Sarnia vs Scranton

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Sarnia is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, with a 2016 population of 71,594. It is the largest city on Lake Huron and in Lambton County. Sarnia is located on the eastern bank of the junction between the Upper and Lower Great Lakes where Lake Huron flows into the St. Clair River, which forms the Canada–United States border, directly across from Port Huron, Michigan. The site's natural harbour first attracted the French explorer La Salle. He named the site "The Rapids" on 23 August 1679, when he had horses and men pull his 45-ton barque Le Griffon north against the nearly four-knot current of the St. Clair River.This was the first time that a vessel other than a canoe or other oar-powered vessel had sailed into Lake Huron, and La Salle's voyage was germinal in the development of commercial shipping on the Great Lakes. Located in the natural harbour, the Sarnia port remains an important centre for lake freighters and oceangoing ships carrying cargoes of grain and petroleum products. The natural port and the salt caverns that exist in the surrounding areas, together with the oil discovered in nearby Oil Springs in 1858, led to the dramatic growth of the petroleum industry in this area.

Because Oil Springs was the first place in Canada and North America to drill commercially for oil, the knowledge that was acquired there resulted in oil drillers from Sarnia travelling the world teaching other enterprises and nations how to drill for oil.The complex of refining and chemical companies is called Chemical Valley and located south of downtown Sarnia. In 2011 the city had the highest level of particulates air pollution of any Canadian city, but it has since dropped to rank 30th in this hazard. About 60 percent of the particulate matter comes from industries and polluters in the neighbouring United States.Lake Huron is cooler than the air in summer and warmer than the air in winter; therefore, it moderates Sarnia's humid continental climate, making temperature extremes of hot and cold less evident. In the winter, Sarnia occasionally experiences lake-effect snow from Arctic air blowing across the warmer waters of Lake Huron and condensing to form snow squalls over land.

Source: Wikipedia

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Scranton is the sixth-largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is the county seat and largest city of Lackawanna County in Northeastern Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley and hosts a federal court building for the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. With an estimated population in 2019 of 76,653, it is the largest city in northeastern Pennsylvania and the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a population of about 570,000. The city is conventionally divided into nine districts: North Scranton, Southside, Westside, the Hill Section, Central City, Minooka, East Mountain, Providence, and Green Ridge, though these areas do not have legal status. Scranton is the geographic and cultural center of the Lackawanna River valley and northeastern Pennsylvania, and the largest of the former anthracite coal mining communities in a contiguous quilt-work that also includes Wilkes-Barre, Nanticoke, Pittston, and Carbondale. Scranton was incorporated on February 14, 1856, as a borough in Luzerne County and as a city on April 23, 1866. It became a major industrial city, a center of mining and railroads, and attracted thousands of new immigrants. It was the site of the Scranton General Strike in 1877. People in northern Luzerne County sought a new county in 1839, but the Wilkes-Barre area resisted losing its assets. Lackawanna County did not gain independent status until 1878.

Under legislation allowing the issue to be voted by residents of the proposed territory, voters favored the new county by a proportion of 6 to 1, with Scranton residents providing the major support. The city was designated as the county seat when Lackawanna County was established in 1878, and a judicial district was authorized in July 1879. The city's nickname "Electric City" began when electric lights were introduced in 1880 at the Dickson Manufacturing Company. Six years later, the United States' first streetcars powered only by electricity began operating in the city. Rev. David Spencer, a local Baptist minister, later proclaimed Scranton as the "Electric City".The city's industrial production and population peaked in the 1930s and 1940s, fueled by demand for coal and textiles, especially during World War II. But while the national economy boomed after the war, demand for the region's coal declined as other forms of energy became more popular, which also harmed the rail industry. Foreseeing the decline, city leaders formulated the Scranton Plan in 1945 to diversify the local economy beyond coal, but the city's economy continued to decline. The Knox Mine disaster of 1959 essentially ended coal mining in the region. Scranton's population dropped from its peak of 143,000 in the 1930 census to 76,000 in the 2010 census. The city now has large health care and manufacturing sectors.

Source: Wikipedia