Actually, the GTA is the fourth largest municipality in North America. Now, Toronto proper is 2.5 million people, which puts it behind New York, then LA, then Chicago. Metropolitan Toronto is around 5 million people.
To my uneducated american friend samaritano
Here's a link for you.....
http://www.toronto.com/feature/324/8.html?cslink=cs_generic_4_5
Want back up, try this link.....
http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/People/Population/demo05.htm[/url]
Now here's the link for the US census for easy comparison....
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t5/tab02.pdf
San Diego falls in around 1.2 million, sorry, you should really do your homework before you spout off.
I hope this allows you to easily compare my uneducated american friend samaritano.
Toronto has about 50 or so murders a year, Washington which is considerably smaller (at around 572,000 people by your own census) has over a thousand murders a year. (See US census link)
Now, I don't know how you can rationalize that one, but knock yourself out.
With regard to my uninformed and uneducated american friend.....
The only country to ever attack this country is your country and you lost. In fact we burned the White House to the ground, and your president Madison ran away in women's clothing and hid.
He he.
But all that aside, in WWI and WW2 combined canadian casualties (however grim that might be) were approximatly 116,000 souls, now combined US casualties were in the area of 180,000 souls. In fact, of all the wars the USA has fought in, the worst casualties were suffered in the american civil war.
Don't believe me, check it out...
http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=collections
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/books/books.htm
If you look at pure population, the USA being 10 x's that of canada, even a fool can see that Canada bore a far higher level of sacrifice than that of the USA.
But when compared to Russia, which in WW2 alone lost over 20 million.....
As far as the Canadian military goes, it has been slowly brought to shamefull levels by our gov't, no doubt about it. But there is a proud tradition there, and most will agree that the few soldiers that we do have are professionals.
American military history is usually one of dubious claim to honour and glory. More often than not, the American military is used to back up American political / financial interests than any noble cause whatsoever.
With regard to my oh so uninformed and uneducated and ignorant american friend....
With respect to the unfortunate deaths of 4 canadian sevicemen in afghanistan, our silly american friend is somewhat misinformed. My understanding of it is that the excercise was approved by American command, and carried out in a designated allied training area. (Night training occurs all the time.) Furthermore, it is my understanding that the pilot was instructed not to fire, but went ahead and did just that. Also the pilot in question is a reserve pilot, not a reg force pilot. Obviously, his training was lacking. I think it far more likely that the American pilot made a collosal mistake that I am sure is haunting him at this very moment, and will most likely haunt him for the rest of his life.
You my friend Samaritano are incredibly disrespectful of those men who died.