Canada's Families: A Mini-Quiz
Quick! How fast can you answer these six questions?
Question #1:
Are Canadians becoming more rural or more urban? 
Question #2:
In which province did the marriage rate drop most dramatically in the last quarter century?
Question #3:
Which has the youngest population?
Question #4:
Where is it most unusual to live alone?
Question #5:
How "normal" is the "traditional" couple (employed husband/stay-at-home wife)?
Question #6:
How many wives bring home more money than their husbands?
When you don't know the answers to questions about Canadians, where do you go for up-to-date
facts? You can wade through volumes of data -- if you like wading. Or you
can flip through a nifty little collection of 30 colour-coded tables that
present all the facts in an easy-to-access format.
Canada's Families -- They Count looks like a small stand-up calendar, but
instead of showing the dates for a year, it tracks major family trends over the past
twenty-five years. Included is current information on our population and birthrates; our
heritage, languages and religions; where we live; the size and types of families
we live in; the changing rates for marriage, divorce and common-law relationships;
our participation in the labour force; and how much money we make.
As the first-ever comparison of this data for the nation, provinces and territories,
Canada's Families -- They Count is an invaluable tool for policy makers, educators,
media, business people, and anyone who wants to understand families today. The
mini-flip-chart has thousands of facts and figures on Canadians across the land,
allowing quick comparisons between regions.
Embedded in the numbers are stories waiting to be discovered about what's
happened to families over time, and how people in different provinces sometimes live
very different lifestyles. Even a casual glance at the information assembled
in the desktop "database" reveals interesting differences in patterns and trends. For
example, although 12.5% of all Canadians say they have no religious affiliation,
this average includes extremes that range from just 1.6% of Newfoundlanders to more than
a third of the Yukon population.
For more information on Canada's Families --
They Count, please go to
The Vanier Institute of the Family home page at www.cfc-efc.ca/vif/
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This article appeared in Transition (March 1997), published by the Vanier Institute of the Family.
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Posted by the
Vanier Institute of the Family, July 1997.
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