, travel your way through Cree territory up to the Northwest territory. The pocket of civilization I described in the Northwest Territory could, in theory, be connected to the rest of Canada through the Cree-controlled river systems of the CS. A French-Canadian/Cree Alliance would not be surprising, nor would be a Newfoundland/Inuit alliance.
Just like post-apocalyptic Norway saw the rise of a sort of neo-Viking culture, post-apocalyptic northern Quebec could see the return of the voyageurs. Whereas the Newfies will be the masters of the sea, the Canadiens and their Cree allies will be masters of the land, capable of traveling through the complicated and hazardous river system that makes up the true and alternative circulatory system of Canada, connecting pockets of civilization within the Shield, trading for the various staples these communities would be generating for the sake of sustaining human life a bit longer. The voyageur, no longer carrying pelts and pemmican, but spare parts and mail and other necessities, little flickers of light in the deep darkness of the Canadian night.
- The Cree nations would in fact become a serious player, being the most populous first-nation group in Canada and largely located well within the "safe-zone". The Canadian Shield is their turf.
- it's rather generous to give St. Pierre and Miquelon their own part of the alliance. They would probably fall under the dominion of the french Canadians. ;P Canada will remain a nation of two solitudes, even in the post-apocalyptic future!
Other cool things to consider is also some thematic connections these lands have with the SSSS setting. Newfoundland itself was famously discovered by Norse explorers - Vinland and all that. A lot of French-Canadians come from northern France/Bretagne, which was famously colonized by Norse raiders (hence the Normans). A mix of Norse, Celtic (French populations have the famous Gauls to boast about, while the Newfies have a sizeable heritage of Irish ancestors), and aboriginal religion could be fostered. Anticousti would not be so much a settlement as much as a sanctuary with a sizeable, intact herd of deers and other mammals. A mix between a holy sanctuary and Svalbard. Maybe Newfoundland could be renamed Vinland and Quebec will revert to Canada. I mean, there is no point in calling it Quebec if the rest of Canada does not exist anymore. The Newfies will get to keep their Grade A War Dogs, to boot. Invaluable while out in the literal sea of monsters that will be the Gulf.
Total population - between 70 to 150 000 for Neo-Canada, including Crees.
- On the topic of BC, I think Deadlander's analysis is dead-on and very cool.
One day I will write this fan side-adventure. Canada has a bunch of untapped folklore and imagery that could lend itself nicely to a story and setting like SSSS.
So yeah. Food for thoughts, I suppose.
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