June 2, 2015 Money Sense by Mark Brown June 1st, 2015 From the Summer 2015 issue of the magazine.
Imagine you are exploring Canada for the very first time. You've committed to travelling around this vast country, looking for that idyllic spot for you and your family to call home. You're armed with a checklist and reams of data tracking liveability across various measures job prospects, affordability, weather and more and are going to use it to identify the best place to live.
We here at MoneySense do something similar each year, spending months sifting through reports from Environics Analytics, Statistics Canada and other data providers. In a country that measures 6,521 km across, with massively different economic regions and seven distinct climate zones, you can imagine it's a lot to digest. We carefully weigh dozens of factors to get a big picture of the overall health of 209 communities across the country. The results for this year are in, and the number one city just might surprise you.
Topping our Best Places to Live list this year is Boucherville, Que. You can find this predominately French-speaking community just across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal. Its population is just over 43,000, small enough to sit everyone comfortably inside Montreal's Olympic Stadium and leave it still feeling somewhat empty. But a look at the city's stellar liveability stats plus conversations with residents, one of whom we'll meet in the pages to come reveals what makes Boucherville such an amazing place to put down roots.
Boucherville knocks St. Albert, Alta., a small town on the fringes of Edmonton, out of the top slot. Two other Alberta cities, Calgary and Strathcona County, also took big tumbles, showing that the surge in the West that has been such a dominant theme in our report in recent years has come to an abrupt halt. Join us as we visit some of the winning cities and learn why they came out on top.
Full ranking: All 209 cities » (Vernon 167th place)
http://www.moneysense.ca/canadas-best-places-to-live-2014-full-ranking/ (125th Place)
http://www.moneysense.ca/best-places-2013/ (116th Place)
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