Statistics Canada has released its Population and Dwelling Counts from the 2016 Census.  This is the first of several releases scheduled for StatCan – it plans to release data products for all modules (e.g., income, labour, ethnocultural diversity) before the end of 2017.  Hats off to them!

This is a map I quickly rendered in Tableau. I’ve played with Tableau in the past but usually stuck to hacking out code and data myself.  After a December meeting and tutorial with Lucia Costanzo at the University of Guelpgh Library, though, I’ve become a bit of a convert.  The proprietary nature of the software is sometimes problematic, but it certainly speeds up the development of your maps and visualizations. Perhaps more on that later.

This map shows the population change in Ontario’s Census Divisions (CD’s) from 2011 to 2016.  The percentage change is based on one census cycle to the next, but the color gradation ends up comparing this percentage change from one region to another. Note well that this can cause issues in interpretation of your numbers.

Some interesting things to note or remember:

• This is considering population change only.  It doesn’t take into account the value itself.  So, while Kenora, in the northwest, shows the most significant population change, it might still be unfair to draw a comparison against any of the regions in the golden horseshoe or GTA