North America’s regional cultures rarely respect current boundaries, and the ones separating the U.S. and Canadian federations are no exception
By Colin Woodard
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, the 2011 book in which I first set out the regional geography of North America, very much included Canada, but I’d never had an opportunity to sit down and create an “official” map of the regional cultures there. Until now, that is.
In honor of Canada Day, feast on this newly-completed map, which is backed by spreadsheets allowing for the sort of regional analysis we’ve been doing on the U.S. to be extended to our northerly neighbor. (As with the U.S., these sheets are available to researchers on request.)
The original intention was to code everything at the Canadian census district level, the closest equivalent to U.S. counties, which is the unit we use for the American Nations model in the United States. We discovered some limits to that approach, however, especially in the Far North, where some districts are physically enormous; the Yukon Territory, for instance, comprises a single census district, all 186,272 square miles of it, an area substantially larger than California. Others were drawn without much thought to history and culture, confounding efforts to use them to fairly distinguish between, say, New Brunswick’s New France and Yankee sections, or how First Nation and Far West come together in northern Alberta.
In the end, we kept to the census district level whenever practical, but broke some down to the subdistrict level to better capture the cultural boundaries where two “nations” came together. The most prominent are in the northern Yukon Territory (because the Yukon North Slope subdivision is a prominent part of the official Inuvialuit Settlement Region); in northern B.C.; in the northern part of Quebec’s Sept-Rivières-Caniapiscau division and in southern Labrador (where First Nations peoples have always held sway); and in New Brunswick’s Westmorland and Northumberland districts, which gerrymandered that province’s French communities.
Recognizing that some statistical data may only be available at the census district level, we’ve also created spreadsheets that ignore some of these finer resolution geographies to allow a wider range of analysis to take place.
None of this helps for elections, however, which is why last month we created this map assigning each federal riding to one of the American Nations. A full analysis of Canada’s 2025 election is found here.
If you’re Canadian and new to the American Nations model, here’s a short description of the seven “nations” that comprise present day Canada, six of which also extend into (or from) what is now the United States. (A description of the “nations” of the U.S. that do not reach Canada can be found here.)
Yankeedom: Founded by Puritans who sought to perfect earthly society through social engineering, individual denial for common good, and the assimilation of outsiders. The common good – ensured by popular government – took precedent over individual liberty when two were in conflict. Spread west across Upstate New York, Upper Great Lakes region, but also east across the Gulf of Maine and beyond by both an early New England diaspora that overwhelmed the regionally-mixed loyalists in late 18th century New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
New France: Legacy of Champlain’s vision for North America, New France blends the folkways of ancien régime northern French peasantry with the traditions and values of the aboriginal people they encountered in northeastern North America. Egalitarian and consensus driven, with a ready acceptance of government involvement in the economy. Most “nationally conscious” of all the regional cultures, it comprises the southern tier of Quebec and parts of northern and eastern New Brunswick.
Midlands: North America’s great swing region was founded by English Quakers, who believed in humans’ inherent goodness and welcomed people of many nations and creeds to their utopian colonies. Pluralistic, multicultural and organized around the middle class, the Midlands spawned the culture of Middle America and the Heartland, where ethnic and ideological purity have never been a priority, government has been seen as an unwelcome intrusion and political opinion has been moderate. Transplanted to Upper Canada by the “Late Loyalists,” who were largely Midlanders fleeing the early U.S. republic.
Left Coast: Founded by New Englanders (who came by ship) and farmers, prospectors and fur traders from the lower Midwest (by wagon), it’s a fecund hybrid of Yankee utopianism and the Appalachian emphasis on self-expression and exploration. Region contested between the federations. Occupies the narrow coastal plain from Monterrey, California to Juneau, Alaska, including the B.C. coast.
Far West: Extreme environment stopped eastern cultures in their path, so settlement largely controlled by distant corporations or the federal governments via deployment of railroads, dams, irrigation, mines; exploited as an internal colony, with lasting resentments. In Canada, comprises much of the interior west, including most of Yukon and parts of the NWT.
First Nation: Populated by indigenous people who generally never gave up their land by treaty and have largely retained cultural practices and knowledge that allow them to survive in this hostile region on their own terms. Includes Greenland and parts of Alaska, but mostly located in the Canadian North.
Anglo-Irish: The unique culture of Newfoundland and parts of southern Labrador and the oldest of the Euro-American colonizer-settler cultures. Communitarian minded and deeply conscious of their “national” distinctiveness.
Thanks for your interest. Et merci pour votre intérêt.
Thanks to our partners at Motivf, Tova Perlman (for her patient coding work) and John Liberty (for the maps.)
— Colin Woodard is the director of Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy.