Saint John is Canada's happy place

This is from the Globe and Mail. The results in this survey contrast with the type of survey that rates cities as best in terms of economic factors. Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal all fail to make the top ten. None of the powerhouse cities of the prairies such as Calgary or Edmonton make it either. In the west only Saskatoon, and Winnipeg make the top ten. Perhaps with its newfound growth and the Saskatchewan Party government Saskatoonites or whomever they are will become less happy!


Saint John is Canada's happy place
The Canadian Press

December 27, 2007 at 8:18 PM EST

Saint John, N.B. — Saint John is the happiest city in Canada.

The New Brunswick city was one of several Atlantic Canadian centres to score well in a satisfaction study conducted by the University of British Columbia.

Sponsored by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the findings were based on survey data provided by Statistics Canada.

John Helliwell, an economics professor at UBC, examined close to 100,000 responses to Stats Canada's ethnic diversity survey of 2002 and its general social survey of 2003.

“The magic is to find out, not only how happy people are with their lives, but to situate them in communities (and) explain why people who are happy are happy,” Mr. Helliwell said.

Saint John led the pack with a life satisfaction score of 8.6 out of 10, which Mr. Helliwell said makes it among the happiest cities not only in Canada, but the world.

“That's pretty high,” he said. “Denmark is the highest country and runs about 8.1 or 8.2. Saint John is operating in pretty rarified territory, so something's going well.”

Quebec City placed second on the survey while Charlottetown was third. Moncton, N.B., and Kitchener, Ont., tied for fourth while St. John's, N.L., was sixth.

Rounding out the Top 10, in order, were Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg and Halifax.

Mr. Helliwell said it's no coincidence that smaller communities scored higher than bigger ones.

He said trusting others is important and those kind of connections are easier to make in smaller cities.

“Having a community that's stable enough to get to know people is important,” he said. “That's one of the advantages of a community that's not subject to the big turnover major metropolitan areas are.

“You have a chance to see people regularly. Clerks in stores are [more likely to be] their friends, not just somebody trying to sell you something. And that's harder to do in big cities.”

Helliwell said he'd like to see a greater focus on this type of qualitative research when it comes to gauging the development of countries, as opposed to strict economic measures.

“Life satisfaction is an alternative way of approaching development,” he said. “We need to stop just looking at GDP per capita and look at the quality of people's lives.”