Like Christmas morning for demography geeks: 2006 census “ethnic origins and visible minority” stats released this week, and they confirm that Calgary is one heck of a diverse city. Seriously.

In Canada, censes are conducted every five years on 1 and 6, and we’re still seeing releases from the 2006 census. The most recent one is the one I’m most excited about, next to the basic population counts (those came out over a year ago); they’re on “ethnic origins and visible minorities,” and they comprise counts on ethnicity and race. As every student or past student of mine knows, “race” and “ethnicity” are related but quite different concepts, and until fairly recently (1996 to be exact), the Canadian census didn’t even ask about “race” (which determines that cludgy and unfortunately named category of “visible minority”). Before then, anybody interested in the racial composition in Canada could only infer race based on ethnicity, but that poses problems. For example, in Canada, one can’t assume that all people claiming West Indian heritage are “black.” Brian is a perfect example of this, because his “racial” background is South Asian, but before 1996 he’d be presumptively considered “black” after identifying as coming from Trinidad (and since Indians are the plurality in Trinidad that would be a stupid assumption, but such was how things were done). Now, there are good reasons for finding out not only where people come from or what they construe as their ethnic heritage but also, for lack of a better way of saying it, what colour they are. And so Canada now collects this information.

And for those naysayers who say “why are we adopting an American obsession with race,” it should please them to know that what’s considered a racial “minority” in the US is not necessarily considered one in Canada. For example, in Canada, we term Arabs/West Asians as “visible minority”; in the US, they’re “white.” In the US, native Americans are considered racial minority; in Canada, First Nations people are not, though they are counted in a separate census module. Finally and most interestingly (for me), whereas in the US they report “Asian” as a composite blob, in Canada we distinguish among South Asian, Chinese, Filipino/a, Southeast Asian, Korean, and Japanese.

Even with all these caveats about definitions, we can still see matters of fair comparison and contrast between the US and Canada. Canada is only 2.5% “black” versus about 12% of the US, but this proportion in Canada increased 18% in five years. In Calgary it doubled (from 1 to 2%, but still). The area where Canada “wins” is in a much, MUCH larger Asian population, percentage-wise. In the 2000 US census (last one conducted), 4.2% of the country was “Asian.” In Canada, 4% alone was South Asian (and per capita that’s fully ten times- yes, 1000%- larger than the US South Asian population). If we add all “Asian” groups in Canada they exceed 10% of the population. All told, about 16% of Canada is “visible minority,” and if we adopt the American policy of counting Native people as “minority,” then that percentage is more than 20%. Interesting times.

If you consider diversity a good thing, and I do, then we have a lot to celebrate in Calgary. Among Canadian cities (by which I mean CMAs), Calgary not only handily exceeds the national average (remember, it’s 16.2%) with respect to its “visible minority” aspect; it’s actually the fourth most “diverse” CMA in the country (and third among “major” CMAs). First and second are, not surprisingly, the world-leading multicultural meccas of Toronto and Vancouver, with VM percentages of 42.9% and 41.7% respectively. Third is the small CMA of Abbotsford, to the east of Vancouver, with 22.8%, but the vast majority of those persons are South Asian (in fact Abbotsford has the highest proportion of South Asians of any CMA in the country). Fourth is Calgary, 22.2%. What’s more, that percentage for Calgary reflects an increase since 2001 of 44%, versus 20% in Vancouver.

Earlier there was a census release on immigration and migration, and it revealed that Calgary was, proportionally, the third largest immigration magnet (INTERNATIONAL immigration- migrants from Saskatchewan, for example, are not “immigrants” although they are important aspects of population growth here) in the country with respect to recent (2001-2006) immigrants. What that report didn’t say, and I had to do some poking around for this, is that it was also third in all of North America on the same statistic. Toronto is first; Vancouver second; Calgary third; Miami fourth. This does not mean that Calgary is third in North America in terms of the proportion of total immigrants, but with, now, a city comprising 24% foreign born, it’s high on the list.

What’s amazing is that Calgary is, diversity-wise, about exactly where Toronto was in 1991. And as long ago as 1986 Toronto went to great efforts to market its diversity, and that was laudable- I remember seeing a story about Toronto’s diversity in National Geographic way back when, and it was part of what motivated my first trip there (with my ex, Timm Elmer- where are you, Timm?) in 1988. Now we’re in that boat, we’re DEEP in that boat, and I wish that Calgary would make room for it in its own self-promotion.