A great place to live

Thunder Bay has become one of the top 20 places to live in the country, according to a magazine’s annual ranking of Canadian cities.

MoneySense magazine’s Canada’s Best places to live 2011 survey ranked Thunder Bay the 20th best place to live in Canada, which beats out the other 160 cities the magazine ranked. It’s also an improvement for the city, which finds itself four spots up from last year’s survey.

MoneySense.ca senior editor Jody White said the city has shown some improvements in the last year.
"Across the board (Thunder Bay) has improved,” White said. “There’s a couple of spaces that the city slipped, but they weren’t in categories that are heavily weighted.”

The list ranks cities in multiple categories, including weather and crime. Thunder Bay’s overall score received a huge boost from the affordable housing section, which ranked the city 7th with an average house price of $136,029. For weather, the city ranked 36.

"Those are all helpful stats in terms of people trying to decide where they want to move," White said.

Unemployment jumped from 86 last year to 61 this year, which also helps the city’s cause. A new cars on the road category, which denotes prosperity, also jumped to 131 from last year’s 147 last year.

"Things are getting better.”

But the city’s ranking wasn’t favourable in every category.

"What keeps Thunder Bay from being an even more livable city is its crime rate. The city ranks 124th out of 180 cities in the area of low crime," the magazine’s write-up concludes.

Coun. Aldo Ruberto doesn’t believe that’s the case. The at-large councilor blames the perception of crime in the city on sensational media reporting, and said ever since the municipal election local news has been leading with crime stories that make the city appear less safe than it actually is.

Despite these media reports, Ruberto said a recent survey shows that 70 per cent of citizens say they feel safe.

"In other cities it’s not a headline it’s on page five or six. If you keep saying it over and over again the perception becomes the reality," Ruberto said.

But the Moneysense rankings had nothing to do with media reports. White said its crime ranking is based on Statistics Canada data. The magazine takes into account low crime, violent crime and a combination of the two to create a crime severity index.

"Violent crime is obviously something that you really want to get a handle on in terms of making a nice place to live," White said.

But crime isn’t as important as unemployment rates or real estate in the magazine’s criteria, White said.

"The key to doing well in this ranking is just to be average or above average across the board. You’re not necessarily knocking it out of the park on any criteria you’re just doing well everywhere," said White.

And while Thunder Bay has climbed 16 spots in the last three rankings, Ruberto said the city still isn’t being fairly placed on the list.

"I’m surprised that we’re 20th, I thought we’d actually be in the top 10," Ruberto said. "Thunder Bay should be no. 1."

The councilor added that 87 per cent of citizens are satisfied with the city, and the magazine doesn’t consider things like commute times or sunshine.

"If it’s just affordability, I can move to Timmins or Nipigion or Red Rock for affordability," Ruberto said.

"I don’t look at just what money can buy me because money’s not going to make me happy."

White said just because a city doesn’t crack the top 10 list doesn’t mean it’s a bad place to live. The ranking is just a measurement to help people make a judgment on where to live and based on the numbers, Thunder Bay is a resounding yes.

"We’re not trying to increase the feeling of regionalism or anything like that," he said. "It’s literally just looking at objective, empirical data that we can measure and we can apply in a formula."

Ottawa took the no. 1 spot, while Bay Roberts, N.L., was last.