They’ll be dancing in the streets of Colwood tonight. Ditto for Oak Bay. Or maybe they’ll have the help do the dancing for them.
Both places just made the top 25 of Maclean’s magazine’s rankings of the Best Communities in Canada.
In fact, seven Greater Victoria municipalities cracked the top 50.
“Many intangible things that determine quality of life can’t be quantified and measured, but a lot of tangible things can be,” stated Maclean’s in explaining its methodology.
“We gathered data on 415 towns and cities across the country and compared them in the following categories: Wealth and economy, affordability, population growth, taxes, commute, crime, weather, access to health care, amenities and culture.”
Oak Bay was the top-ranked Vancouver Island community, in 15th spot. Its high placing was based on low crime (I have said it before: Oak Bay doesn’t need its own police force, though the Securities and Exchange Commission might want to open a branch office), amenities and culture, and the ease of commuting.
Colwood came in 25th, thanks to low taxes, great weather and a lack of crime (think Florida, minus the gunfire).
Victoria could manage no better than 121st, though it placed highly in the Most Entertaining City Council category. At least, it would have, had such a category existed.
We can be excused if, while pleased, we don’t take all this as seriously as, say, the Mueller report.
For one thing, Maclean’s treats the 234 municipalities here in Dysfunction-by-the-Sea as unrelated fiefdoms. We get snapshots, not a big picture.
True, some of those snapshots are interesting. They have some intriguing data explaining why Langford, Colwood and Central Saanich were fifth, sixth and seventh on a sub-list of the 100 best cities in which to retire, and why local communities, led by Oak Bay, rated highly on a similar ranking of places for new Canadians to settle. Still, they’re just snapshots.
Also, we have all become jaded after being buried by lists — lord, we love our lists — that we suspect of being little more than clickbait.
Note that in 2015, when online retailer PinkCherry Adult Toys ranked the Sexiest Cities in Canada, based on the company’s per capita sales of sex toys, adult novelties and lingerie, Colwood was in second place, sandwiched (as it were) between Kentville, N.S., and third place Fort McMurray, Alta. Bedroom community, indeed.
Yet when the next year’s PinkCherry list came out, Colwood wasn’t even in the top 40. You have to have doubts about any Sexiest City rankings that see the Paris of the West Shore (civic motto: “What happens in the old gravel pit stays in the old gravel pit”) relegated from Sin City to Dullsville in the space of a year.
We tend to cheer the findings we like and discount the ones we don’t. Either that, or we just get confused (when USA Today named Victoria as the only Canadian entry among its Ten Best Romantic Winter Getaways in North America, it cited our “European-style downtown,” which we assumed meant “guys pee on the sidewalk.”)
When Next Generation Consulting named Victoria the best city in Canada for young professionals, we just nodded in agreement and assumed they knew what they were talking about. Ditto for when the Canadian Council on Learning called us the Smartest City in Canada, and when — for the seventh year in a row! — Amazon.ca called us Canada’s Most Romantic City this spring.
Yet when Moneysense.ca ranked Victoria in 264th spot in its Canada’s Best Places to Live rankings in 2018, or when the Boring Awards short-listed us for the most boring city in the country, we wrote them off like a bad debt.
We live in a wonderful place. We know that. We don’t really need to develop a list to change our slant on things.
Maclean’s magazine: Best communities in Canada
1.Burlington, Ont.
15.Oak Bay
25. Colwood
26. North Saanich
29. Central Saanich
32.Saanich
38.Langford
50.Sidney
121. Victoria
159.Esquimalt
180.Courtenay
194.Nanaimo
209. Campbell River
210. Parksville
229.Greater Vancouver
248. North Cowichan
273. Port Alberni
415. Mountain View County, Alta.
Best communities to retire in Canada
1. Toronto
5. Langford
6. Colwood
7. Central Saanich
13.Saanich
14.Sidney
16.Victoria
18.Esquimalt
21.Oak Bay
22.North Saanich
33.Salt Spring Island
44.Comox
73.Sooke
86.Nanaimo
94.Courtenay
Best place to raise a family
1.Burlington, Ont.
43.Oak Bay
63.Colwood
Best communities for new Canadians
1.Grimsby, Ont.
8.Oak Bay
10.Saanich
27.North Saanich
29.Sidney
34.Central Saanich
54.Victoria
63.Colwood
98.Esquimalt
