These are Canada’s parallel cities around the world
Feeling the connection? Several major cities across Canada line up almost perfectly with some major cities around the world
Maps are more than just guides on a journey. These vital tools can show us how we relate to one another across borders and climates.
It’s also fun just to see how two distant places are joined across continents.
A new online tool reveals “parallel cities” around the world, and it’s interesting to explore just how different these cities can be despite their similar geographic stature.
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Canada is pretty far removed from the densest global population centres. Nearly half of the world’s population lives within the tropics, or between the latitudes of 23.5°N and 23.5°S.
Despite its northerly location, Canada’s major cities still enjoy some heavyweight global neighbours.
Calgary sits at 50.1°N, placing it at roughly the same latitude as Frankfurt, Germany, which is a global powerhouse of both finance and international air travel. The city is also on about the same parallel as Prague and Krakow.
Winnipeg (49.9°N) and Vancouver (49.2°N) are parallel cities themselves, with only about 44 kilometres of latitudinal distance separating the two. (One degree of latitude is equal to about 111 kilometres).
The pair also resides at about the same parallel as Paris, which sits in northern France at about 48.8°N.
Interestingly enough, Vancouver and Paris have similar temperature profiles even though they have different climates and influences overall. Winnipeg’s annual daily temperatures look much more dramatic as the Prairies swing through the seasons.
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St. John’s, which is Canada’s easternmost city, falls around 47.5°N, which puts it about parallel with both Seattle and Ulaanbaatar, the latter of which is the capital of Mongolia.
Montreal (45.5°N) features a long list of global parallel cities. Aside from Ottawa, folks in Montreal are roughly equal in latitude to Oregon’s Portland, Italy’s Milan and Venice, and China’s Harbin, which is home to the world-famous ice festival every winter.
Toronto is the southernmost major city in Canada with a latitude of 43.6°N. Some of Toronto’s global neighbours include Sochi, Russia, which hosted the winter Olympics in 2014, as well as Sapporo, Japan, which is one of the snowiest major cities in the world.