Talk:Southwestern Ontario

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Merging some sub-regions

SW Ontario has been split up by county, which is too granular, and has resulted in a bunch of mostly empty county articles. Eastern Ontario, by contrast, is not split by county.

I am proposing the following mergers (with the number of articles in brackets):

• Essex (6) + Kent (1) => Lake St. Clair (7). (Kent county article is a redlink now, and Kent County has been known as the City of Chatham-Kent since 1998).
• Elgin (4) + Norfolk (2) + Brant (1) + Haldimand (0) => Lake Erie Shore (7). (Brant and Haldimand are redlinks)
• Lambton County (2) + Middlesex (1) + Huron (3) + Perth (2) + Oxford (3) => Western Ontario (11). (Lambton, Middlesex and Perth are redlinks.)
• Wellington (5) + Dufferin (1) => Wellington and Dufferin Counties (6)

Yes, the regions are arbitrary, but there do not seem to be natural or commonly used dividing lines for these areas. Comments? Ground Zero (talk) 19:15, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support. Perhaps a static map could be created? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:20, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
  • That would be great, but beyond my skill set. Ground Zero (talk) 00:03, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I can't create static maps either, but I could see what could be done with a dynamic map. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:15, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

This is definitely not a finished static map, but it's what I've created to help me (and perhaps others) better understand the proposed regions. I think Lake St. Clair is in blue, Lake Erie Shore in green, Western Ontario in red, and Wellington and Dufferin Counties in gold. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:58, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I have since added the other region colors and now it should be ready to be added to the regionlist. Certainly not one of our best maps, but should be good enough to help people find appropriate region articles. --Comment by Selfie City]] (talk | contributions) 19:44, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I think that helps clarify things. Thank you. Ground Zero (talk) 21:29, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

And the Regional Municipality of Waterloo in purple. Ground Zero (talk) 04:27, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Work in progress

I've started putting through these changes. It will take a while to complete them and to build up the resulting articles.

I now think that Brant County should be included in the Brantford article as it surrounds that city, and Brantford and Brant would thus be its own region. Brantford isn't really on the Lake Erie Shore. Ground Zero (talk) 02:53, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Is that the county that is landlocked and shown in the color light green? It should be easy to adjust the static map to give it its own color. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:49, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, and thank you. Also, could you zoom in a bit more to focus on SW Ontario and have less grey? I think that would make it easier to read.

I'vd tried to make the colours on the panel with the colours you chose, but I struggled to find good matches. The peach coloure you used for Grey County was particularly difficult to match. Ground Zero (talk) 12:58, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I used the colors of Inkscape, which do not seem to match the standard regionlist template. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:03, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I have added new colors. The new codes will be b7c8c4ff and aaaaff. I adjusted the other one because it was too similar to Lake Erie in colour. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:21, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Ground Zero and Selfie City, this looks good. I was taking a look at the regions and was wondering if we could rationalize further. SW Ontario has a lot of small towns and so I think it could be one of those areas where we should go a little over 9 cities so we don't end up with too fine-grained regions. Some of my thoughts are:

• I think Kitchener-Waterloo should be in the same region as Guelph and Elora. Common sidetrips for the KW area include St. Jacobs, the Elora Gorge and Guelph. I'm not sure of a good name, perhaps "Waterloo-Wellington", the country names (the Ontario tourism region is called "Waterloo-Wellington-Huron" so Waterloo-Wellington is out there). I understand "Region of Waterloo" is well-recognized but I think it's too small for travel purposes.
• Can we combine Bruce County and Grey County? When I lived in Ontario, I remember hearing "Bruce-Grey" and the combined region wouldn't be far over 9 cities.
• Does Brantford/Brant County need it's own region? I see what you wrote above, but I find it unusual to give it its own region (I don't recall it being that important tourism-wise) while we have a large one like Western Ontario. I know it's not on Lake Erie, but it's not that far. The government tourism regions place it with Hamilton, which would make sense, but doesn't align very neatly with our existing region structure.
• Is there any appetite for straying from country borders? One anomaly I find is Blue Mountain, which is closely associated with Collingwood, is in a different region because of how county lines fall -- Blue Mountain is in Grey County and Collingwood is in Simcoe County (I just noticed the banner for Simcoe County appears to be a scene from Blue Mountain!) If there's support, I'd like to carve out the eastern sliver of Grey County so Blue Mountain and Collingwood are both in the Simcoe County guide.

Anyway, this is all based on my recollection of the area went I went to university there many years ago. Things might have changed. I can pitch in with the static map Selfie City if you want some help. -Shaundd (talk) 15:36, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Adding names to regions would be helpful, as I don't have the correct font that is required. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:42, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@SelfieCity: Did you upload the SVG version of the map to Commons? I see the PNG but it would be best if I could edit the SVG (Inkscape) file. -Shaundd (talk) 06:16, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Region names are now on the map. Cheers -Shaundd (talk) 16:44, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

@Shaundd: thanks for your input. Some comments:

• Bruce-Grey: what would be the advantage of merging these two regions? They are already both usable regions, so it would be a bunch of work for what advantage? Grey is a little light on destinations, but that gives it room to grow.
• Brantford and Brant: I've struggled with this one. I was avoiding shifting between macroregions, largely because I can't do maps, but if you want to propose that, go ahead.
• Blue Mountain: I can see the argument for doing that, but what would happen to the rest of Grey? Lumping it into Bruce-Grey would be awkward because it wouldn't cover all of Grey. Ground Zero (talk) 17:46, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Ground Zero, fair enough, I realize I'm late to the game with comments. The reason I think Bruce-Grey makes more sense is because, in my experience (which is many years ago now), people don't usually talk about going to Bruce County or Grey County, it's more the Bruce Peninsula and the area around it -- the beaches, Owen Sound, etc. -- which includes both Bruce and Grey counties. It's the same reason why I think Waterloo Region and Wellington County should be in the same region. There's a lot of cross-travel between Guelph and KW, certainly more than between Guelph and Orangeville.

Re Blue Mountain, it's only 2-3 km inside the Grey County border so I was thinking just list it in Simcoe County. On a map, it'll sit pretty much on the line. The rest of Grey County would remain as-is.

I'll politely turn down the offer to change the macroregions for Brantford. :-) Getting agreement on how to fit it within the existing GTA and Niagara regions could be time consuming and I don't have enough free time to push a discussion like that forward right now. Treating it as a region is odd but it works. -Shaundd (talk) 06:11, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

@Shaundd: I don't want to discourage you from pursuing further reorganization; I just don't want to take it in myself. I don't think that what I've done is necessarily the most logical approach. I've been working on upgrading all SW Ontario articles to usable; I'm close to being finished, and I want to move on to other projects. But if you want to take this on, go ahead. Ground Zero (talk) 16:42, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Ground Zero, that's understandable. If you're OK with the below changes, I'm happy to do the work myself.

1. Merge Bruce County and Grey County into one region called Bruce-Grey
2. Move Village at Blue Mountain to Simcoe County so it's in the same region as Collingwood (Ontario)
3. Merge Region of Waterloo (Ontario) and Wellington and Dufferin Counties into one region called Waterloo-Wellington

Let me know if you're OK with me moving forward and I'll slot it in my to-do list after doing the maps for the BC region changes. -Shaundd (talk) 05:47, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the map. Should Dufferin County just be combined with Simcoe County then? Ground Zero (talk) 17:57, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

@Ground Zero: I was thinking of combining it with Waterloo & Wellington but not including it in the name. It seems to sit on the line of SW Ontario and Central Ontario, so it could probably go either way. I was thinking because most of it is west of the escarpment to include it in SW Ontario, but I don't have a strong position on that. What are you thinking? -Shaundd (talk) 07:07, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

@Shaundd: I guess that could work. I don't have strong views either way. Ground Zero (talk) 02:13, 19 July 2020 (UTC)