Vancouver is Canada’s Unhappiest City, According To Statistics Canada

Statistics Canada has released findings of a new survey titled "How’s Life in the City?" which showed Vancouver is the country’s unhappiest city. This is quite ironic because the city regularly ranks among the top cities in the world to live in.

The report revealed that despite the city’s snow-capped mountains and cherry blossom-lined avenues, Vancouver residents still find their life lacking in happiness. On a scale of 10, residents ranked their life satisfaction at 7.8, the lowest rating in Canada.

Statistics Canada said data for the study were taken from the five cycles of the General Social Survey fielded from 2009 to 2013, as well as the four cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey fielded from 2009 to 2012. The respondents were asked to answer the question, “Using a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means ‘Very dissatisfied’ and 10 means ‘Very satisfied,’ how do you feel about your life as a whole right now?”

John Helliwell, one of the study’s authors and a University of B.C. professor, said the report didn’t look for reasons for life satisfaction. However, they observed that those who responded with higher life satisfaction ratings lived in areas where the populations were under 250,000. This suggests that people are happier living in smaller communities, Helliwell said.

Social interactions among residents likewise played an important role, the researchers found. “In big cities, it takes a little courage to put your cellphone away and make connections with real people,” Metro News Canada quoted Helliwell. “The fast-paced life—which includes a lot of these electronic gadgets, in fact—tend to draw you into yourself and your private networks, and not to spread more widely.”

Of Canada’s 33 cities and 58 economic regions, the highest rates of satisfaction came from Saguenay, Quebec (8.245), Trois-Rivières, Quebec (8.176) and St. John's, Newfoundland (8.174). On the other hand, the bottom three were Windsor (7.850), Toronto (7.818) and Vancouver (7.808).

The complete listing of happy cities according to satisfaction:

1) Saguenay

2) Trois-Rivieres

3) St. John’s

4) Greater Sudbury

5) Quebec City

6) Saint John

7) Sherbrooke

8) Thunder Bay

9) Moncton

10) Ottawa-Hull

11) Saskatoon

12) Kelowna

13) Montreal

14) Halifax

15) Oshawa

16) Calgary

17) London

18) Regina

19) Kingston

20) St. Catharines-Niagara

21) Hamilton

22) Brantford

23) Winnipeg

24) Abbotsford

25) Kitchener

26) Peterborough

27) Victoria

28) Barrie

29) Edmonton

30) Guelph

31) Windsor

32) Toronto

33) Vancouver

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