If you're not sure where Thunder Bay is, you're not alone. (That's a nearly re-roofed camp, left. All except the roof part.)
And if you live in the U.S., you at least have an excuse. How many Canadians could pinpoint the location of Downey, a city of about 100,000? It's the same size as Thunder Bay, roughly. Give up? I consider myself to be a fairly well-educated person and I had to look it up--and actually, all I know is that it's in California.
Still, one expects some people to know where cities are located. Those who deal with maps every day, for example.
This morning I discovered a geographically challenged person where I least expected it: doing weather on national television. Jeff Hutcheson talks about weather in various locations throughout the country most days and has been doing so for a very long time. Yet he doesn't seem to know where Thunder Bay is.
A reminder: Thunder Bay is in central Canada. When Jeff talks about the West, we're just off the map. Then the map rotates to show the Eastern half of the country, out through the Maritimes. We get a glimpse of Thunder Bay as it rotates, but once the map comes to rest, Jeff stands in front of our spot to talk about weather elsewhere.
All of which is fine, really. We catch our glimpse of the icon for the day, it's usually out of date, and otherwise, we're ignored. That's OK. Often, when you're ignored by the weather person, that's a good thing. No hurricanes.
But today, Jeff said--at least twice--something slightly disturbing. As the map rotated past him, he actually mentioned Thunder Bay and gave our forecast (sunny) and predicted high temperature (25, which is upper 70s in American). And then he said, "And in Ontario..." and described forecasts for other cities.
Jeff: Thunder Bay is IN Ontario. Southern Ontario (including Windsor, Toronto, greater and lesser suburbia, up to Ottawa and Kingston--those "important," or self-important, places) is not a separate province.
Except that it sorta is. Or rather, Northwestern Ontario is.
One of the cottage industries up here (or should it be "camp" industries, that being what people up here call what people in Toronto call "cottages") is complaining how Toronto, specifically the provincial government, is ignorant of Thunder Bay. Solutions to civic problems in large metro areas don't work up here; costs are different; infrastructure needs, as in highways and mass transit, are different; power needs are different; delivery of health care is (or should be) different. Et cetera.
And of course, there is truth in those statements--things up here are different. They're different all across the province. Communities in the far north of Ontario, along Hudson's Bay, face similar yet also different challenges.
And yes, Toronto thinks it's the hub of the universe.
But we're all in one province. Which I'm sure Jeff knows, if he stops to think about it.
Mostly, I think I'd prefer to be ignored. Limbo isn't a particularly comfortable place.
