Canada has a region it considers its heartland, a region with a large share of the nation's population and economic activity. This region, the national core, has served as the central basis for the development of the country. The area is southern Ontario and southern Quebec, and it is an area that contains disproportionate shares of the urban population and national industrial capacity as well ("The National Core Region of Canada" 156). An analysis of this region points to many of the resources and long-term advantages of the nation of Canada.
Three themes have been suggested as deriving from this region. The first is that this is a region with a relatively small size, raising the question of what factors have combined to restrict growth in the core to this limited territory. It would usually be expected that a region that is the development hearth of a rapidly growing and prosperous country should increase its area along with the growth in its economy. In this case, such growth in territory did not occur. Second, there is great diversity within this region, which is unusual in that there is usually a certain intensity and functional uniformity in such a delimited region. There is a cultural diversity in Canada that has threatened the very existence of the country as a single political unit, and this diversity is found in this region. Third, the character of this national core is affected by its location within the larger core region for the entire continent, which means that the third theme is the relationship between the United States and Canada in terms of the way the national core is integrated into the continental core ("The National Core Region of Canada" 156).
Consider each of these themes in turn. The limits of the core have come about first because of geographic realities. Because of the geography, the early settlement of Quebec was restricted to land south of the thin and poorly drained soils of the Canadi...