Riverside Park (Image credit: CFJC)

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: All together now – ‘We’re Number 18, we’re Number 18!’

Jul 9, 2022 | 6:49 AM

SEEING OURSELVES as others see us can be either reaffirming or disconcerting, depending.

So what are we to make of the latest survey that pegs Kamloops as Number 18 on the 2022 top 25 Canada’s Best Small Cities list created by a marketing outfit called Resonance Consultancy? The survey looked at cities with less than 200,000 people, covering six categories it calls place, product, programming, people, prosperity and promotion.

They address such things as sense of place, infrastructure, shopping, nightlife and marketing success. Victoria, not surprisingly, is in first place. And, of course, our nemesis Kelowna is in second. How is it, though, that Kamloops ranks lower than the likes of Lethbridge, Burlington and Fredericton? Not ours to reason why.

There we are at 18, just below Barrie. The description of our Tournament Capital is positive enough. It speaks of our “bulbous mountains” and rolling grasslands, our fishing lakes, university, skiing and film productions. Our highest ranking among the categories is for “Place,” in which we’re ranked 15th. It covers natural and built environments “from how often the sun shines to the safety of streets.”

That includes crime, average number of sunny days, travel time to work, parks and “quality” landmarks. Eighteen out of 25 might not be cause for excitement about but it could be worse. Aside from a little Kelowna envy, is it really so bad? These surveys make for good sport in comparing one town to another, and we can either get indignant at being ranked lower than other places, or brag about getting a good review.

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Lists of the best and worst places to live and work come from all sorts of sources, some more credible than others. Over the years, Kamloops has been up and down in a range of these lists. It often depends on how much turf the study covers.

In 2014, three Canadian cities were in the top 10 most liveable cities in the world, according to The Economist. Kamloops wasn’t one of them. Vancouver was third, Toronto fourth and Calgary sixth. (Melbourne, Australia, was first.)

Among the attributes judged were health care, culture, environment, stability, education, transportation, crime rate and infrastructure. We did make another one that year. Amazon.ca came out with a “20 Most Romantic Canadian Cities” list and, guess what? We were on it, seventh in fact.

We beat out places like Regina, Red Deer and Thunder Bay, though we were ranked lower than Saskatoon, Lethbridge and Winnipeg, those bastions of romance. The criteria for that one were rather limited — rankings were decided based on Amazon sales of romance novels and CDs.

In 2010, I reported that MoneySense magazine put us down as 53rd among “Canada’s Best Places to Live,” up from 81st the year before. Kelowna was 115th, a fact our own Mayor Peter Milobar didn’t neglect to mention at the time. But in 2014, we’d dropped to 75th. Kelowna moved up to 92nd .

There are some lists we’d rather not be on. One of them is the annual Macleans magazine list of most dangerous cities, based on crime stats. In 2010, Kamloops was in 20th place. It was regarded as something of a triumph because the previous year we’d been 13th.

Prince George, by the way, was given the dubious title of The Most Dangerous City in Canada. (In 2020, though, PG was down in 19th place, eclipsed by the likes of Williams Lake, Terrace and Quesnel. Number One was Thompson, Manitoba. Kamloops? It was 67th out of 267.) Williams Lake — that’s where a couple of people were shot last week at the annual stampede — is consistently near the top for danger. It placed ninth in the Macleans top 10 list last year.

The Williams Lake Tribune published a story saying 1,400 people, or about 12 per cent of the population, had been taken into custody in 2019. But back to Best Cities and more recent examples. Surely, if we look hard enough, we can find some good reviews. Well, B.C. Business magazine had us at Number 28 on its list of “B.C.’s Most Resilient Cities” this year, down from 23rd the year before.

Arch-rival Kelowna was fourth. Criteria included economic growth, employment and household finances, industrial diversity, housing availability and “a sense of belonging.” Aha! Here’s a good one. In a survey of the 11 “Best Cities in British Columbia,” published a year ago, Kamloops is in at Number 10.

Of course, Kelowna is ahead of us in third spot behind Vancouver and Victoria, but still. According to the list published by travel website Planetwar.com, “Kamloops may not be on everyone’s radar as a top city in British Columbia” but does have good fishing, a heritage railway and a museum. And here’s another.

According to moving company QMM, as of 2021 Kamloops was in second place among the top 10 “Most Affordable Cities,” though it spells our name “Kamploops.” Sadly, we make neither QMM’s “Best Places to Retire” or its “Top Overall Places to Live in B.C.” But then, Kelowna doesn’t either. We seem to be popular with moving companies.

U-Haul announced this year that the ‘Loops is the 11th most popular city to move to. I’m sure if we looked harder, we could find other favourable reviews. As for me, I put little stock in them anyway. Kamloops is a damn good place to live, and we don’t need anybody’s list to validate that.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.