Map of the Week: Military recruiting, redux, with video

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

This is Part 2 of the map I produced back in February showing regular force enlistment rates by postal code in Ontario.

We have the data for the whole country, along with a complete set of .kml boundaries, but for various reasons (the main one being that even the .kmz file is still too large to display) I can't produce a national map in our usual method.Yet.

So today we have a national map of regular force recruiting rates presented in Google Earth video, based on 2007 data.

The map shows some clear patterns - many people join the regular force from Atlantic Canada (which for anybody who has spent time with soldiers will not be much of a revelation), especially from the greater area around Halifax and the St. John Valley in New Brunswick. Fewer join from PEI, Newfoundland, Cape Breton and the north shore of New Brunswick. I expected higher rates in Cape Breton and Newfoundland.

There was some data missing in the Fredericton area, hence the visible hole in the map.

Quebec has lower rates, with the very visible exception of Quebec City and the area to the north, through and past Valcartier.

Ontario has a similar pattern - low enlistment rates, except for an area of the Upper Ottawa Valley stretching north from Petawawa. Trenton, Kingston, Barrie and Meaford are also pockets of high enlistment.

The West has very low enlistment rates, except for three pockets: Brandon, a large area around Cold Lake, and Victoria and the south shore of Vancouver Island.

As some readers will have already guessed, what all these areas have in common is a visible normal military presence, something that is otherwise unusual in Canada. (Edmonton, which is an oddity as a large city with a major regular army presence, has fairly low enlistment rates).

I'm still figuring out how to present Google Earth video, so be nice. I know the audio quality could be better.

Mouseover the image below to start: