City makes top 25 in magazine's annual survey

Thunder Bay’s reputation is moving up in the ranks as it jumped to no. 24 in a business magazine’s annual list of Canada’s best places to live.

MoneySense, which has been ranking Canadian cities since 2006, lists Thunder Bay at no. 24 out of 179 cities for 2010, enough to put the city on the magazine's Top 25 Best Places to Live Map. That’s also 12 places better than the city’s no. 36 showing last year.

Thunder Bay’s worst rank was in 2007 when it was placed in the no. 71 spot. MoneySense editor Duncan Hood said Thunder Bay had an "excellent showing" in this year’s list.

"What happened over the last year is that Thunder Bay sort of endured the recession fairly well and a lot of other cities fell," Hood said.

Hood said his magazine uses hard data to determine prosperity, housing affordability, weather and air quality and lifestyle, with subsections such as crime rates and culture, to score a city’s rank.

One of the biggest misconceptions about the list is that it is based on aesthetic qualities of a city, he said.

"We are not looking at things like how friendly your neighbours are, or how pretty the views are or whether you have heritage buildings downtown because we can’t measure those things with hard data and everyone has an opinion depending on where they come from," Hood said.

Hood said Thunder Bay’s strength is its housing affordability, coming in at no. 8 in the country. That doesn’t mean that housing costs in Thunder Bay is down but rather the price of houses in other cities has gone up.

Besides weather, which Hood admits can’t be helped, Thunder Bay’s biggest weaknesses is its crime rate.

Thunder Bay ranked no. 129 on the crime severity index from Statistics Canada, which was used by MoneySense. Another factor where Thunder Bay needs to improve is income levels.
Hood said Thunder Bay needs to bring in higher paying jobs to the city if it wants to keep improving.

"Crime is definitely one of the weaknesses for Thunder Bay and despite the fact that homes are very cheap we also found that incomes are a little below average," said Hood.

Coun. Frank Pullia said the improved rank is proof that Thunder Bay is making great progress year to year.

Pullia said along with affordability, the list shows Thunder Bay has clean air, less traffic and a good amount of arts and entertainment, with culture coming in at no.85.

Pullia said he hopes the list will encourage people to move back to the city to help with a stagnant population growth.

"There may be a negative perception that Thunder Bay is not the place to because we’re lacking in arts and entertainment and now when you rank across the country as one of the best places for arts and entertainment…as long as we can get that message out I think it will help tremendously in getting people to come back," Pullia said.

Pullia said the city is working hard to improve crime issues and has added four initiatives in recent months to lower the crime rate.

"Many of the issues that we’re facing are also social issues and we’re engaging different agencies and different levels of government to get to the source of the problem," Pulia. "I think we’ll start seeing positive results.

Coun. Andrew Foulds said he is encouraged by the no. 24 spot that the city is moving in the right direction but he admits it shows there is still a lot more work to be done.

"It shows that we are dealing with a lot of our challenges. But at the same time it also shows us there are some challenges we still have to deal with and we still have to see growth in some areas," Foulds said.