Canada-filter: What's the Pittsburgh of Canada?

June 26, 2018 8:18 AM

I'm a dual citizen currently living in the US. I love my city but, well, [waves hands at everything else]. Hypothetically and out of curiosity, if I wanted to repatriate to Canada with my family, where should we be looking?

I've lived in Pittsburgh since I was 3, and I love my town. I'm curious what Canadian cities might have similar characteristics:

Mid-sized city (metro area is about 2.5 million but the city itself minus the sprawl is 300,000). Primary industries are higher education (which is what I work in, so that's kind of a must), health care, and technology. Due to our gilded age history, Pittsburgh punches above its weight when it comes to cultural institutions: libraries, museums, symphony, opera, theater, etc... It's very family-friendly, with a ton of stuff for kids to do. Lots of parks and green space. A fair amount of diversity for the midwest (this is primarily due to the universities and hospitals). Cost of living is low because we're still well below our historical population high-water mark. I know that "education/tech-oriented-city" and "low-cost-of-living" is kind of a unicorn

Say for now that weather is not an issue.

Where should we vacation next to get a feel for a potential new home?

posted by soren_lorensen to Travel & Transportation around Canada (32 answers total)

That sounds like Hamilton. Kitchener-Waterloo is missing some of the gilded age assets, but is also about the right size.

Canadian real estate is pretty nuts right now. There's nowhere to buy that looks like a screaming deal.
posted by thenormshow at 8:25 AM on June 26, 2018 [11 favorites]

Yeah, the Hammer definitely punches above its weight, but seconding the bananas real estate in anywhere populous in Ontario. If language wasn't an issue, I'd say Sherbrooke sheerly for the beauty of it and its close proximity to Montreal. (I lived there for my first five years in Canada.)

Kitchener-Waterloo is great, Ottawa too. I'd rec where I live because I love it, but it doesn't hit all your buttons.
posted by Kitteh at 8:27 AM on June 26, 2018

Hamilton?

No small Canadian city is going to match the museums & cultural institutions of Pittsburgh. But Hamilton is similar in some ways. There is a major university (McMaster) and a college (Mohawk). Cost of living is lower than the GTA but rising. It's also close enough to Toronto if you want to go to a major concert or something. It's not bad for diversity by Canadian standards. Also, most importantly, it's a steel town.
posted by GuyZero at 8:28 AM on June 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

ha. three very similar answers. Kitchener-Waterloo is indeed similar but the CoL is higher due to there being more tech industry stuff there. But there are two major universities and a couple colleges, so for higher ed it's an even better bet.
posted by GuyZero at 8:30 AM on June 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh hi!!! Mrs Molerats and I are erstwhile Pittsburghers (moved away for now, but would definitely consider returning), and we too have 'hypothetically' asked this question. FWIW, we haven't visited but have been eyeballing Halifax for quite some time. Big but not huge city, cultural center of the maritimes, lower COL than many of Canada's big cities (I've read that food is quite expensive, but housing not as much), big university presence. I've also read that the job market is tight but well, I've read that for every place I've ever lived.

I think we'd also be quite happy in Montreal but don't know how hard it is to job hunt as a non-French speaking immigrant with no super-special job skills. (We're not dual citizens, so that might be easier for you?)

How funny if we both ended up Pittsburgh-Canadians.
posted by nakedmolerats at 8:30 AM on June 26, 2018 [5 favorites]

After that possibly Ottawa which also has two universities and some colleges and is not that expensive as it's sprawling and is largely a government town and they're not getting paid amazingly (compared to KW).
posted by GuyZero at 8:31 AM on June 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Adding that we have technically visited Halifax for one day, but obviously didn't get much beyond a vague impression of the city. The surrounding geography is gorgeous, and I especially love being on the ocean.
posted by nakedmolerats at 8:32 AM on June 26, 2018

Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge includes areas with a much lower cost of living. Waterloo is fully gentrified and Kitchener is rapidly getting there, but Cambridge is farther behind and still very geographically close. Parts of Cambridge are quite nice. Other parts are very not.
posted by allegedly at 8:32 AM on June 26, 2018

Ottawa seems like it would meet all your criteria, with a reasonable cost of living compared to other midsize cities (Montreal is cheaper though, especially for housing). Lots of green space for a city this size, far more than the Toronto area. Lots of family-friendly stuff, not as good for the hipstery/music scene but not bad either.

Happy to answer specific questions about the area, as I've lived around here my whole life.
posted by randomnity at 8:32 AM on June 26, 2018

HALIFAX
This ticks a number of your boxes. It's home to a number of universities, metro area is something like a half million (I think), lots of green space, very walkable, very friendly. I think that real estate might have gotten a bit worse the past few years, but it's nothing like a Toronto or Vancouver in that regard. I lived there for 5 or 6 years and still count it as the best place I've ever lived.

OTTAWA
Bigger, but a small feel if you live in the core. Very green, safe, excellent place to raise a family. When people ask how I liked living there, I would always describe it as unexciting, but supremely livable. It's not cool, but you can afford a nice house in a nice neighbourhood, your kids will go to good schools and be safe, and there are two major universities there. It's also got a decent tech sector going on. And a crap hockey team, but you can't win them all.
posted by fso at 8:33 AM on June 26, 2018 [5 favorites]

FINALLY if weather is really, really not an issue, Winnipeg. A couple universities, a couple colleges, much, much lower CoL. But prairie winters. But the Royal Winnipeg Ballet! The Winnipeg Symphony! The Blue Bombers! But, uh, the anti-native racism... Anyway, it does fit the bill mostly.
posted by GuyZero at 8:36 AM on June 26, 2018 [7 favorites]

Also if you're planning a vacation to check it out, it's quite easy to visit Ottawa, Montreal, Kitchener-Waterloo and the Hamilton area (and Toronto if you want, but that sounds like it's not what you're looking for) all within a few days by car/bus/train....could at least get a rough feel for each of them.
posted by randomnity at 8:39 AM on June 26, 2018

Most of my non-MeFite Pittsburgh friends who are looking for Canada's Pittsburgh seem to be zeroing in on Halifax, FWIW. (We're not quite there yet but, uh, bookmarking this question in the hopes that I don't need it.)
posted by Stacey at 8:53 AM on June 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh ya. I've lived in Pittsburgh and Hamilton. You want hamilton. I actually really miss it except for ya know, winters.... Museums, healthcare, still morw reasonable real estate than most of Canadian cities, access to outdoorsy stuff on both great lakes, access to Toronto by train or car.... It's pretty as hell. Weather notwithstanding I'd move back in a heartbeat.
posted by chasles at 8:55 AM on June 26, 2018

Shepherd has said Oshawa might also fit your needs.
posted by Kitteh at 9:32 AM on June 26, 2018

Edmonton might also be worth considering; moderate size, large university, reasonable cultural amenities - in particular lots of festivals in the summer, not the most overpriced place, a nice green river valley, fairly diverse population. The winters there are... I don't want to doubt your "weather not an issue" statement, but hoo boy.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 9:47 AM on June 26, 2018 [7 favorites]

Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge includes areas with a much lower cost of living. Waterloo is fully gentrified and Kitchener is rapidly getting there, but Cambridge is farther behind and still very geographically close. Parts of Cambridge are quite nice. Other parts are very not.

KW can be really nice to live in (I've lived there three times, for a combined total of almost 9 years), but some things you need to know: the community is very cliquey, and moving back there as an adult without the support of my university community (I did my undergrad at UWaterloo) I found it virtually impossible to make friends or develop a support system. I eventually did, but it took considerably more time and effort than in literally any other place I've ever lived in Canada. The tech culture there is notoriously arrogant and Waterloo can be an aggressively classist place; Kitchener and Cambridge less so. Public transit is improving but it's still garbage, and driving is even worse. I actually find driving there more frustrating than in Toronto. The volume of traffic is lower but the drivers are, if anything, even less attentive and less considerate of others. As a pedestrian or cyclist it is downright terrifying.

That being said: there are some really great restaurants and great local businesses, and Waterloo has one of the best indie bookstores in the country (so does Guelph, which is not far up the road). It's trying hard to develop its cultural institutions after taking a few wrong steps over the last decade or two.

Halifax, on the other hand, has a really well-developed cultural scene, tons of history, great restaurants and local businesses, and might be the friendliest city I've ever visited, period. I haven't actually lived there, though, but along with Winnipeg (which is actually really lovely, except for the weather, which is nice in the summer and horrific in the winter) it's one of the few places I'd consider moving to if I couldn't stay where I am.
posted by Fish Sauce at 11:02 AM on June 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've lived in Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax and currently live a bit outside of Edmonton. I work in higher ed. Actually, I love the Alberta weather more than any of those other cities. It's dry and sunny more than any other. Not too hot, not humid or grey, and the cold is dry and not bone chilling. No shoveling tons of heavy, wet snow.

Halifax was great to live in, but the grey weather made me crazy. Halifax has more culturally than you'd expect for its size because it's a regional center. Also, the rest of the Maritimes are close to take day or weekend trips, and that's fantastic. Higher ed in Halifax has lots of options.

Ottawa is great culturally, and is a very livable city. Cultural diversity is good here too, compared to some of the other options. Lots of green space, and you can easily get out of the city without driving for an hour to get past the sprawl. Good for tech and higher ed.

Montreal is fantastic if you deal with its particularities: language, urban density, and getting around generally. There may be a lot going on, but accessibility is a factor.

Edmonton is really growing culturally, and so has a lot of potential. Ethnic diversity is, well, it's there, but it's not as good as other cities. Edmonton is less Conservative than the whole of Alberta, but Alberta redneck culture is still prominent. The Alberta economy and social services are probably best of all of those cities. Ontario is over burdened, and Halifax is economically depressed comparatively. Calgary is far more expensive and sprawly, but the quality of life is also good.

Out of those cities, I think Edmonton is the most under-rated of the bunch. It is changing rapidly for the better. In a sense, you'd do well in any of those cities. I think your biggest concern will be actually finding a position in higher ed. If it were me, I would pursue a job and be happy to take any of those cities I could actually land.
posted by kch at 11:03 AM on June 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: This is great info, yinz guys. I am taking lots of notes. We visited Ottawa last summer and really really loved it (the giant robots may have been a factor, but we loved all the non-giant-robot features as well!). Despite being Canadian, I have basically no family left there now and have barely seen the country at all outside of Toronto and (briefly) Ottawa. If you guys consider Ottawa "not exciting" and "not hip" well... I think I am neither exciting nor hip. We had a great time.

Not being a French-speaker is definitely a bummer (my French is tourist-level, not working-in-Francophone-Canada level).

Are there any smaller cities inland of Vancouver in the BC area that aren't heart-attack expensive? For now our family is on the East Coast of the US but that won't be forever, unfortunately.

I'm also taking notes on places where we might retire if we do stay in the US through the end of our working years. So, while I still prefer a university town for the culture, if we wait long enough, jobs won't actually be a necessity.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:15 AM on June 26, 2018

Have lived in Edmonton for twelve years. People who think Edmonton is culturally awesome have not sufficiently experienced culture in other cities.

I think pretty much all of BC until you get to the culturally isolated north is insane real-estate-wise; I have heard Coquitlam is nice but I wouldn't expect the prices to reach sane levels.
posted by Nyx at 11:56 AM on June 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Canada doesn't really have university towns in the American sense. There are a handful of colleges in small towns in Atlantic Canada, but for the most part university size and prestige tend to track population pretty closely. The closest I can think of are some of the mid-size Ontarian cities: Waterloo, Guelph, St. Catharines, London.

As others have said, Halifax is a pretty good match, as well as Ottawa (though it's a government town at its heart, not a university town). Montreal checks a lot of boxes and is worth visiting: it's a larger city, but it's very livable, lots of green space, very education/tech focused, reasonably diverse, and has a really excellent ratio of culture to cost of living. The big curveball is of course language, though higher education & tech are precisely the two fields where not speaking French shouldn't be a problem for jobs. (Kids do need to go to school in French if neither parent was schooled in English in Canada.)
posted by vachement at 12:08 PM on June 26, 2018

We visited Ottawa last summer and really really loved it (the giant robots may have been a factor, but we loved all the non-giant-robot features as well!).
...
If you guys consider Ottawa "not exciting" and "not hip" well... I think I am neither exciting nor hip. We had a great time.

Last summer Ottawa was the focal point of Canada's 150th Birthday celebrations (the giant robots, for example, were a part of that). Your story reminds me a bit of my friend's American cousin who, upon visiting Canada for the first time, declared "I don't know why you've been telling me Americans are more concerned with patriotism than Canadians. I've seen almost as many flags on display here as we have back home!", not realizing that her visit coincided with Canada Day weekend - the only time most Canadians bother to display the flag.

Now, I'm not saying that Ottawa isn't awesome in many ways (I enjoy being a tourist there), but I feel obligated to warn you that your experience there last summer may have been a bit exceptional.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 1:51 PM on June 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

If you don't mind a smaller city, Kingston Ontario fits a lot of what you are looking for.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:58 PM on June 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Don't forget Guelph and London. Glancing, London seems cheaper than any of the other places in Ontario but is also more remote. Not, like, REMOTE, but whereas K/W, Guelph, Hamilton are all pretty close to being in the same megalopolis with Toronto, London is clearly separated from both the GTA and metro Detroit.

If access to the US remains important you could do worse than St. Catharine's. For that matter, if just being a half hour away from the border instead of four hours in the event of the shit hitting the fan were enough, you could just hit Buffalo, which is like Pittsburgh but not as much and not as successfully emerged from its chrysalis.

If you don't mind road-tripping it, it would be easy enough to hit St. Catharine's, Hamilton, Kitchener/Waterloo, Guelph and London on the same trip and then I dunno hit Cedar Point on the way home.

All of these places will be dramatically more expensive than PGH.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:10 PM on June 26, 2018

I will echo Ottawa (where I currently live) and Halifax. Basically you probably want a provincial capital, which tends to be the "second" city (with the exception of Toronto, which you don't want), as this means it will have better than average cultural institutions.

I'm from Vancouver and I don't find Ottawa is exciting enough for me in terms of the type of cultural activities I expect (smaller-scale concerts and creative endeavours and the aforementioned hipstery activites, etc, which are indeed getting better but not there yet), but if you liked summer in Ottawa last year, you probably would like it here because it is ALL ABOUT the public activities. There are museums, ballets, music festivals galore, expressions of "why are there fireworks AGAIN, there were just fireworks dammit", you name it. There are always things going on, particularly in the summer, but also in mid-winter (Winterlude). And they're probably going to bring back those robots.

I wouldn't say housing in Ottawa is particularly inexpensive, unless you're wanting to live in the sprawl (or Vanier or Gatineau Quebec which are central but less expensive because they have their downsides), which many do, then you can find something for like $400K (Canadian, obv). The cost of living here for food (groceries! but also restaurants) and such is higher than I was used to in Vancouver.

Montreal is the best, however. So good.
posted by urbanlenny at 2:31 PM on June 26, 2018

Chiming in with another vote for Edmonton. We lived in Ottawa and find Edmonton similar in feel, amount of greenspace, activities... But the climate here is (surprisingly) much more agreeable to me: sunshine like crazy! The people here are super friendly, too.
posted by unlapsing at 2:53 PM on June 26, 2018

If you don't mind a smaller city, Kingston Ontario fits a lot of what you are looking for.

Hey, it’s where I live! I love it here but it is not a happening place culturally. But what I do love is that I’m less than a few hours drive from Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal so we go to those places often to scratch those itches.

Queen’s, RMC, and KGH are our main employers, so my partner and I are lucky to have well-paying jobs at two of them.
posted by Kitteh at 3:01 PM on June 26, 2018

With reference to the upthread mention of Coquitlam... it is nice, but the prices are just as insane as the rest of the BC lower mainland. You have to go east to Abbotsford or even Chilliwack before prices start to drop even a bit. They’re a bit better by lower mainland standards.... probably still crazy by other standards.
posted by cgg at 4:33 PM on June 26, 2018

In terms of direct comparison with Pitts, I'd go with Hamilton (for urban decay and gilded age remnants), Winnipeg (for similar reasons), maybe Guelph (not much decay). I wouldn't want to necessarily visit Hamilton or Guelph as a vacation spot but I think they are ok to live in. Hamilton is decently affordable, Guelph is increasingly getting expensive. I love Winnipeg and I think there's plenty to do and see there however winters are not easy if you're from a place like Pitts. There's Toronto & Ottawa but Montreal and Halifax are great and cheaper to live in. I like the Northern Ontario cities of Thunder Bay & Sudbury but I'd likely be in the minority and again winters are not so easy up there and people can be a bit reticent to outsiders. But if you learn to curl and are cool with drinking you'll be fine.

As for Kitchener-Waterloo mentioned above, I've lived in KW for about 20ish years. I've watched it change from a pretty white town where actual WWII Nazis lived in to an increasingly diverse and interesting city. As mentioned above, there's loads of higher education and tech (not just start ups). I don't find it that expensive compared to say the greater Toronto area or Ottawa. It is a big area though and includes a wide range of economic diversity. I don't know what the other community groups across the region are like but the downtown ones are pretty good if you want to connect with people. And yeah it is on the rise. My experiences are a bit different then Fish Sauce's comments but they aren't wrong. I do know lots of people who've felt that way about KW, especially those connected with the universities or tech. And there is still a strong component of "tech culture ... notoriously arrogant and Waterloo can be an aggressively classist" but I'd argue that things have been changing the last few years and really only the older folk that hang on to that. We'll have a Light Rail running by December (fingers crossed) which will improve transit a fair bit. I walk every where and I've only found this year to be actually bad but I'm a downtowner and never walk in the suburbs. I don't personally find driving worse then Toronto but construction has been bad the last few years here so things get tight everywhere in the morning and evenings. There's stuff, if you're into it, like you'd see around Lancaster County (Mennonites, German culture, pretzels, actual farmer's markets). One of the biggest things I think that cripples KW is the lack of a vibrant arts scene - it does exist, its just a little underwhelming sometimes.

I don't know the costs of living in Pittsburgh are like but you can do some comparisons with this app.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:29 PM on June 26, 2018

I have heard Coquitlam is nice but I wouldn't expect the prices to reach sane levels.
posted by Nyx at 11:56 AM on June 26 [1 favorite +] [!]

I grew up in Coquitlam and live about 10 minutes away now. It is very suburban, and I would not say it has any sort of cultural institutions - that's all Vancouver. The prices in Coquitlam are very expensive, and nowhere in the Lower Mainland is affordable (sob).

You could try Kamloops in the interior, but I wouldn't heartily recommend it - it feels very different than the coast. FWIW, I have several friends who have recently moved from Vancouver to Ottawa and they are all VERY happy about having done so. I vote Ottawa for you (sorry about the winters though).
posted by just_ducky at 5:19 PM on June 27, 2018

I will counter and say the winters in Ottawa aren't so bad if you're into winter activities (or willing to take some up). I took up snowshoeing when I moved here from Vancouver, then cross-country skiing a few years later and now I look forward to winter. You just need the proper clothes and the proper attitude about it. There is a lot of winter fun to choose from if you just get out there rather than avoiding it.

The summers in Ottawa, however, are more of a challenge if you're not used to humidity.
posted by urbanlenny at 5:55 PM on June 27, 2018

Coming from Pittsburgh, soren_lorensen is *definitely* familiar with humidity.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:34 AM on July 7, 2018 [1 favorite]