Moncton: Canada’s Most Canadian City

Source) Last week, Canadians from coast to coast celebrated Canada Day.  It turns out the residents of Moncton had a little extra reason to celebrate. The city has been named the Canucky-est City by the Martin Prosperity Institute. The Institute, a University of Toronto think-tank, developed the Canuck Index to determine which cities contain the most Canadian touchstones for their population size. This is yet another reason why Moncton rocks!

The Canuck Index The Canuck Index is a blend of eight quintessentially ‘Canadian measures including:

1. The number of local breweries

2. The number of Tim Horton’s restaurants

3. The number of maple syrup producers

4. The number of fur stores

5. The labour force share of the fishing, farming and forestry class

6. The number of Hudson Bay Company Stores (the Bay, Zeller’s, and Home

7. CHL and NHL hockey teams in those areas

8. How close the distribution of language within the region is to the distribution of Canada's two official languages. Each of these measures were applied to 144 Canadian cities and indexed per 100,000 residents. NHL teams were given twice the weighting of a CHL team; although smaller places lucky enough to host a CHL team still preformed the best. The study also included a measure based on how close the distribution of language within the region is to the distribution of Canada's two official languages. The researchers felt that this collection of Canadian touchstones made for a “Canucky” place. Notably absent from the list were measures of snowfall, politeness and Roots stores.
   

Top 10 ‘Canucky’ Cities

Source) Moncton Mayor George Leblanc told CTV that he wasn’t completely surprised by this honour:

"I've always thought that Moncton was representative of the country.... It's a secret we've kind of kept to ourselves so it's nice to see Moncton being recognized." While Moncton wasn't a top performer on any individual metric, it ranked high enough in each to claim top place overall, with an index scored of 0.74 out of 1. The city's top categories were bilingualism (4th) and Tim Hortons (8th). Halifax was the only other maritime city to make the top 10, while Bathurst ranked a respectable 12th.