[ihateittoo]

A list of Canada's "Safest Cities"
But I figured we'd be lower than toronto:

http://spmedia.canada.com/gallery/newsroom/Top50.jpg

[raisethehammer]

not bad at all...i didn't even know Canada had 24 big cities...haha

[matt602]

I find it kinda funny/weird Brantford is so high up there.

[flar]

Brantford is bad, my cousin got jumped there a couple months ago.

[BCTed]

ihateittoo, what is the source of this data? Any idea on how these crime scores were derived?

Things like this are pretty cool to check out, but I imagine that it is all but impossible to make apples-to-apples comparisons. The fact that Western Canadian cities seem to have the highest crime rates is something that I have never really understood. We have a clean sweep of the top 9, but I have never really thought of Western Canada as any more dangerous than Ontario or Eastern Canada.

[AylmerOptimist]

Where's Ottawa?

[raisethehammer]

actually, the top 10 was pretty much what I expected other than Chilliwack. It's a little town an hour east of Vancouver...not sure how they ended up there.
The rest of them are chronically bad for crime...I'm a little surprised that Vancouver isn't higher as well, but per capita it kinda makes sense.

[Millstone]

This is the list of the most dangerous cities.

[the dude]

i took stats in university but i'm a little confused by the table. i'm not very smart, though, so...

as for hamilton, i feel very safe in the city and apparently these figures back that up.

[go_leafs_go02]

haha..yeah they are, I looked at them, and thought, no way quebec is the most dangerous canadian city out there.

[ihateittoo]

I can not find the chart again but I believe it was on canada.com,

but it all comes from statscan 2006 crime statistics.

http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/070718/d070718b.htm

[ihateittoo]

Also sorry my title as "safest cities" was definitely misleading but most got the fact that chart actally showed the exact opposite.

[SteelTown]

I thing I noticed is that for Hamilton it includes Wentworth yet with Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, etc it's just the city alone.

[JT Jacobs]

actually, the top 10 was pretty much what I expected other than Chilliwack. It's a little town an hour east of Vancouver...not sure how they ended up there.
The rest of them are chronically bad for crime...I'm a little surprised that Vancouver isn't higher as well, but per capita it kinda makes sense.

I wasn't surprised to see the top ten crime destinations for Canada. Three are bustling port cities (Victoria, Vancouver, and Halilfax), which means high drug crime.

All of BC is bad for crime, really. It has a serious problem lately. Kelowna is a serious drug town, seriously owned by the Hell's Angels, and where armed robbery is so frequent that I've wondered if it's a local hobby. I'm surprised it didn't rank 'higher' on the overall list.

Part of the problem is that BC has an outlaw culture. And it is primarily policed only by the RCMP, which is woefully thin for such a large province. For example, Kelowna is a city of about 125,000, and is in real need of its own municipal police force. Instead it relies on a few RCMP cruisers.

Can't wait to get back to the safe Hammer.

[the dude]

i have to reiterate what someone's already asked, 'where's ottawa?' it has to be on that list somewhere. i think someone at statcan pulled some strings to keep them off the list.

[jeremy_haak]

i have to reiterate what someone's already asked, 'where's ottawa?' it has to be on that list somewhere. i think someone at statcan pulled some strings to keep them off the list.

The thread starter didn't include the complete list. Ottawa is simply further down on the list. You can see the complete list here (http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20080312_162114_5536).

[the dude]

^thanks.

i'm surprised how low ottawa is on this list. perhaps the 2 years i spent there were aberrations in terms of violent crime.

[thistleclub]

Here's the methodology (http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20080312_173739_7356).

The sensational framing reminds me a little of the recent Forbes story on America's Most Miserable Cities (http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/29/detroit-stockton-flint-biz-cz_kb_0130miserable.html). In the middle of the cover story, Macleans acknowledges (http://www.macleans.ca/canada/national/article.jsp?content=20080312_110944_110944&page=3) that:

"It's easy to paint a lurid picture in Canada's major cities of crime rampaging out of control. In fact, Canada's overall national crime rate hit its lowest point in over 25 years in 2006, led by a drop in property crimes in all provinces. Still, the violent crime rate, which climbed from the 1960s through the end of the last century, was unchanged. Headline-grabbing gun crimes, perhaps the biggest driver of public fear, were stable in 2006 for the fourth straight year."

Terrifying, really.

[rousseau]

The fact that Western Canadian cities seem to have the highest crime rates is something that I have never really understood.
Huh? I lived in Winnipeg for six years, and I can completely understand.

[coalminecanary]

Here's a great site set up specifically to combat the west coast car thefit problems:
http://baitcar.com/video

They have a ton of videos from the hidden cameras inside "bait cars" set up to alert police when they are stolen.

Property crime is really bad in Vancouver... my buddy locks his mountain bike up to his futon in his living room because thieves have been known to scale the exterior of his building to cut locks and steal bikes from balconies on the 2nd and 3rd floor! Thieves have been known to steal guardrails from the road for their scrap metal value too... crazy

[chris k]

Thieves have been known to steal guardrails from the road for their scrap metal value too... crazy

Thats ridiculous!

Its like when people still large heavy amounts of scrap copper to get a puny amount of money (-100) Is it really necessary??? or worth it?

[DC83]

^^ I actually watched a hour-long CBC special about the Vancouver Bait Cars! They're awesome!

And if these stats incl. petty crimes (ie: posession), I can completely understand why Western-Canada would have such high crim rates. Hell, when I was in Kelowna, there were SO many people smoking pot and selling other drugs out in the open in the middle of City Park which is a park/beach RIGHT downtown Kelowna! Nuts!

[matt602]

Thats ridiculous!

Its like when people still large heavy amounts of scrap copper to get a puny amount of money (-100) Is it really necessary??? or worth it?

When you're living on the streets and all you've got is time: yah, it's worth it.

No I've never lived on the streets nor have I done it, but it's easy to see why it's worth it if you look at it from that perspective. The stuff is $3.50/lb right now, doesn't take much of it to bring in $100.

[flar]

The kid in this picture would be happy to collect $5 worth of scrap. He lives in Wallaceburg and makes his way riding his bike around town collecting scrap metal.
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k28/segaert/wallaceburg/f1000027.jpg

[the dude]

i love that photo. if not for the mountain bike, it could be from a bygone era.