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Every five years, the bean counters at Statistics Canada dole out the census numbers. Well, the 2006 model is in the showroom, the tires are getting kicked, and those who care about such things are saying things like, "Hey, Toronto is STILL the biggest city in the country!"
Indeed, Toronto's population has grown—albeit by a mere 0.9% in the last five years—to include 2,503,281 urban dwellers.It's not surprising that the suburbs have been experiencing explosive growth, but it is significant that, for the first time, they outnumber their urban counterpart. The combined population of the three regions surrounding the 416—Peel, York and Durham—comes out to 2,613,375. That makes Torontonians the minority population in their own house.
StatCan even has a cool animated map that shows the population growing like some virus spreading through Los Angeles on 24.
The 5-million-plus population in Toronto's metropolitan area easily kicks the ass of Montreal's 3.6 million. Contrary to public perception, however, Montrealers are no longer fleeing for Hogtown. While Toronto's growth is trundling along, Montreal's population has grown 5.3% since 2001. (Also, they've won a Stanley Cup since the Pearson administration, but why rub salt in the wound?)
In case you're a big-picture person: Canada's population has grown 5.4% and now sits at 31,612,897. Ontario and Alberta are leading the growth boom with Ontari-ari-ari-o's more than 12 million residents sitting pretty at the top of the provincial population pole.
These are just the raw population numbers and StatCan will be releasing all sorts of interesting factoids in dribs and drabs over the next 15 months.
So, the statistics have spoken and (aside from that pesky suburban thing) Toronto clearly remains the Centre of the Universe. Accordingly, residents of Vancouver, Montreal and, heck, the 25 million people in the rest of the whole country, still have a raison d'être: the great unifying power of Hating Toronto.
Photo by Metrix X from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Wow, that animated map is totally trippy!
I like your conclusion and I don't think we need to beat ourselves up over non-Toronto places having a greater population than Toronto itself.
If there is one thing that would definitely dramatically increase Toronto's population, it would be the North American Union becoming fact. If it did, entire blue state populations would move here in a heartbeat.
I'd move there now if I could.
I love that animated map.
It 1971 there was a big blob of 12000+ density area in what looks to be bounded by Bloor, Queen, Bathurst and Deufferin. But by 1981 it was all down to 6000-12000, and even that area was shrinking.
Then in 1991, the purple region starts to grow again and St Jamestown gets the dark purple 12000+ zone, but nowhere else seems to have it yet.
The Portuguese village, Kensington and Little Italy must have been crazy busy back in the late 60's early 70's.
With all the condos and loft conversions, it seems like single family households must be declining - less kids/family, 2 row houses knocked into one big one...?
Also, some new immigrant groups are moving direct to 905 now rather than 416 first, as used to be the case.
In some ways this is good because less people living here = less infrastructure strain but it will mean more 905-416 traffic but we're busy building a subway to nowhere rather than expanding GO at crash programme speed - their current expansion programme will barely keep pace with existing ridership let alone make inroads into the number of people travelling by car.
So will Toronto be amalgamating with the suburban metropolises at some point? That would really be a... mega... city.