Talk:List of cities in Canada

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Contents 1 Saint John vs St. John's 2 Winkler, Manitoba 3 No cities in Nova Scotia? 4 What a great resource for Americans! 5 Nova Scotian Cities 6 Haldimand County and Norfolk County 7 Quebec section too large. 8 Request change

[edit] Saint John vs St. John's

Maybe I'm wrong, but I was always under the impression that Saint John, NB was Canada's oldest city, not St. John's NL. mylesmalley 02:52, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Uhh, probably should've looked this up before I commented in the first place...

According to the Saint John NB page, it is the oldest incorporated city in Canada, so I'm going to change it on this page.mylesmalley 02:56, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

To clear up this confusion the oldest settlement in Canada and North America that has grown into a modern city is St. John's which was discovered by John Cabot in 1497 (the oldest settlement in Canada would be L'anse aux Meadows which was found by Norse settlers around 1000 A.D.) Saint John, New Brunswick wasn't founded until the early 1600's but was incorporated (meaning it took the surronding populations and created a city) in 1758, making Saint John the oldest incorporated city in canada. This all aside, this is only a list of cities in Canada and therefore making historical facts are irrelevant. Theyab 02:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure there are native settlements much older than L'anse aux Meadows. --Arctic Gnome 00:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Currently, this page is a mess.

I think that this page should be a list of Canada's larger cities in alphabetical order, not by province and territory, since we already have lists of cities by province and territory (to which this page should link).

If there are no objections, I'll effect this rearrangement. - Montréalais

This is a nice rearrangement, Montrealais, and my next comment may be baised as an Ontarioan, but Brampton and Mississauga, Ontario are 350,000 and 600,000 people strong respectively. Yes, they are part of the GTA, but we are in a seperate municipality than the megacity, we have a much different suburban culture than about 82% (a guess) of the population.

Would it be possible for an indented section underneath, like so?

Toronto, Ontario

Brampton, Ontario

Mississauga, Ontario

User:zanimum

Does Mississauga still exist? I thought it became part of the megacity. At any rate, I'd prefer that if you want to add Brampton, you do so under B. I'm worried that another hierarchical list will end up in the chaos that was here before, and would be difficult to interpret to boot ("should Hamilton go under Toronto, or not?") - Montréalais

Gee, it's not part of the megacity - well, I'll be dipped. I added Brampton and Mississauga in alphabetical order. BTW, other large cities that are part of major metropolitan areas (such as Gatineau, Quebec are already there, in alphabetical order.) - Montréalais

[edit] Winkler, Manitoba

Winkler was given city status on 2002-04-07.

Winkler's official web site history page: http://www.mywinkler.com/historical.html

I couldn't find any pages at gov.mb.ca about the upgrade, but their site refers to "City of Winkler" since that date; eg: http://www.communityprofiles.mb.ca/cgi-bin/csd/index.cgi?id=4603050

--Michael Z. 00:56, 2004 Aug 14 (UTC)

[edit] No cities in Nova Scotia?

What does it mean that there are no longer any cities in Nova Scotia?

If that is correct, then it needs some kind of explanation...

That is correct, there are no longer any cities. There are RM's however. - Earl Andrew 23:17, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What a great resource for Americans!

I've been to the US on many occasions and even lived there for a few years. In my experience, even the best-educated Americans cannot name more than 3 Canadian cities, unless of course that is one of their specialties.

I applaud Wikipedia for providing this valuable resource to our geographically-impaired cousins to the south. Steve Rapaport

[edit] Nova Scotian Cities

I'm not sure why someone removed the work that I did but I have a good explaination why I put all those places in. All the places I put in were towns but since they were amalgamated into RM they than have larger population than some cities on this list. It is clearly marked a the top that there are no more cities in Nova Scotia and so I put in RM's. I also did this to show that we don't have just 2 RM's that deserve recognition. The fact that we only have 2 RM's (Halifax Regional Municipality pop. - 359,183 and Sydney Regional Municipality or the Cape Breton Regional Municipality pop. - 109 300) that have enough population to be recognized is wrong. I think that you might have not done enough research to look for other RM's that have some kind of significant population. For example Truro, Nova Scotia the population of the actual town is only 11, 457 (and as a side note, places like Winkler, Manitoba only have a population of 9, 000 but are given "city" status) and the area (meaning municipality) is 44, 276. Please don't remove my work.

This is a list of cities. Not former towns that are now amalgamated into regional municipalities. -- Earl Andrew - talk 17:08, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes I realized that after I finshed I just thought that it would include RM's as well because of the heading on the Nova Scotia section. Sorry about that User:Theyab_07

There is of course a list of towns. You may wish to include them there, as long as you make sure they are noted as being no longer in existance. -- Earl Andrew - talk 18:16, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Haldimand County and Norfolk County

Haldimand County and Norfolk County have been removed from the article. Even though they are both single-tier municipalities and have since removed any lower-tier reference to their official corporate name (e.g. The Corporation of Haldimand County is the official corporate name for Haldimand County), they were both incorporated as towns in 2000, and this has not since changed. As a result, they have been removed from the Cities of Canada article.

Statistics Canada says they are cities. -- Earl Andrew - talk 00:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Really? That information has to be out of date, as the municipalities have the full name of 'Haldimand County' and 'Norfolk County.' StatsCan's data doesn't include the proper name. We'll have to wait and see what the 2006 census says. Snickerdo 03:12, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Out of date? Were Norfolk and Haldimand cities in 2001? -- Earl Andrew - talk 03:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quebec section too large.

I think the Quebec section has too many cities. I'd remove some of the less important ones myself, but I don't know Quebec too well... -- Selmo 20:32, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request change

Perhaps we should limit the list of cities to include only provincial/territorial capitals, and cities with a population of at least 10,000. Many of the cities listed do not even have articles on Wikipedia, and others have very small populations. No worries though, I won't do anything without some feedback. Basser g 14:29, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

• I'm for your proposal. Bobo is soft 04:22, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

• I removed all the red links from the Quebec sections, as I believe all those towns/cities have a population under 10,000 people. If there is not an article on them by now, they are obviously not big population centre. This list should be for cities only, meaning bigger population centres (10,000 people minimum is a good suggestion by User:Basser g). Other editors, please give your opinion so we can remove all small towns from this list and keep only cities above 10,000 (or another # of your liking). Thank you. Bobo is soft 01:13, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

This list should include any and all communities whose legal designation is "city", regardless of their population. In many provinces, 10,000 is the population cutoff for city status, but not in all; we need to respect the legal definitions. Occasionally people have added communities that aren't incorporated as cities; the answer to that is to remove them. But any community whose provincial government has legally incorporated it as a city should be on here, period. Quebec's a tricky case, admittedly. Bearcat 11:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• Alright that is a good point, Bearcat. For now to make sure all lists are up to date, editors should check what the minimum cutoff for city status for their province is. Hopefully we can get a list of the cutoffs for each province here. Then we can have a concise list of places with city status in Canada. Hopefully the Quebec section will be cleaned up as well, I'll try to find what the minimum cutoff for Quebec is. Hopefully other editors can help out. Bobo is soft 05:39, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Important, I've found a possible solution for most of the provinces. The Statistics Canada website has a new list of metropolitan areas (CMA's) for 2006. View it here[1] Using this, by clicking on each province, viewing the metropolitan areas and then further checking each metropolitan area for cities we can keep this list up to date. For most of the provinces and territories, the Wikipedia list is pretty good. The biggest problems remains Quebec. Montreal alone has many "villes" and independant municipalities with a population of over 10,000. I haven't found any definitions of what city status is in Quebec exactly, as in a specific number. Bobo is soft 06:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

The challenge in Quebec's case is that under Quebec law, no distinction between town status and city status exists; one designation, ville, covers both types of community regardless of whether they would be designated as towns or cities elsewhere in Canada. Montreal and Acton Vale are both villes; Quebec City and Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce are both villes. So for Quebec we'd need to do one of three things:

1. Permit all municipalities designated as ville, and accept that the Quebec list will be unusually long.
2. Include no municipalities based in Quebec.
3. Settle on a population cutoff for listing here, but be aware that this can be disputed as an arbitrary distinction.

All three of these solutions are imperfect, but there aren't really any other options. Bearcat 19:44, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Let's just use the "villes". This page will not get seriously long if we add all incorporated cities in Canada, because there simply are not very many of them. I originally used StatsCan to create the list, but there have been some changes since the last census. Notably amalgamations and de-amalgamations in Quebec as well as a handfull of towns being incorporated as cities such as Iqaluit. -- Earl Andrew - talk 19:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

• Great job to Earl Andrew and Bearcat for fixing the situation for Quebec cities and adding in those intro descriptions. Just to note for possible inclusion, for Saskatchewan, it is stated in a few articles on Saskatchen cities that the cutoff number for city status is 5000. In the article for Estevan, Saskatchewan it says, "On March 1, 1957, Estevan acquired the status of a city, which, in Saskatchewan terms, is any community of 5000 or more." In Melville, Saskatchewan it says, "Currently Saskatchewan's smallest city, its population actually falls well below the 5,000 threshold required for city status in the province". Hope this helps. Cheers to keep improving this list. Bobo is soft 05:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)