I think you're right, but I don't think 'colonization' ever really stopped in Ontario - it just moved elsewhere. While Quebec was incentivized to develop its regions, there were more valuable places for Ontario capital to flow to, such as Alberta.

The difference between the two is language really and the urge to develop Quebec as a sovereign country, that drive has never been there for Ontario because Ontario is Canada, at least in the eyes of Ontarians. You don't see people in Ontario proud of being Ontarian as you do in Quebec, the Maritimes, Alberta, etc, instead they're proud of being Canadian.

Thanks for the history. Very interesting. I guess Ontario still isn't interested in trying to farm land further north now..? The last time I was in Australia (15 years ago), I met a French chef in the middle of nowhere in the Northern Territory (he walked out of the bush with a can of kangaroo meat to say hello) who told me he was being paid something like $500 per month by the government just to live out in the middle of nowhere and homestead, which I found astonishing.

Both Finland and Norway have low population, too, because overall the climate is too harsh for high-yield agriculture.

*subsidizing

Yes, and no one sane invests into agriculture around Moscow when there's much more warmer and fertile land down south. Factory farms and greenhouses? Yes, certainly, but this is driven by the food demands of a massive metropolis next door: move east or west far enough to offset this benefit and you will see scenes of rural decay.

You're right, and I edited my comment accordingly, but I asked Google and got this interesting AI response, so I guess a lot of people on the internet make the same mistake, since AI just echos its training data:

The term "Continental United States" (CONUS) generally refers to the 48 contiguous states plus the District of Columbia, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. It encompasses the landmass of the United States located on the North American continent. While sometimes confused with the "contiguous United States," which also refers to the 48 states, "continental" specifically emphasizes the geographical location on the continent.

Melville (roughly) agrees -- from the first chapter of Moby-Dick:

---

Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

---

Sorry for the huge response to your passing comment but:

Not really. Statistically, the things that most often kill people lost in the wilderness are exposure and following that, accidents that outright kill or weaken the body's ability to deal with the weather and thus accelerate exposure effects. You do not need freezing temperatures to die of exposure. Even being exposed to mild cold, but continuously, and particularly if wet or partly submerged in water, will eventually bring your body down to hypothermic temperatures.

Hunger is barely a factor because you can go without food for an exceptionally long time before you weaken severely, let alone die, and though we need water to live quite soon, it's rarely impossible to find unless you're in a very arid place. In either case, if the weather is bad and you're under-dressed, that's what will kill you well before you need to worry about dropping from hunger or even thirst.

As for wild animals, they're your single lowest worry, despite being the things that tend to most scare people about the wilderness (thank our ancient hunter/gatherer instincts for this, since they led to us not immediately fearing things we'd adapted ourselves to handling well, like weather and sources of nutrition, but continuing to fear the things we couldn't easily control, like lurking beasts).

Generally, you'd have to be incredibly unlucky to be the victim of something like a bear or puma attack and forget completely about attacks from any other animal, since they're nearly unheard of.

Just to be clear, with most of the above i'm referring to North America or at least to some sort of northern or southern temperate region that may include deserts, forests, prairies, etc, and not tropical conditions or wildlife.

In tropical conditions, and especially jungles, the calculus changes quite a bit, with exposure being less of a risk (though one can be surprised by unexpected cold, as has happened to me in outright jungles deep inside central America where you wouldn't fucking expect to feel really cold, but holy shit!.) Certain kinds of wildlife also become much more of a danger in tropical places, though with few exceptions, the really problematic ones won't be the big predators. Instead you can genuinely worry about smaller things that sting or bite with venom.

Edited for way too many spelling mistakes.

"Easy, we just A-star this thing and walk for a maximum of 273 days."

Same time as I was doing similar work in the same area, same time the Pintupi Nine popped up wondering who all these pale people are.

> likely has

Yeah, mostly the case but certainly not all .. had they been available at the time it'd be unlikely that pair would have been given an EPIRB given the run down economic state of the pastoral station then.

If you want an EPIRB success story for those that are routinely well prepared, there's this tale from the Gunbarrel network:

Desert Raid 2017 - Two Days From Death https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL44EAyz8Qc

Even today people disappear every year or so on these roads .. some are found, others aren't.