As a country, we have been truly blessed with peace, order and good government and have over the decades achieved a quality and quantity of life that is one of the highest in the world. It is true our history has not been perfect or free of injustice or inequality. We will face numerous challenges in the years to come both to deal with our past as well as dealing with a much more uncertain world as the recent few years have demonstrated.
Yet, whatever our divisions and challenges, we have had solid institutions and we need to combine those with an international effort to reach out to like-minded countries - many of them as small as we are - in an effort to build new alliances and networks with which to help shape and stabilize the world. That is our new challenge for the 21st century.
Just as Canada has grown over the last 152 years, so has Northern Ontario and the figure below plots the population of the five largest urban areas in the north from the earliest available city population figure from the Census of Canada to the 2016 census.
From small 19th century resource communities, all these cities have grown to quite sizeable centers though it is true they have in recent decades not kept pace with other parts of the province or country. Nevertheless, the future has yet to be written and opportunities abound. Happy Canada Day!