I'm originally from Vamcouver and spent the majority of my 20s there working in the Games Industry before switching more to web and mobile and then moving to the US for last 5 years. So I've obsessed and tracked this topic. I've lived in many States in the US as well as Montreal in Candada.

I think reading Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley gave me the best break through in understanding of why Silicon Valley is so dominant in tech. http://steveblank.com/secret-history/

There's just been decades and decades and billions of even World War and Cold War money poured into into it's infrastructure. The shear amount of money and momentum of peak US effort seems nearly impossible to catch up to.

My best advice to other locations is to tie into SV as best as you can and of course focus on getting to scale by bringing in external to your local economy revenue and partnerships to bootstrap, but regardless it's gonna be a long haul. SV is the Holliwood of programmers and its best to acknowledge that. If you are an actor in Canada you know you are likely going to stay small time unless you go down North West for example and break out or stick to a niche.