Cross thematic Comparison 1 — Landscape and transportation

Canadian Landscape

There are many differences about landscape between Montreal and Charlottetown, PEI. At first, these photos show the difference obviously. I took both of them at the same day. Montreal has many buildings and big river. PEI has vast farm and the scenery looks like green carpet. What makes these differences? There are some factors.

At first, the height of buildings is very different. In Montreal, we could see many high-rise buildings. Montreal is one of the biggest city in Canada, and I think the mean of “big city” is to be developed more modernly. The modern city has a lot of skyscrapers, subway, and so many people. Therefore, people need more company offices, residents, shopping malls, schools. This is the reason, I think, that Montreal has many buildings to include large people and a lot of things.

Then, how about PEI? When we walked around this town, we could found houses which were painted pretty colors. However, there are no high-rise buildings like Montreal’s. All of them are lower. We also found abundant nature, such as very vast fields, horses or cows, beautiful ocean view and more. In addition, we can see many flowers on spring or summer. I thought that to protect these beautiful nature view, PEI has no skyscraper in this island.

Another factor is the style of buildings. In Montreal, many buildings look like European architectures, which were made of stones. Moreover, these buildings were lined up closely each other. I went Paris this August, and saw similar scene. On the past time, European settlers came to North America, and mainly French people lived in Montreal, so the buildings in Montreal are in mixture of European and American architecture, I thought.

On the other hand, PEI has few stone-houses. In PEI also, historically European especially English, Irish, Scottish have settled. Then, why there are few stone-houses? We can find the answer from soil. PEI has red soil, which contain abundant iron oxide. And, these soil isn’t suitable for construction materials, because of its fragility. Therefore, PEI has few houses which made of In PEI also, historically European especially English, Irish, Scottish have settled. PEI has many houses which were made by red bricks or by trees.These are the factors I found and thought about the difference of landscape between Montreal and PEI. Then, I was interested in the difference among each city in same country. One city has peculiar history and culture. If I study about cities in the future, I will pay attention to these differences.

Transportation

I compare Montreal with Charlottetown from my point of view.

In Montreal, STM metro and bus are main transportation. We can move by only one card, “OPUS card”. We bought a weekly card. There are various cards, one-day-card, three-day-card, weekend-card and monthly card. The weekly card we charged at the Montreal International Airport is available for the shuttle bus going to downtown. In terms of the metro, it has four lines, Green line, orange line, yellow line and blue line. I think it’s simple, so we hardly lose transfer. It’s easy to understand how to go to the destination.

In Charlottetown, I think this town is totally automobilized. That impression comes from seeing massive amount of cars parking on the streets. I took the picture in Charlottetown. A lot of cars are forming a line. Taking rental car will be most useful for tourists, but the downtown is small, so we walked around there. PEI doesn’t have subway, but we can take bus. When we went to University of Prince Edward Island, we took the bus from downtown. The local bus doesn’t run from end to end of the island, but several sightseeing coach lines exist in the limited areas in the island. On Wednesday, we took part in Anne tour. Tourist spots relating to Anne are far from the downtown, but we can go there by tour coach.

Comparing Montreal and Charlottetown from the viewpoints of transportation. In Montreal, main transportations are metro and bus, on the other hand, those are bus and taxi for tourists in Charlottetown. Presence or absence of subway will lead to the deference.