There are certainly a lot of wealthy folks in Canada the thing is that with the population being only 1/10th of the US you won't see vast tracts of it in other than places like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. I'm sure Winnipeg has it's area as does Calgary with the Victorian mansions and now the super modern mansions on the outskirts with the best views. As for poverty, well that exists but not in any proportion to what you see in the US, probably the worst place where it is in your face is Vancouvers downtown eastside. When I moved there in 75 I wash floored to see people sleeping on the streets and it's 10x worse now with beggars and panhandlers. It's also worsened here in Calgary over the last 10 years. What you don't see though are streets and neighborhoods of ghetto's. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are pretty much the only 3 cities that do have sprawling suburbs though Calgary is the 4th largest city it is the largest in land area, no suburbs, it just ends at wheatfields like Rob says. I'm a few miles out but am now being overtaken with huge subdivisons of 3000-6000 sq.ft McMansions on 4 acre lots. I'm not complaining, they're pushing my property skyhigh but some of these houses are just gawdawful inside and outside with overuse of iconic and doric columns, archways, palladian windows all overdone to the n'th degree and not following any particular style, just slam the feature in and hype it. A Taj Mahal for everyone. I'll take a pic of some of them up the road.
Growing up in a border city with Port Huron MI. both of these cities were about the same size, 50,000 people roughly and architecturally similar subdivisions, houses etc. The only key difference you could note was the houses and subdivisions on the Canadian side have much better maintained streets with proper curbs and sidewalks, more streetlighting and sidewalks whereas Port Huron, the paved subdivision streets usually didn't have curbs, the asphalt usually ended in dirt to the grass, some sidewalks, and minimal streetlighting, but then they probably paid less property taxes for less "finish"
