Re: array two of a kind

[Rick James]

That is essentially "groupwise max" where you want 2 rows per user_id and (perhaps) don't care which 2.
http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/groupwise_max -- see the two "Top-N" sections in that blog.
Change
* `province` to `user_id`
* `Canada` to your tablename
* 3 to 2 (You want 2 each)
* `population` to `id` -- I'll have it get the 2 with the smallest `id`
* DESC to ASC -- to get the smallest `id`s, not largest
* SELECT id, user_id, name