Finding Canada's Happy Place

"Saint John is the happiest city in Canada. The New Brunswick city was one of several Atlantic Canadian centres to score well in a satisfaction study conducted by the University of British Columbia. Sponsored by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the findings were based on survey data provided by Statistics Canada."

"John Helliwell, an economics professor at UBC, examined close to 100,000 responses to Stats Canada's ethnic diversity survey of 2002 and its general social survey of 2003. 'The magic is to find out, not only how happy people are with their lives, but to situate them in communities (and) explain why people who are happy are happy,' Mr. Helliwell said."

"Mr. Helliwell said it's no coincidence that smaller communities scored higher than bigger ones. He said trusting others is important and those kind of connections are easier to make in smaller cities. 'Having a community that's stable enough to get to know people is important,' he said. 'That's one of the advantages of a community that's not subject to the big turnover major metropolitan areas are...You have a chance to see people regularly. Clerks in stores are [more likely to be] their friends, not just somebody trying to sell you something. And that's harder to do in big cities.'"