Percentage of Population Whose Mother Tongue Is French (2006 Census)

For historical and other reasons, the French language is dominant in the province of Quebec. And while there are regions of New Brunswick, Northern Ontario, and the Prairie provinces with large French-speaking communities, francophones are the linguistic minority in all provinces and territories outside Quebec. But does the prevalence of French as a mother tongue change across Canada's North-South boundary? The answer is . . . yes, it does. A higher percentage of Northerners (24.4 per cent) than Southerners (21.6 per cent) declared French as their mother tongue in the 2006 Census.

The accompanying map and table show a number of other patterns that may surprise some. For example, a higher percentage of Yukoners than Southern Ontarians report French as their mother tongue. Franco-Ontarians are proportionately far more likely to live in their province's North (where they account for 17.1 per cent of the population) than in its South (3.2 per cent). In neighbouring Manitoba, however, that pattern is reversed--4.2 per cent in the South, compared with only 0.7 per cent in the North.

Source: The Conference Board of Canada.

Methodology

Data from two fields--"Total population by mother tongue" and "French"--were exported from Statistics Canada's Profile for Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Divisions, and Census Subdivisions, 2006 Census (catalogue number 94-581-XCB2006001) using Beyond 20/20 Professional Browser.

These data were imported into Microsoft Excel, where the number of people whose mother tongue is French was summed for each Northern and Southern region, converted to percentages, sorted, and presented on the map and in the table.

About the Series

Here, the North is a bi-weekly series researched, written, and produced by The Conference Board of Canada's Centre for the North. The series is designed to illustrate similarities and differences--between Canada's North and South, and between Northern regions--in keeping with the Centre's mandate to provide policy-directed research to decision makers.

This issue of Here, the North was researched and written by Peter Wilson.